This distinction is rooted in the balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and your company’s culture will dictate how your employees feel about coming to work.
BY FAISAL HOQUE | May 22, 2014
It’s true that most of us have to work to sustain ourselves, but what happens when we actually enjoy what we do? When employees have a balance of motivators, businesses see employees that are actually happy to show up for work each morning.
If your employees are intrinsically motivated, there is something inside of them that pushes them to work. However, if they are extrinsically motivated, something outside them brings them there.
– Intrinsic motivations include the inborn needs for mastery, autonomy, and purpose.
– Extrinsic motivations are often what’s being suggested when managers talk about incentivizing a task: money, promotions, and other dangling carrots.
The best companies have a handle on this balance and encourage their employees to feel both kinds of motivation.
For instance, Apple gives new hires a memo in which the company contrasts work and life’s work:
People don’t come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end. They want their work to add up to something . . . that couldn’t happen anywhere else.
Apple’s confidence is intoxicating. We think that organizations should have a similar swagger in their own field and should be exemplars of doing the absolute best work. This is what the top performers are attracted to: fully exerting their talents in an environment that encourages and cultivates that skillful exertion.
Skillful exertion is at the center of doing work as an extension of your individual emotional convictions and as an expression of your interior life by way of commerce. This is also the emotional center of the organization: its culture.
Read the full article @FastCompany.
Image: Flickr user Erfi Anugrah]
