Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation (and why one doesn’t work without the other)
Understanding how to motivate your team can be one of the biggest challenges business owners, managers and leaders face. Finding the right people for your business is just the first step, once you have the players in place, getting the most out of them, motivating them and pushing for greater productivity and motivation is an ongoing pain point which can often feel like some sort of secret witchcraft.
For many managers, when thinking of ways to motivate staff, our automatic default is to entice them with some form of incentive, or show them recognition with some sort of gift, reward or show of gratitude. Some people even think that the bigger the gesture, the more expensive the gift or reward, the higher the motivation should be. Then, after outlaying the money, expecting a huge return on their investment by achieving high motivation across the team, they are disappointed, frustrated and resentful that their efforts have had no direct impact, and in fact can sometimes appear to have had the opposite effect.
The problem here is that employers who take this approach have missed a foundation piece of motivation, they have focused solely on extrinsic forms of motivation, without giving any attention to intrinsic motivation – and the reality is, without intrinsic motivation to perform, any extrinsic motivation efforts become, with the exception of a very short term impact, almost a complete waste of time and money.
When we think about bonuses incentives, gifts, team lunches and other rewards, these are extrinsic motivators. We are using things which are external to the employee themselves to motivate them to achieve. Now these extrinsic forms of motivation absolutely have their place, but in order to get the most out of them, to maximise your return on investment, you have to get intrinsic motivation on track first.
Intrinsic motivation comes from within the employee, it is their desire to perform and achieve purely for the sense of satisfaction and achievement. When someone is intrinsically motivated at work, they are engaged in their role. They feel a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging and an inner commitment to their role and the organisation as a whole. When someone is intrinsically motivated at work, they are far more likely to present as being motivated, to be more productive and to produce higher quality work.
When they are intrinsically motivated, and engaged, they are also far more likely to respond in a positive way to extrinsic motivation efforts from their employer – particularly if the types of extrinsic motivators are aligned to the individuals’ values – if the types of incentives and gifts are in line with their interests and likes.
Relying on extrinsic motivators may deliver you a short term win – like a sales representative chasing a deal to secure the commission, but it does not deliver consistent, long term and compounding motivation. Whereas ensuring your team are intrinsically motivated at work is a much stronger long term engagement strategy that will most certainly deliver a higher ROI on your time, energy and financial investment.
An Invitation
If you have questions about engaging your team and increasing motivation, I’d love for you to join us inside our free Facebook Group where you can connect with other like minded business owners, leaders and managers to discuss all things HR:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/hrsupportaustralia