E024: Motivation

hi everyone. This is James. I'm Jane, and here we are again with another episode of The World of Work podcast today, we're going to be chatting about motivation. You motivated for today? Jane, oh, nice part. Yes, I am very motivated for today. Not least, I think this really interesting content that I'm looking forward to chatting about. Yeah, it's a pretty it's a pretty good topic, isn't it? There's so much, and once you start looking into it, it just grows and grows. It's pretty exciting. But we'll come on to that in a minute before we get into it. As ever, you guys can get in touch with us. Check out the slides that we'll post online. They're going to be at WWW dot Wow podcast.org, you can also sign up for the WoW mail, which is our newsletter that goes out on the same day as the podcast. Gives you a little bit of extra information about what we've been talking about. Yeah, and as ever, get in touch with us on Twitter, at the WoW podcast, we tweet fairly regularly. You can have a look there, see what we're talking about, or other platforms as well. We're also on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, so just come and find us, and we will be waiting with breath to have a chat about this week's topic. Yeah, motivated to talk about it. Sorry. Just, just, just prepare me to say, how many puns are there going to be? I think we can go for like, one a minute. Great, excellent. I should look forward to that little KPI, a little goal we can set ourselves anyway. So that's what we're going to be doing today. It's we're in series three. So series three is all about sort of behavior, and behavior change and motivation is our second episode in that so we started last episode talked about behavior and behavior change as a bit of an idea. Today, we're speaking about motivation. We're going to go on over the next couple of episodes to speak about goal setting, habituation coaching and some lessons from others as well. So hopefully it should be a fairly congruent little series that looks at why people behave in different words and how we can change Yeah, and it's just worth reminding that we always look at everything through the context of work. So yeah, we might spread a little bit beyond that, but generally, we're always thinking about it for you guys to have a think about how you can make it relevant in the workplace, how it's relevant to you as managers, as HR professionals, as students or as leaders and sort of organizational management. It's all about the world of work. It is, indeed, that's what we do. All right, so that's what we're doing. We're going to run the episode as we usually do. So we'll start off with some definition discussions, do a bit of a research round up, share a list of a week with you, stories from a keyboard, final thoughts and top tips, and then we will be checking out, but before we do that, I guess we should check in. How you doing? Yeah, I'm alright, alright. It's been a funny old week. I had a really, really exciting but busy week last week, and I struggled a little bit to get going this week. Almost had a motivation issue. Yeah, a little bit funny

so, but it's overall, I'm good. I mean, I'm genuinely excited. It feels like it's been for those of you don't know, it's been a couple of weeks. Normally, we record every week, so kind of excited. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's been a few weeks. It's good. My week's been good. I've been doing, you know, usual type of stuff that I do. One of the people I'm coaching at the minute, I'm coaching about motivation. So it's kind of fun seeing it all come together. Naughty. Total geek central there, but it's fun, so that's good. And then someone else I've been doing is we've been working towards building out like a bigger website with a lot of different content for people. So we're working on that, and hopefully about the time we release this, we will have something headed that way. I know it's really interesting. We haven't talked about doing an episode on flow Yeah, yeah. And I have witnessed firsthand your ability to produce work like a monster when you're in the flow. So how to completely forget about everything else. That's amazing. I've never seen anything like it.

You're like, it's like, texting me, going, Oh, my target was one web page. I've done 12. I hate you. I'm

just very motivated, yes indeed. So that's got to be like six references to motivation so far. I know I'm sorry people, right? Apologies, exactly. Honeymoons, yes, yes. A little bit giggly. All right, so, so let's, let's sort of draw a line under it there and move on to what we're going to focus on today, which is for the core content. But just before we do. I wanted to just ask you a quick question. Jane, this is always dangerous. It's a bit dangerous, isn't it? We'll see how it goes off topic three minutes. So my questions to do with you know, if you're in an organization and you're looking to bring somebody into your team, and I guess you've got two options, you've got somebody that you can bring in who you think from a comp.

NC level, sort of middle of a middle of a road, you know, they're not going to like let anything totally fall down, but they're not going to do a particularly outstanding job in relation to their ability. But they're really motivated. So middle ability, huge amounts of motivation and passion for what you're doing, or you've got an option to bring somebody in who, you know, has got really, really high levels of ability, but they're not motivated by what your team is doing at the moment and the activities that are very sort of day to day that job. If you had to choose between them, how would you go about it and what would you do? Who would you prefer? Okay, so without

ruining your question, I'm going to quote my current, one of my organizational psychology professors who would say it

depends, David would say it depends. Life depends. And for me, that's very specifically in a number of things. One, it depends on the state of the culture of the team they're coming into. How much am I confident that that could impact their motivations, if they because it may be or could it be damaging? Because actually, they're in a pretty vulnerable place at the moment, maybe they're going through some change.

One is about what the discrepancy between ability is. So are we talking about two decent, operated, one of the brilliant or are we talking about someone who's weak? But also, for me, it's about how much can I get to grips with my understanding of what informs their motivation okay during the recruitment process, because there are some people that I have recruited in the past, or been part of recruiting where I've been really confident that they are really clear about what motivates them. And it might not be the subject matter, or it might not be the tasks, but it might be something that is indirectly influenced, and I think it depends on the product or the service, okay, that they're delivering. So for example, I would be more and I wouldn't, it's definitely still not a no, but I'd be more nervous about someone who wasn't motivated, if they were going to be a corporate partnerships manager in a in a charity, okay? Because I need that person to be able to sell what we are doing and why we are doing it with passion. Yeah, and I think it's harder if you don't fundamentally believe in it, and at some point someone's going to spot that. Whereas I think if you're selling really great, high level tech that everyone already knows is good, I know you're selling a software solution that's best in market for charity, I'm less concerned about whether you really care about how good the product is, and I'm more concerned with Are you motivated by levers that I can control? So for example, do I have the ability to influence your compensation package find your bonus? Because if that's what motivates you and the product's already good, I'll let someone else worry about being motivated about having the right product, and I'll get worried about you being motivated by leaders I've got control over. Yeah, cool. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's a very long answer, a very simple question. Well, I think the answer is, it depends. But I mean, that's kind of appropriate for motivation, because it's such a complicated it is super complicated. And I think, you know, this theory stuff is really interesting, and I really like it, but I you have to view it with a lens of it is part of a picture that you're building up, and the narrative is layered. Yeah, cool. All right. Well, let's start out with one of those layers and maybe jump into some definition discussions. We've got a few to run through this week. Do you want to take us through some definition? Yeah, sure. So a couple of these I've picked out because I think we need to understand them in order to be able to understand some of the research that you're going to go on to and a couple of them, I just like them.

the psychology and society wiki talks about motivation as being the reason for people's actions, willingness or goals. It is derived from the word motive, which is defined as a need that requires satisfaction, gosh, which I'd like to pull apart from beginning to end, really. But, you know, I think, I don't believe needs is the only

context. I think once is has absolute relevance in motivation, particularly when you're looking at the nuance of different types of motivations, of intrinsic and external, extrinsic, working amongst each between them, that interplay between them in people. Because, you know, fundamentally, people aren't one thing, yeah, but I do think fundamentally, it's really understanding that if you're not motivated, you won't act, and you certainly won't act the best of your abilities, motivation. Yeah, absolutely and, and the way that you understand your own motivation helps you shape your own behaviors. So I always think about it as

I talk about hacking myself a lot. Yeah, so how can I hack into my brain and understand what that what on earth is going on so that I can figure out how to create a better environment? So the next one is needs deliberately. There is absolutely a psychological definition around needs, but I'm just sticking with the generic one first, because I think it's really important, which is requires something because it is essential or very important, rather than just desirable. That's dictionary.com now the psychological definition.

Which I picked up from Wikipedia is to most psychologists need is a psychological feature that arouses an organism to action towards a goal given purpose and direction to behavior. So

what I think is important about those two is that both of them highlight this is about significantly important things that are critical to the way people behave,

and are more than just want. So needs are very specific. They're about things where, if your needs are not being met, and we talk about a lot in relationships, right, if your needs are not being met, then you will be dissatisfied with what's going on. And that's how psychologists talk about it. A lot of it comes from social psychology. So I believe so hygiene factors which we will come up with, which you may or may not have heard about before, depending on your background, HR, tend to talk about hygiene factors quite a lot, and they're the factors that characterize the context or environment of person's work, and they're quite often the source of job dissatisfaction. Yeah, they're quite often the things that irk

so it's kind of important to understand that, and that's from study.com and then the other one I'm just going to call out is job satisfaction, which I have to say, we've picked out one from Cambridge dictionary. But Job satisfaction is hotly contested, what it is, how it's defined, not just about word play like really hotly contestants, what it is, um, but the one we've picked out the feeling of pleasure and achievement that you experience in your job when you know that your work is worth doing, or the degree to which your work gives you this feeling,

yeah, it doesn't, on the face of it, seem like it should be all that contentious, but just, but I just, I don't think that's what it is. I think, I think it's job satisfaction, to me, is the literal satisfaction. Are you satisfied with your job, and what role is it playing within your wider life, and is it meeting those needs financial

so, so yeah, me and Cambridge don't. But yeah, those are some of the definitions that I think will be relevant as you start to talk around the research cool. So let's jump into that research then. So obviously, research on motivation theory is quite big.

There are basically two schools of theory around motivation. There's a content model school of thought, and then there's a process model school of thought. So the content models tend to be older at the minute. They're maybe slightly less fashionable from an academic perspective, and they're certainly not deemed to be as rigorous and evidence backed as their process models. But models in here include things like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, all the first ERG theory, McClelland theory of needs and Hertzberg two factors theory. These models all focus on the what of motivation. So they're about what it is that individuals want to achieve, to put it simply, that motivates them. So these are fundamentally often about the needs that individuals feel, sort of physical or psychological needs that motivate them to act in certain ways. Process. Models are something slightly different. These models focus on not the what, but the, I guess, the whys of motivation. They focus on the process of motivation, and they look at things like your behavioral processes and the psychological processes that motivate people to move in certain directions. These are academically more rigorous models. They're more discussion about them at the minute, and they're fairly popular. They've made a bit of head roads into the business world, but maybe not as much as the content models. Today we're going to touch on Adams equity theory and rooms Expectancy Theory. So that's content and process models. Anything you'd like to add to that bit? Jane, no, I don't think so.

I think I think you're right in that they are process models are a bit more in in the moment, should I say academically, although I would argue that you still see Maslow everywhere, particularly in practitioner world, I still see loads and loads of consultants.

I think that the key, probably the key reason for that difference between process and content popularity is, you know, one is much more influence. About influencing the way in which we are motivated, in process models which allows people to identify more levers, whereas what motivates us

is possibly less usable. Yeah, it's more individual that's less subject to influence to some extent. Yes, and therefore, once people have got the basics, maybe it doesn't matter so much, then I don't know, hard to know. Well, let's jump into them. So content, we're going to talk about a few models. We're going to start with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm sure a lot of people have seen this. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is basically a pyramidal model. I.

Um, why would I mean a pyramid? I don't quite know why I said pyramidal. Anyway, what Maslow says is that there are five layers of human needs. So he talks about physiological needs, safety needs, social belonging, self esteem and self actualization. And what Maslow says in his model is that you need to achieve

and satisfy the base layer of needs before you're able to be motivated and interesting and pursuing the next layer of needs, for safety needs, and you need to have achieved your physiological and safety needs before you're able or interested to be motivated in achieving the third layer of needs, being social, belonging and so and so on throughout the model. So essentially, what he says is people need to build on base needs before they can progress to higher level needs, and they'll carry on this journey throughout their sort of careers and lives as they look to progress and develop as individuals and then create better lives for themselves. And at its core, that's really what mass says in regards to what's in the layers. The starting layer is physiological needs. And this is basically sort of survival type needs, so food, water, shelter, things like that. The next layer of needs is safety needs, and this is about sort of longer term survival, really. And here we've got things like physical and emotional security, housing, health, finance. And then above that, you've got the next, I guess, middle layer, the third layer, which is social belonging. So this starts to bring in social aspects, like family and friendship, relationships, a sense of social belonging, social acceptance. And then above that, self esteem is satisfying needs the ego. So things like status, respect, recognition. And at the very top, Maslow put self actualization, which he describes kind of as achieving your potential, you know, having that sense of purpose, sort of verging towards transcending daily needs, towards really being the best that you can, and feeling a sense of fulfillment. So that's um, that's Maslow. What do you think? What does the world think I should also well, probably worth adding is that one of the ways that

Maslow deals with the sort of top tip of the pyramid is say that that's never You are never content with your self actualization, and that's how you very effectively keep the model perpetuating. Yes,

I like it. You like it. Yeah, I do. I really like it as a model. Unfortunately, there is literally no evidence whatsoever in a work context that made low is is an appropriate model to use, and there's no evidence for existing as a decent model there. There's a couple of very specific places where there's no evidence. One is that it's not sequential. So these things do not operate by that. Two is there's a big, big debate about whether social belonging sits in the middle or actually at every level. Yeah. And does that matter to everybody? And particularly when you start to study sociology around

things like this, certain tribes and how they have kept themselves safe through social belonging, there's just it's way more complicated. Yeah, also, people move up and down. They jump around.

Yeah, exactly. I do fundamentally agree that it's very hard for people to focus on other areas of their life if their physiological and safety needs aren't met. And I think there is some evidence of that. That's about it. So I guess my plea is, if you see, Mother used understand that it is useful model for discussion, but absolutely no evidence that the model that he has, which is that it is a good sequential progression of fulfillment of needs, is accurate for the workplace. Oh, that's one takeaway from today, isn't it? Change for world? Yeah, myth busters, that's what we're doing. That's another episode anyway.

So yeah, that's right, and we're not going to dwell on it, but algebra, ERG model basically addresses some of those points, and it creates a slightly more robust model. What he says is that there are three levels of needs. There are existence, relatedness and growth. So he's got an erg model, but he says people can move up and down between them, kind of as they wish. They kick in at different stages. And it's just a little bit less definitive in Maslow, but academically more rigorous and more proven in the real world. And I think it's important to understand the background when the time in which these models were being created, which were much more they were tools for discussion than they were scientifically rigorous, tested models. It's no disrespect to Maslow, I think it, for what he was trying to understand at the time, is hugely impressive he started. I just think it's really important that we don't hark back to something that could

be misleading. Is misleading. Cool. All right, so that's fairly clear. There nice model. Just don't believe it. Oh, I'm sorry.

Okay, that's good. So then still on the world of content, we're going to jump onto the next model, which is McClelland acquired needs theory. And we've actually touched on this earlier. We touched on it in one of the earlier episodes.

Said in series one, actually, right at the beginning. So you might see it there. We're just going to reflect on it briefly now. And what McClellan says is that over the course of an individual's life, they acquire different, I guess, psychological and emotional needs. And he says that there are three types of needs, and that individuals end up with a blend of these needs, but normally one of them is a bit more dominant than the others, and the three needs he identifies are achievement, power and affiliation. And what he says is, if somebody has a strong achievement need, they'll act in a certain way and be motivated in a certain way. Likewise, if they've got a strong power need, they'll be motivated in another way. And same for affiliation and the way these work is different in each instance, right? So whatever the dominant need is, will shape a different set of behaviors. So from an achievement perspective, if achievement dominant need, then an individual is going to be motivated towards succeeding, you know, delivering, achieving, overcoming obstacles, things like that. From a work perspective, they're going to be looking for an opportunity to do that. So they'll prefer to work in a work environment where they can constantly overcome, you know, challenging yet achievable tasks. That's what's really going to be great for them. Power is slightly different, though. For people with a dominant power need, their need is all about status and the ability to influence and control others around them, and to have actually that power and to win. And what that means is that their preference for working environments are going to be very different to the achievement oriented individuals. They're going to be as power dominant people. They're going to be interested in competing with others. They're going to want to accumulate power. They want to manage, they want to direct, they want to influence, they want to control outcomes, and that's their working preference. And affiliation is different yet again. So the description of affiliation is that it's really about the desire, or the need to be liked and accepted and to create social harmony and to smooth social relations. And that's the dominant need that affiliation

dominant people have. What that means is that their work preferences are different yet again, so people with a dominant need for affiliation are going to seek out working environments where they can collaborate with others. They're going to want to work together towards achieving common goals. They're going to try and make sure that they maintain social harmony at work, and they're going to be drawn to places where people are important. So those are some descriptions and thoughts on their preferences at work. People with these different need dominance is are going to have different strengths and weaknesses or risks as leaders. And there's more on the website for this. But you know, people with an achievement. Need, as a leader, are going to be really focused. They'll drive lots of volume of work and quality. But from a risk perspective, they might be a little bit too driven. They might work people until they kind of collapse. But for risk around them, because they love that stuff, and maybe more so than others, people with a power need, they're really good at committing to things and getting through difficult decisions and sometimes making unpopular decisions. But from a risk perspective is they might be too competitive. Their pursuit of power might come as a cost of a business, and sometimes they damage relationships along the way. And from an affiliation perspective, you know, as leaders, these people can really drive cohesive teams, bring people together, inspire, create loyalty, create followership, but from a risk perspective, they might not be the best people to push through difficult decisions, but

don't help people, but maybe focus more on business outcomes than people. So that's some some sort of insight into McClellan's model, the three needs of their achievement, power and affiliation and whichever need is dominant contributes to shaping individuals behaviors. What do you think I went a bit quiet there, because I was just quickly Google scholaring A couple of critiques of McClellan, because I I like it, and I think

if you don't get too hung up on his interpretations of what those needs mean. I think they are a useful lens with which to look at people, particularly leadership roles. Yeah, and so, like all things, as much as I try and think with my academic hat, the first thing that that I do when I see this stuff is all, does this feel familiar? Does it relate? Does it relate to me? Challenges prove my sense of the world. And, yeah, does it? Does it prove what I think from my biases? Certainly, yeah. Oh, bias. Anyway. So for me, there's some really interesting stuff around

the interplay between particularly your risk as a leader. I think that is a really interesting concept, I think. And actually, I would do away with leader. I just risk as an operator in the work world. I think if you can identify in yourself that you like to and the way I would describe it, you know, when I'm coaching people, is, do you like ticking things off lists? Yeah. Because if you.

Do, there is a risk that you will get them done in a way that is not necessarily effective, or that you will create tasks in order to feel like you're achieving similarly, for me, there's a really interesting one about power. Do you want to be in the room when the decisions? So there's a great if you've seen Hamilton the musical, there's a great song in Hamilton. Hamilton's a great musical. Anyway. It's really interesting. But there's a particular song and say, I want to be in the room when it happens? Yeah. And it's about and for me, that's, that's the absolute nub of power. Are you in the room when the decisions been made, or are they being done to you? And I think the risk of that is, if you always want to be in the room, even if you're not the right person, and you want the power, it's really hard to step away from that. Yeah. So yeah, I really like it. And I also think that

is as a leader. If you can spot the people in your team who are tend have a tendency, one way or the other, quite often, they're the people. So, you know, someone's got a natural leaning to affiliation, they are probably the person to clear up your messes. Yeah, they're the ones. You know, if you've upset half the team, they're probably the best person to help you out there, but they're not the ones to put through a restructuring, because they'll find it harder,

or maybe, Well, depends on your perspective of restructures, I think maybe they should. I firmly have to believe they should be hard, because then you're going to make good decisions if they really hurt when you do them, they are uncomfortable for you, then you don't end up doing them, because you're satisfying a level of ego and a level of influence to show that power, I would be far more worried about people who are doing it with a power preference, because they're like, Oh, look at me. Thing, right? Yeah, but are

they gonna get it done the right way anyway? No, we could argue about this. And I guess that's kind of a good model, right? That I can I look at it and I look at the way that it's being used and the way that it's recommended it's used, and I recommend it, but identified as it could be used. I think it's really helpful. So yes, as always, I like McClellan, yay. So a little something for us to think about on content. Yeah, next content model for us is the it's Hertzberg two factor theory of motivation. And this basically says that there are two types of things going on. There are hygiene factors, and there are motivating factors. And hygiene factors are basically the basics you've got to get this stuff right so that people will achieve a medium level of satisfaction. If these things aren't there, people will not be happy at all. These are the things you've got to get right. These are the basics that keep people reaching a midpoint of satisfaction. And these are things like salary, they're things like safety, they're things like, you know, reasonable, so, physical environment, all that kind of stuff. These are, you know, the real basics you gotta get right. And then the next set of things are motivating factors. And these are the things that people won't care about at all if they're not safe and if they're not paid enough, but if they're already, you know, if the hygiene factors are already in place, these are the things that can boost people from sort of neutral satisfaction to really high levels of satisfaction. These are kind of the icing on the cake, or the mustard on the hot dog, or whatever phrase you want to use. James is looking at me with those puns, going, there's a terrible aren't they? Yes, but you see, they're phrases, they're phrases, but you know what I mean. So anyway, so that's what it is. I guess the real call out here is that, you know, you can have strong hygiene factors and you can have strong motivating factors.

And if you've got right, if you've got weak hygiene factors, it doesn't matter if you've got strong motivating factors, because people are still going to be miserable and unsatisfied. So you've got to get the hygiene factors, right? And then only once you've got the hygiene factors right, is it really worth if you've got a leaky roof, don't book everyone on a staff away day. Yes, that's the way I always talk. Yeah, they want the roof fixed. Yeah, they want to not be wet. Yeah, totally, totally. So that's, that's really all I want to say about Hertzberg. It's just a simple way to think about things. And there are hygiene factors that are really important, so get them right. What do you think? Fix the roof? I Yeah, just fix the roof and just it consistently. So I'm stuttering now, but consistently. I have conversations with leaders who are lovely but dishonest with themselves about the state of their hygiene factors, yeah, if your basic computer system kicks you out 10 times before you can get started in the day. You don't care if you're getting an extra half days holiday because you've wasted seven hours over your six months getting kicked out of the system. Yeah, don't send a fruit basket to the rubbish cupboard that you make me sit in with a leaky correct just all of that so and I think the bit that it's important, I think this is particularly true when you're a small consultant working with small organizations with small

budgets. It is evidence. Is with some evidence, it is something that you can use to explain to them why they shouldn't be divesting money away from the basics. In need of whatever the latest fad is, get the basics right, and you can do very cheaply some of the high level stuff. Yeah? So really, really, really focus on fixing the brief. Yeah, cool. So that's our three content model. So we did our four content we did Maslow, alderf, McClelland and Hertzberg.

And you can listen to that, but the key takeaways are, take Maslow, put it in the bin. Oh, harsh. Don't put it in the bin. Just be conscious when someone puts it up that they unless they say to you at the beginning, this is not really relevant in terms of academic perspective, but I think it's a useful frame. They say anything else, just you should have question marks about you can nod and smiles, well, if you're paying them, yeah, maybe not. Well, maybe not if you're paying them, but if they're

doing it kindly. And then pirtz, yeah, fix the roof. All right, let's jump on to process models. So we've got two. We're going to run through, we're going to look at rooms Expectancy Theory, then we're going to look at Adams equity theory. And they're both models that look at some of the hows and whys around motivation, as opposed to for what So Victor room, who really is fortunate? How does he not own a electric razor company? Yeah,

the room, anyway, his model is the Expectancy Theory, and this is all about expectations. And he's got an equation, and his model sometimes known as the BI model, the vie model, and that's because that's for the core bit of his model. His model says that m equals v plus I plus E, and his models all to do with

how people are motivated in relation to certain outcomes, in terms of the rewards that they will receive as a result of doing something? You know, will they be motivated to do something? Well, they will, provided that the reward reaches and meets certain criterias. And those criteria fall under the three letters. It's model VI and E. So V is for valence, I isn't for instrumentality, and E is for expectancy. And what he says is that these rewards, which could be, you know, monetary, but more likely than not, or as likely they are, often things like the sense of achievement, a sense of accomplishment, a thank you, the opportunity to help my team whatever the rewards are that you get from something, provided that they meet these three criteria, then you'll be motivated to pursue whatever that activity is. So V for valence, I for instrumentality, E for expectancy, going to run through them in order. So valence, this is all about value. So if I value the reward that's there, if I think it's intrinsically a valuable thing but I want to get then I'll be motivated to do that, right? So, so if a thank you from you mean something to me, then I want to work towards achieving it. If you know the whatever $200 bonus that you'll give me is going to be motivating, then that'll help. If I value it, it'll help motivate however, it'll only help motivate me if i and e are also true. So I is instrumentality, and instrumentality says that I'll be motivated to pursue this chain of action and achieve the standard of output that I need to achieve to trigger the reward, only if I believe but I have the ability to do that. You know, if I can work hard to achieve this outcome and to have the ability to actually achieve that outcome, then I'll be motivated. But if you're if you're setting me a task or constructing a situation where the task is impossible for me to actually achieve, then I won't be motivated. If the system is stacked against me, if a cards are against me, if I don't have a resource, then to some extent, it's not worth me trying. So unless I have instrumentality, I won't be motivated. And lastly, E is for expectancy. And this, this is really all about belief and trust. And what this is saying is that, you know, if I think something's valuable, I'll be motivated towards it, provided I think of it, I've got the instrumentality to achieve it, but also only provided that I genuinely expect and believe that if I achieve a required standard of outcome or performance, that I will receive that reward, be it a thank you or a $200 bonus or whatever it happens to be. So for me to be motivated, there needs to be some reward attached with the task that I might be doing or motivated to do, I need to believe that I have the ability to complete that task to the required level. And I need to have a belief that if I meet the required standards, that the reward will be made forthcoming. So to be motivated, there needs to be valence and value, instrumentality and the ability to deliver and expectancy, which is for belief the reward will be forthcoming, should I achieve a right standard? So that's rooms Expectancy Theory in my sort of garbled run through, no, I think it's very straightforward. Basically,

give, give people what they want. Don't give them what they don't want, yeah, in terms of rewards packages, etc, yeah. You know, if people don't want to be able to buy back their holiday because they've already got holiday because they've already got loads of it and they're paid, well, then that's not going to help them, whereas it may, for some people,

make sure that you don't set them impossible goals, because that's just nonsense. Yeah, and also, don't ever offer stuff, and don't come through ever, even if it's just k.

In the office on a Friday. If you've said you're going to do something, do it, because otherwise you lose trust, and then people will not trust you when they say, Okay, well, there's a big, big, big bonus in it for you to see it. Well, we break cakes every Friday, so why would we believe this? Yeah, yeah. And you know, one of the things I like about this model is I have seen people be get to the stage where their motivation is totally destroyed as a result of each of these separate three things? Yeah, so I've seen rewards that are on valued. I've seen tasks that people can't achieve because the system won't let them. And I've seen them perceive that they've been lied to before about outcomes, and so they're not motivated. So you were saying that like you look at Maslow and or McClelland and you think you can relate to it. I it's the same for me with this one in two words, unreliable leadership, yeah, this is how I see it. When I think about it, it's as a leader, have you or manager? Have you been reliable? Yeah, yeah. Okay,

okay, cool. So that was rooms Expectancy Theory. So it was good to talk through that the vie model for him, expectancy model. There are other expectancy models, but, you know, rooms is one of the biggest ones and the most popular ones that people know about. The last of our process models that we're going to speak about is Adams equity theory.

And equity theory basically says that people value fairness. You know, people are motivated by fairness. And I guess the flip side of that is that when things are unfair, it's a challenge to people's motivation. That's really the core of what's going on in this model. And there are a couple things that we need to look at when we're thinking about this model. The first thing is about sort of the relationship between input or contribution, you know, what I'm doing for an organization, and then output or benefit, which is what I'm getting from an organization.

And when Adam did his model, he looks at my relationship with my inputs and my outputs for the organization. But then he also looks at some sort of peer comparison work as well. And we'll come on to touch on that. But if we start with the first bit, which is just, you know, what's my input like? What's my output like? Does it seem fair? Then what Adam says is that if I put in a unit of contribution. If I'm trying to work, I'll automatically make a bit of an assessment around, what does that contribution feel like? What would be a fair return on that contribution? What do I expect from the organization? And I've got this sort of equation in my mind of inputs outputs, and a sort of fairness line on a graph, if you will. And if what I'm receiving back feels fair, then I'll be reasonably motivated. You know, that feels pretty good to me. However, if I feel that I'm inputting more than I'm being compensated for, if I feel kind of under compensated from an organization, then I'm going to feel demotivated. I feel like I'm not being recognized. And, you know, that'll um, that'll make me feel, I think the words that are used by Stacey Adams are distressed. I'll feel kind of distressed, and I want to do what I can to get back to a sense of fairness and equity. Actually, the same is true if I feel that I'm being overcompensated as well. So if I feel that I'm doing not very much and receiving much more benefit than I'm really worth, then actually that's kind of distressing as well. So regardless of whether I feel overcompensated or under compensated, I'm going to feel distressed. And when I feel distressed, I'm going to try and do something to get rid of that distress. And that's something that I do is really all about trying to bring me back to a place where things feel fair and equitable. So I'll take different actions to do that. So as an individual, if I feel under compensated, perhaps what I'll do is I'll lower my level of work so that I feel like it's fair. And if I feel like I'm being overcompensated, then maybe what I'll do is I'll increase my quality of work so it feels like actually that compensation is fair because I've upped the amount of work that I'm doing. So that's one way to change about sense of fairness, and that's about changing the actual work and the actual relationship between the input and the output. There's another way to do this as well. So there's another way for me, in either of those situations, to try and change my sense of perception between contribution and the reward I'm receiving. There's other ways actually to change my own perceptions. So if I feel that, for example, if I feel that I'm being overcompensated, instead of changing the amount of work that I do, what I might do is I might change my perceptions of the value of a work that I'm contributing. So I might go through a bit of a process of cognitive distortion and somehow come to believe that my actions are really valuable, I'll get perhaps, an inflated sense of

self worth or importance, or belief in the quality of what I do. And that'll mean that actually, you know what it feels like, that high level of compensation is fair. Conversely, if I feel that I'm being under compensated, obviously I can lower the amount of work that I'm doing so that that feels fair. Or alternatively, what I can do is I can lower the value that I ascribe to the work that I do do. So, you know, I'll do the same amount of contribution, but I'll reassess what that's worth and have a sort of diminished sense of what what I'm doing is worth. So, so that sort of cognitive distortion piece around changing perceptions is, at least in my view.

Less helpful and less beneficial in the long run than some of the other ways to get back to normal. But the point is that people want to tend back to equity and fairness in that type of relationship. So that's really the first part of the equity theory, and that's about me and my relationship with my organization and work. There's one other part of this, which is around my relationship with my peers, right? So if, if in the relationship I have with the organization, it feels that it's fair, it feels like my sense of what I'm contributing is matched by what I'm receiving in terms of benefit. So I feel that I'm appropriately being compensated. That's great. But then the next thing I'm going to do is compare myself to my peers. So what I'll do is I'll go out and I'll say, Okay, well, here I am. This is what I get from my unit of contribution. What are my peers doing? And what I'll see is I'll see peers who are comparably or fairly compensated in a similar fashion to me. And if I see that, that's fine. I'm motivated,

or at least I'm not demotivated. If, however I look at my peers and I say, Well, wait a minute, this person over there, Jane is working the exact same amount as me, but Jane's getting paid 50% more than me. Then I'll say, well, that doesn't really feel fair, does it? So what do I need to do to reach fairness again in this situation? So maybe again, what I'll need to do is change my actual contribution. So maybe I'll work less, so maybe I'll work two thirds as much as Jane, so that my two thirds pay seems fair. So I'll try and get back to normal, or alternatively, I'll go through one of those cognitive distortion functions, and maybe I'll just believe that my efforts are worth significantly less than Jane's effort. So that's really what Adams equity theory says. Says that we've got this sort of instinct and this desire to tend to the norm towards fairness, and that's what we'll do. So, yeah, so that's Adams equity theory, I guess. In a nutshell, what do you think? I think it's really, it's probably one of the most powerful things I've come across when talking about motivation, because I think it's the best at articulating that context is everything, yeah, so it's a great bit about

people seeing their contribution as fair and adjusting, particularly about adjusting through I think you called it cognitive distortion. Yeah. You might call it conscious cognitive distortion. Or you might make it a fair judgment that if the boss, who knows more than you theoretically, is paying you more for work that you didn't think was valuable. It was valuable. If you take an economics aspect, if someone's prepared to pay for it, then that's what it's worth, not what you think. And what it really does is play much more to the reality of how we see the world, which is that we are interacting with the world, or certainly, in my view. And I think the peer thing is is fascinating, because it's just at the root of so many problems that I've experienced. And when I say that, I mean that people are judging themselves against what they perceive to be their peers versus what they aren't. Yeah, and it also doesn't take any account of the reality of how

salaries exist. You know, predominantly salaries are negotiated on the entry point of your career, and if you go in significantly lower than a period of doing the same amount of work, then any uplift, quite often, will not be seen as bringing people into line, because that's not happening. How organizations think about it. They think everyone deserves the same percentage. For example, yeah. So you can, quite often, you quite often end up with people pay different amount, unless there's actual mechanisms which regulate it. So for me, it's

really interesting. The example I always talk about, and I may have even talked about it before, is if you had three kids who were growing up, and they come down on Christmas morning, and one counts the number of presents under the tree, and one counts how much someone spent on those presents. And one person is thinking about who's got the most difficult present to get, because it's like on the list of things, how much time someone's spent on it, then what you've got is three different perceptions of fairness. And this is where it all becomes very complicated. And I've had this in teams, people perceive fair as different. Yeah. So some people will say it's based on output and how much impact they've had in the organization. Some will be about the effort they've made. Some will talk about will talk about teamwork. Do you quite often see people suffering where they haven't focused on their own work, but they have played, they take them off the team, and then they don't get rewarded for it, because they're like their perception is, well, I was doing it for everyone, and someone else's perception might be, but you didn't get done what we asked to get done, but you asked me to do this, and then you end up in this cycle of, well, you said you said you needed me to be a team player, yeah. And a lot of it comes down to

and the other thing I think that doesn't get included in any of this, is what that reward or recognition gets you on the outside world. So

ultimately, some people talk about is that reward for their contribution fair in the context of a numerate amount, but mostly we think in the context of life, it can buy us, which is why, you know, if you're geographically in a city, that's really expensive versus cheap response. So I think it's a good theory.

Be Do I think that we always do this concept of returning to equity, and do we always feel distress? I'm not sure. Distress is overpaid. Distress is a big I think mostly we might go, Well, that's how much it's worth, if someone's prepared to pay me brilliant, thanks. I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm worth more than I thought. Yeah, so I don't know about that, about that, about the distress thing, but do I absolutely think that

people who go above and beyond, particularly people who go above and beyond without expectation, but then don't get anything, and then frustrated? That's a complicated thing, and I think that's that's you can a lot of that can be ascribed to the fact that they have trust in equity theory. They have trust that if they up their effort and they've been asked to, they will be rewarded for it, and when they're not, they do experience dissatisfaction. I think that is exact word. Sure. I think distress is the exact word. I did this. You asked me to do this. What have I got for it? I've got nothing done if I had done exactly the same thing. And you say it's unfair. I mean, it just feels, I feel distressed and unfair. That is literally the words that I would use to some of the reactions that I've seen. Yeah. So, yeah. So I like it. I like it a lot. And I think it's really helpful when, particularly when you're going into things like pay reviews. Yeah, I've got a manager who never ceased to be surprised when everyone was disappointed in the pay review every year, and he was like, but it's killed me to get this, this Pay Review, and I'm like, they don't know that. And actually they don't care. They see that as your job, yeah, yeah. So they're still upset because they're looking at what everyone else is getting in the rest of the sector, yeah? Or where do you bench? And really interestingly, with the charity sector is I worked in a team where we were pretty much all of our friends were outside of the charity sector, so each of us had friendship groups that were in professionals, yeah, so papers were never going to help us.

So you had to frame it in a different way, because we were always so far behind our peers. Yeah? Because, to me, my peers are not in the charity sector. My peers are my friends that I went to uni with school friends, and I'm benchmarking against that, and how far financially Am I behind, yeah, that makes up that is contribute

compensated for by the fact that I get to sit at dinner parties and everyone goes, Wow, everyone else got boring job and you've got an interesting one, yeah, and that is the trait, the actual trade offs that go down in my brain. So I think, I think it's a really helpful way of thinking about people and really question Who peers are, because who you think your staff or your colleagues peers are and not the peers they've got in their head? Yeah, I know someone where it's their family. Yeah, okay, that's not helpful. No, I'm sure it's not. I've quote somebody who's said some things that make me feel that that's the same, same case there. So for me there, I guess maybe just a couple of final reflections based on what we spoke about there. One is from the leadership perspective, when you think about somebody in an equity theory situation, when you're thinking about benefits that they receive, I think some of those benefits are financial, but I think you know, a benefit of doing something would be praise, recognition, celebration. So I think as a leader, it's important to be equitable in terms of the way that you you provide benefit to people for what they're contributing, by recognizing them, by celebrating their successes, by saying thank you. You know, if you only ever say thank you to one person and not to somebody else, and that's inequitable treatment, and that's a little bit difficult, I would argue that one of the most powerful things you could do as a leader is say up front, I can't give you a pay raise, because it's not, it's not within the budget. But let me tell you, I would if, if I could, this is, this is the value of what you've done, yeah, and I think framing value in different ways, framing value in the impact of what you've done, particularly for back office staff. So being able to come back and say, because of you, the organization has significantly saved money. And no, we can't give you payrolls, but we that will mean active in nonprofits and things that will mean X number of people are going to benefit. Yeah, social recognition. And then the other thing that I think is really interesting, what I've seen caused some problems with this, is to do with benchmarking contribution. So when I compare my contribution, perhaps to a contribution of my peer group. You know, it's really hard for me to really see what my peers do. All I see is the bits that I see. Do you know what I mean? So I might think, Well, I see you doing this, and I know that I'm doing more, but I don't see all the stuff that you do. You know, this is something that I've seen, that I've read about in in sort of behavioral economics as well. It's that sort of visibility thing you only are aware of what's visible. So if I don't see you do it, in my mind, you're not doing it. So it feels like you're contributing less than me and getting recognized. I think that's particularly true of line management. Yeah. So one of my favorites is where people like, why is my manager paid so much more when they're doing less? Like,

so the one of the ways I always talk about it is, is thinking about not what you're doing, but the role you're playing. Yeah? So if you're having to deal with

difficult, challenging situations, difficult habitation, more emotionally, yeah, it's not about the number of hours you spend in the office. It's really not, yeah, contributions, not the same. And if it is in your organization, that's about.

Thing, yeah. All right, well, I think that was a good conversation about equity theory. I feel nicely balanced in a good middle position, refined. You're not You're not distressed. I'm not distressed. I feel pretty good. That was good. All right, um, list of a week. Do you want to tell us a little bit about list of a week? So like we've done once or twice before, we've actually snuck in some additional content into list of the week. But we've gone from a more practitioner base and more practical set of

lists. It's from John Adairs a basic rules for motivation. And John does done lots of writing around this stuff, lots of really accessible stuff, which is useful. And as always, with any lists that I give you, it's not the list, it's a list. So there are other ways of doing things, but these are 80s. Yeah, it's just stuff to think about, stuff to think about, and it's a nice little chest. So rule one be made motivated yourself and really important for so many reasons, but I the nothing more tragic than watching a really unmotivated leader or manager trying to engage his team. It's just an uphill battle,

and it's depressing. Just want to be in that room. So really be honest and self reflective. Are you in the right place to be actually thinking about other people's motivation, and if not, what can you do around yourself? Rule two select people who are highly motivated, I would put in brackets afterwards, or people who have had experience of being highly motivated. So, you know, quite often people are not highly motivated at that point, and you have an opportunity to give them something that will re engage them. Rule three, which actually I would delete one and two and four to eight, and I would just stamp this on everything, which is, treat each person as an individual. Do it because you will get better results. Do it because it will make your job easier. Do it because it will have impact on your organization, and do it because it's the right thing to do. It is correct? This is this is one of those just the right thing to do. To do it. Rule four set realistic and challenging targets. So we're going to talk a little bit about goal setting in the future. Then we'll talk about the evidence around why it's so important to have both realistic and challenging targets, but also from a motivation point of view. You know, if people don't think it's achievable, we've already heard why, what happens, which is, and if they're not challenging enough, they're not they're not targets, they're just writing down what you do, yeah, and there's no reward. You don't get the tick list feeling Yeah. You don't get to Yeah, tick list Rule five. Remember that progress motivates. So one of the things I was telling you about is, telling you about is in my old event job on a wall, we used to have an arrow. We moved along the journey and all mapped out. And it was a very visible physical experience to move. Each week, someone got to move the arrow. Yeah? It feels reward something, yeah. Rule six creates a motivating environment. And I think for me, this is about physical about the physical environment, right? Where I say physical and psychological, I take a bit of both, but I might be Yeah, but I think, I think within this list, a lot of these things will help you create a psychological, yeah, environment, whereas this is specifically about, how do you create a motivation? You know, if you are sitting with rubbish daylight and a pile of old books, not

and it may, you may not see it anymore, because you go in that room every day, but other people do, yeah, number seven, provide fair rewards, which is important, but also the equivalent of saying, Just do it really well. It's such a hard thing to do, and the easiest way to do is to think about rewards in lots of different contexts. So sometimes and change it up, you know? So one of the things that was really powerful is we used to have a

celebration budget, and if we did something well, it rotated who was allowed to spend it, because then they're empowered to decide. And if it's not fair, fine, you get a crack at it rotates, right? So some people would be like, Oh, I've arranged for us to go on this really amazing boat for a drink. Sorry, Naomi.

And then finally, rule eight, give recognition. And this is not going to cost you anything. Absolutely. Should be on the tech list. And if it's on a tick list and you're not doing it, start again, because giving recognition is the most fundamental thing, and if you can't do it in the context that you would normally do it, find another way of doing it. So the practical example I would give to you is, if you are giving recognition, if you can't give recognition in a form meeting, because you're presented to a client and you can't possibly point at the person who's least paid and go, that was all their idea, that's fine. Do it the drinks afterwards, do it to your CEO, do it in the board meeting and let them know. So the worst I've ever seen. It was so funny. I used to, I used to work with someone who was amazing at giving credit and board meetings, okay, and would promptly forget that I was the only one in the board meeting, so that, unless I went back to the team, yeah, do you know what happened in the board meeting? And he would, he would just never tell people, what are you doing? They all think that you don't grab value them. Yeah. And then he'd like wax lyrical for hours about the amazing team in the board. Yeah? So I would then have to go back and go, by the way, yeah, believe me, he said the following thing, really, I've never heard him say he's not an emotional person either. Particularly, they'd all be sitting there going, did he.

Did he really say that about me? And I'd be like, Yeah, of course he did, because it's true, hilarious, hilarious, just in different contexts. So that's the late eight rules. Be motivated yourself. Select people who are highly motivated, motivated or have experience of it. Treat each person as an individual set realistic and challenging targets. Remember that progress motivates. Think about creating a motivating environment, and how you can provide fair rewards and give recognition, eight ways that you can absolutely improve motivation. Yeah, very simple things, right? I mean, it's not complicated the business. How easy is it? It's great to great to have a little

symbolistic Yeah. Would you like a story from the keyboard? Ah, James, tell me about your story from the keyboard one time, many years ago in a faraway land. No, it's kind of like a bad

pun. So I guess this is just a little reflection. And as I've been thinking about the motivation stuff that we've done here, I've reflected back a little bit on probably the least motivated period of my working career, and that was actually the third year that I was in my accountancy qualifications. I trained as an auditor and did a three year graduate program. The first two years I liked and I felt motivated. And in the third year I lost, lost motivation. And a lot of that motivation came out of

changes to my sense of rewards, but also some other things that I think tie into some of the models that we've looked at today and trying to think about what led to that loss of motivation for me,

I came up with several things. One was I'd stopped really learning. So in the first two years of my program, it was intensive studying and training for for new content and skills. And in the third year, that disappeared. So I lost some of that reward, that sort of development reward that I get from improving and a sense of making progress. So that disappeared. I wasn't really part of core teams. I was sort of rotating through matrix teams, because that's the way projects work. So I didn't have that, you know, social stability. Not all of my work had tight deadlines. It was busy, but not always tight deadlines. So I lost some of that sense of progress that's talked about, you know, for if it deadlines in 10 weeks, and there's lots of stuff to get there, you lose a bit of momentum, and a lot of the activity didn't really align with the underlying things that I was interested

in. So some of those factors, combined with some cultural issues meant that I lost a lot of motivation, and it was just interesting for me to to look back at that in light of some of the stuff that I've done here. So yeah, that was it, my little story from wikibook. What about you?

So I was thinking about which one I was gonna, was gonna talk about here, and for me, actually, one of the things that I would probably talk about is when I was working in a really small team, and I was deeply demotivated, but I was still flocking my guts out, because that's just nature of my open Need to prove things. Anyway,

I sat down, and I actually was one of my first coaching sessions ever that I had, and no as a coaching coach, and I had a conversation. She was asking me why I was so miserable, and I support because I'm working really hard, something I don't really want to do, and it's miserable. And we talked quite a lot about it. And the upshot of it was that I I really struggle with

not getting praise. Yeah, yeah. I have an ego the size of a truck when it comes to this stuff and and I'm hurt, and I'm very emotional about it, and it's really not necessarily the most helpful thing, although it's very helpful to know it anyway my coach

got that out of me and really showed me how to think about what was motivating me and what was not and why, and then convinced me to go have a conversation with my boss

about it, and a really pragmatic way of not moaning about where I was, but instead saying, Listen, I think it would be really useful for you to understand that you will get the most out of me when you give me feedback good and bad, because then when I get the bad, I feel better about the good as well. So it can't just be good, but it really matters. And this is the kind of feedback I mean. I mean thoughtful, considered feedback that explains to me why you think I have done a better job than someone else. And if you do that, I will stop worrying about all the other things that we've talked about, because this really matters to me. Yeah?

And it was, it was revelatory. It was revelatory for both of us. We never talked about it again, and we never mentioned it, and I never questioned when he praised me, but I sat there smoke, and it was part of me was like, he's just doing it, yeah? But you know what? I don't care. It made me happy. And actually, very quickly, it stopped being stilted, and it became really important. And what I noticed was a knock on effect with everyone else, yeah, because he didn't just it for me, he did it for everyone. And actually for them, it might not have been as important for all of them, but at least one other person, it was. But, and also, I got better. I got so much better at my job, because for me, the motor.

Information to be improved is when someone can articulate what I'm doing wrong. Yeah, they don't have to tell me how to fix it. They just have to tell me what they're not satisfied with, yeah, and also tells me when I'm doing it right. And that is a so important. And I know we I wanged on about this. I went on and on and on about this in the feedback episode that we've recorded, and you haven't had, you guys haven't heard yet, or would have done by now? Yes, would have done right now. We're speaking into the future. But for me, that was it, was it so it was revelatory. Yeah, cool. That's good, and that's a great story. I mean, it's feedback to powerful and recognition to powerful motivator. Any final thoughts,

anything you want to jump into for final thoughts. So following on from that, I'll go on, because following on for that, mine would be to all of those people out there who are wanting to be as good as they can in the workplace, whether they're a manager or whether they are just managed at the moment,

spend time thinking about what motivates you and what doesn't, because if You can articulate it to the people who manage you, work with you, work for you. It is so powerful to say to someone, if you want to reward me, if you want to motivate me, these are the ways. These are the levers that are most effective with me. It's almost like self disclosure. It's telling someone else how to hack you, right? And it's a brilliant thing, if you can do that and own it. A, you look self reflective and emotionally intelligent, brilliant. B, you will know how to fix you when you're struggling. But also it's just such a beautiful, trustworthy thing to do to remember your team. This is how to manage me. This is how and it just people whinge about the managers all the time, and and if you your manager and you is an equal relationship, right? It may not be financially, it may not be for all sort of thing, but the bottom line is, there's only two of you in that one to one relationship, and you need to think about how you can help them get the most out of you, because both of you want to get the most out of it, right? That's the whole point. So that's mine. Cool. Think about yourself and tell people, yeah, and mine's like, mine's not too different. Mine is basically think

about what motivates you and try and do more of that. You know, it's kind of a skills based, skills based approach to things, right? I mean, if you find something that you find really motivating, do it. If you find a skill that is something that you're really good at, I try and put more of that into my job. And if I think of things and find things that I find motivating to do intrinsically, I'd like to get more of that in my life. And it's not always easy, and you know, it's perhaps a bit of a luxury, right? Sometimes you just need to have a job and get paid and do stuff. But if you can find a way to shape your job into something that's more motivating for you, or move into a job that's intrinsically more motivating, but I think that's good. I think you know, you are at your best when you do the things that are the things that you want to do the most fundamentally, and you will make time for them. You will do, yeah, you know,