How Do We “Get” Motivated?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Motivation – New Insights

Competencies: motivation, managing others

Who benefits: those interested in understanding what motivates us

Consultant Usage: excellent material for training classes which address issues of employee motivation

What’s it about? My colleague Ken Nowack, who writes the other weekly column on this Blog, loves to present the “facts”.  If you like data, you “gotta love” his postings.  Me, I like and learn best from stories.  I learn best from things that appeal to my emotions.

Take for instance Peter Bregman’s recent posting “A Story About Motivation”.  It touches the heart.  It is the story about volunteers helping an old man on the street while the man paid to help, sat by and watched.  But I don’t want to retell the story.  Please click on the link and read it yourself.  Fascinating and touching.

If you like the story or are interested in more information about human motivation, check out “What Really Motivates Workers” from the January-February 2010 Harvard Business Review.  And in a bow to my aforementioned colleague, the article is filled with facts and figures and charts to support the authors’ conclusions.  This short article really should be a must read for managers and supervisors. 

If you would like to read a book on the topic, Daniel Pink’s new book (Dec. 2009) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is a worthy investment.  He certainly presents a provocative model that goes against the grain of what a lot of people think motivation is about.  The book has been extremely well reviewed by the business community and business publications.  I have added the book to my reading list and will perhaps do a full review in the future.

Well, I am motivated to stop now.  Hope you find the Blog, article, book helpful.

Catch you later.
 

[tags]motivation, managing others, peter bregman, daniel pink, ken nowack, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.