6 factors that affect our performance
This article is the first part of a summary of the book “Primed to perform” by Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor.
How much do we know about motivation? What are the most common principles to encourage our team to work in an efficient manner?
When someone is asked about the motivation to do some particular job, the answer that we expect is financial motivation, career opportunities and other material benefits.
Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor in their book prove that very often it is not the case. Let’s see why.
Scientific Proof
Researchers at Stanford University conducted a test about motivation differs among different professions.the motivation customer service representatives. The goal was to show how much center of call the one of MBA business school students and
The list of factors was set as follows:
- For the benefits
- Because the work is worthwhile
- For the praise
- For the money
- To gain skills
- To feel good about myself
- To learn new things
- For the security
First, MBA students marked their own motivation, then they were asked to predict motivation of call center employees. They were actually mostly motivated by skills, learning opportunities and because they feel that the work is worthwhile. MBA students expected prior motivation to be: pay, security, and benefits.center employees ranked their own motives. It might sound fantastic, but MBA students did not guess the majority of motives of call cente representatives and after that those call
Here is the table with all the results of the research:
Direct vs. Indirect Motives (Source: “Primed to Perform” by Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor)
We see that very often we do not know much about real factors that motivate us. However, it is crucial to concentrate first on “why” factor of work (“Why do people work in your company?”), then the “how” factor will be affected (“How people perform their work?”).
In this article, we will analyse what influences our motivation and what, actually can ruin good performance in the long-term.
TYPES OF MOTIVES
There are 6 motives distinguished by the authors, three direct and three indirect.
Direct Motives
Play, purpose and potential: remember this formula, as those are the strongest factors that will create the strongest team.
⚡Play: is not about gaming. It is about your perception of work: do you really enjoy what you are doing? If you feel internal motivation and drive to do your work because you like the activity itself. You would do that even if you were not paid.
For me this finding is eye-opening: if you like doing sport, you will be doing it no matter what, and eventually will be losing weight. If your goal is just to lose weight, but you hate doing sports and cannot restrict yourself from eating another piece of cake at the dinner, you will have hard times, as you are lacking the strongest motive to reach the long-term results.
Play employees by giving them time for developing their own projects during their workday, something that really brings pleasure to them.their is an essentially strong driver to create an efficient team. Some companies try to introduce “play” motive into the daily work routine. For example, Google is encouraging
This also explains why people who make businesses out of their hobbies are the most successful and happy: they simply feel fun doing what they do, whether they receive money or not. They would be glad to continue doing it even if the market situation is getting complicated. They are more open to explore new options and find new solutions.
Tim Brown, CEO and president at IDEO, explains how “play” element boosts creativity:
“Kids are more engaged with open possibilities. Now, they’ll certainly — when they come across something new — they’ll certainly ask, ‘What is it?’. Of course they will. But they’ll also ask, ‘What can I do with it?’. And you know, the more creative of them might get to a really interesting example. And this openness is the beginning of explorato
play.” (2008)
⚡ Purpose: occurs when an activity that we do brings us to some particular result that corresponds to our values. We think about the outcome of our activity: social impact, innovation development, contribution to the economy, etc. There should be a direct link in our minds between the activity that we do and the impact it creates, which is valuable for us.
In his article, David Sturt, executive vice president of O.C.Tanner, describes how people doing “devalued” work perform differently once they feel the purpose of what they are doing. Such, he gives as an example, results of interviews with hospital cleaners that show that those who engage with the patients and their relatives feel more purpose and satisfaction from the work that they do.
⚡ Potential: this motive is also based on the outcome, but it is the so-called “second order our values.fulfil” outcome, meaning that it brings us to result that will help us to
A very correct illustration for this is motivation for students to finish university: it helps them to get the job they want to accomplish their values and create impact.
From those three direct motives, the play is the strongest, then comes purpose, followed by potential. However, focusing on all of those three factors will definitely help in supporting team’s motivation. Play, purpose and potential help to build a strong motivation culture in the team.
PLAY <- PURPOSE <- POTENTIAL
Indirect Motives
Learn more about motivation here:
6 factors that affect our performance
Read other interesting articles:
⚡ How to be a good team leader?
