David J Paul Project Management Professional, Management Professor, Author and Small Business Manager
Prior to the 1950’s, the four, classical motivators consisted of Love, Hate, Fear, and Hope of Reward. Today it’s more complex. Today, our Gen-Y and Millennial individuals can recognize, “I want to do the work because it matters to me (Intrinsic Motivation). In addition, I can identify that I am respected and valued because the work matters to the company (Identified-Respect) and they have assigned it to me (Extrinsic-Reward); I am willing to get engaged in the work and I feel safe (Introjected-Regard) even though there is some risk to the task because the people care about me (Intrinsic-Regard), my development and growth and my life outside of work (Intrinsic-Regard). If you don’t show that the work matters or that they have a safe and caring workplace, you are neither a leader or a manager, and you will destroy virtually all motivation for employees to become engaged beyond working for a paycheck. Are you beginning to see how powerfully motivating Regard can be in the workplace?
Psychologists are beginning to shift their emphasis from the bad things that happen at work to those positive elements that happen when good leaders pay attention to the caring needs of the people on their team. Michael Berg at the University of Massachusetts, Amhest (Berg, 2010) informs us that, “Intrinsic and identified motives are forms of autonomous self-regulation; intrinsic motives are based on enjoyment of the activity itself, whereas identified motives reflect values that have become assimilated to the self, even if the individual has not decided to do anything about it.” So, this motivational responsibility that you have as a leader is potentially incredibly complex, and it involves each employee in a different way. Fortunately, following the precepts of “Dare to Care” means you are embracing a positive psychological approach to caring in the workplace.
This positive psychological approach contrasts with early researchers such as Herzberg, Mausner, Peterson, and Capwell (1957) who focused on what was ‘dissatisfying’ with the work environment, why people found it dissatisfying, and a few suggestions on ‘how’ to make it less dissatisfying. They further characterized the work environment in light of the school environment from which new workers arrive at their jobs like this, “In school, the day was varied, there was constant stimulation of new things to be learned, and a social interaction with a large and varied group of people. Even more important, accomplishment was usually rewarded in a very clear-cut way with high grades and with promotion” (Herzberg, 1976, p. 159). He then contrasts school with work environments—single tasks, repetitive motion, little interaction, unfriendly management, etc. No wonder early researchers studied job “dissatisfaction”, there was a lot of it. Today, job dissatisfaction ranks as one of the highest stressors experienced by individuals and one of the biggest reasons for lack of engagement and productivity. You can approach improved engagement through a positive, strategic approach to improved caring. The alternative Herzberg describes is not attractive.
Herzberg (1976, p. 160) observes, “While…. overly grim, it is possible that this contrast with life in school is at least partly responsible for declining morale” (noted among younger workers after their first year(s) at work). In fact, Herzberg notes, “One conclusion of immediate concern to industry does emerge from this work: Much more attention than is presently given must be paid to the morale problems of workers during the first few years of their working lives” (Herzberg, et al., 1957, p. 141). “All clients who were either unsuited to the jobs in terms of abilities or interest actually found the jobs distasteful……People who are dissatisfied with their jobs are less outgoing and friendly, show more boredom, daydreaming, discontent with their personal adjustment, emotionally unbalanced, their personal relationships are poorer, and they show a higher degree of nervous symptoms…..It is one of the most widely held tenets of contemporary psychology that the origin of many of the adult personality (issues) is in the individual’s developmental history” (Herzberg, et al., 1957, p. 157). There was so much emerging complexity to the work place that many researchers of the day focused on dissatisfaction, the removal of dissatisfaction, the sources of dissatisfaction and training of managers to remove dissatisfaction from the job environment. It remains up to us to focus in a positive way on the needs of the workers themselves to be cared for, valued, or appreciated at work.
The Cameron Group, Inc. 