The Six Types of Motivation

Chris Young of The Rainmaker Group left a comment on the syndication of my blog over at Brazen Careerist that offered an interesting perspective on what really motivates people. I wanted to share it with everyone here:

The short answer is not everyone is motivated by the same things. I have found that there are 6 major “types” of motivators. With each type of motivator, I am including an example of an activity or reward that can motivate the person more appropriately.

1. Utilitarian – motivation for money as well as efficiency. People high in this particular value are more “careful” with how they spend their time, energy, and may want to make more money. $1000 in cash may motivate.

2. Knowledge – motivation to learn, to understand the “truth” about something. People with a high knowledge “factor” may want to spend more time learning. The reward may be to actually send them to additional learning opportunities as a reward. Literally a reward for learning and completing a test may be additional learning. A $1000 learning program may motivate.

3. Social – motivation to help others. A proper reward for someone with a high Social motivator may be to give them a day off to give back to the community. A $1000 donated to a desired cause may motivate.

4. Aesthetic – motivation for nice things, surroundings, clothing, life-fulfillment. A reward for someone with a high Aesthetic may be to give them a pass to an art gallery, a gift certificate to a high-end clothing store, a home-decorating gift card, or a pass to bungee jumping. A $1000 membership to several museums may motivate.

5. Power – motivation to control one’s own destiny as well as the destiny of others. A way to motivate someone with a higher power motivation is to let them lead a project, lead others, or perhaps a gift certificate for professional career planning. A $1000 investemnt in leadership development may motivate.

6. Tradition – motivation to live one’s life according to a set standard. Depending upon one’s beliefs, a person may be motivated by their specific belief system and any type of respect of or recognition of this belief system. A $1000 donation to someone’s belief system may motivate.

The assumption that money motivates everyone is not a true assumption. In fact one person’s motivations may offend another person. There are resources one may use to identify what motivates someone. At the very least, the best thing to do is create a short survey specific to each person to identify what best motivates them. In other words – ask – do not assume.

Thank you Chris for your insightful comments.

Money is No Stand-In For Motivation

One of the first few posts I wrote on this blog chronicled a story about a pilot program in several New York City public schools that offered monetary or material incentives (such as ipods or gift certificates) to students for doing “typical” student tasks such as attending classes, completing homework assignments or achieving high scores on standardized tests.

Ronald Fryer, the head of one such project had this to say about the program in a January interview with U.S. News & World Report:

“Roland Fryer, a Harvard professor of economics, says it’s “absurd” to expect children who grew up in poverty, with parents who, for example, dropped out of school, to appreciate the value of education without giving them immediate rewards for taking school seriously. As the chief equality officer for New York City public schools, Fryer oversees a pilot program that pays students from low-performing schools $25 and $50 for doing well on standardized tests. “We’re not undermining this idea of learning for the love of learning,” Fryer says. “We’re trying to cultivate it by making education tangible for these kids.”

Eight months later the results are in:

Money does not singularly improve performance.

According to the New York Times, a similar program encouraging high school students to take and score highly on Advanced Placement exams has produced more test takers, but less high achievers than in the previous year (with no monetary incentive).

“Offered up to $1,000 for scoring well on Advanced Placement exams, students at 31 New York City high schools took 345 more of the tests this year than last. But the number who passed declined slightly, raising questions about the effectiveness of increasingly popular pay-for-performance programs in schools here and across the country.

Students involved in the program, financed with $2 million in private donations and aimed at closing a racial gap in Advanced Placement results, posted more 5’s, the highest possible score. That rise, however, was overshadowed by a decline in the number of 4’s and 3’s. Three is the minimum passing score.”

About 400 more students took the test this year this last, most, presumably, to have a shot at taking home about $1000. Yet, while they were motivated enough to show up, the students were unable to achieve a high enough score to pass, failing to achieve the desired effect.

Does money offer only enough motivation to try but not to succeed?

“I’m just dumbfounded that they can regard this as an achievement or as a great improvement or as something worth spending the money on,” said Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, who had expressed cautious support for the Advanced Placement program when it was announced last fall. “I’m surprised that that kind of money, that kind of incentives, doesn’t produce better results. It sort of undercuts the argument that the problem is the question of motivation.”

I tend to agree with Mr. Stern. In the business world, we are offered monetary incentives to show up to work everyday in the form of a paycheck. It’s enough to get people through the door everyday, but once they’re there, how does an employer get them to produce, achieve and excel? The employees may be motivated to do well but may lack the tools or skills necessary to achieve their goal, whether it be signing up new clients or discovering new revenue streams.

Offering a student $1000 to do well on a test but not ensuring that they have adequate preparation or good study habits sets many students up to fail. A student may really, really want that $1000, but, never haven taken an Advanced Placement test before, may not have figured out the best test-taking techniques, or found the material too challenging or just had an off day during the exam. In that case, the money would have been better spent on prepping the student rather than incentivizing them. Motivation wasn’t the missing piece in this equation, it was the skills and knowledge needed to score well on the exam.

My own experience with bonus programs in the workplace has been mixed. I once worked for a company that proudly boasted that its bonus program accounted for roughly 15% of total employee compensation. The bonuses were based on company wide financial projections and were handed out at the end of every quarter. After several quarters of poor financial performance many employees (including myself) were starting to get upset about the smallness of our paychecks. Complaining about it one night at dinner to a friend, who worked for an hourly paid wage and didn’t receive bonuses (but did get time and half for overtime), dismissed me without sympathy saying I was lucky to get a bonus at all.

My response was,

“How would you feel if you worked hard all quarter and then, because of circumstances out of your control, you only received 85% of your pay?”

Talk about de-motivating.

I think the real problem is that there is no one way to motivate everyone. Some people might find that extra money in their pocket enough to out perform others. Some might value the competition with other students/employees for top prize. And then others might put more emphasis on perks like flexible hours or free food. The trick for managers is to get to know their employees, find out what makes them tick, and then create an incentive that plays to their natural motivation.

Working Women Have No Good Role Models

I was reading a Wall Street Journal blog, aptly called The Juggle, which is centered around topics pertaining to modern parenthood. A recent post asked readers to share stories about their parenting role models, which got me to thinking about the working parents (and more specifically, working women) I had met in the course of my career.

Two female co-workers of mine both had their first babies right around the same time. They were roughly the same age and held roughly the same level of responsibility in their respective departments. One woman chose not to return to work after her maternity leave and became a stay-at-home mother (one of the most noble reasons to leave our company according to the male CEO, when asked about the high level of employee turnover).

The second woman returned to work after a few months with an abbreviated schedule (3 days in office, 2 days at home). Her husband worked from home and provided childcare during the day while she was at work. I once observed this co-worker storing bottles of breast milk in the fridge. I was curious as to how she managed to pump milk while at the office since we were working in very cramped quarters with barely enough space to hold a meeting let alone find a quiet place to yourself, so I asked her about it. Turns out she was shutting herself in a utility closet in the hallway and sitting on storage box for support. A few months later, she was promoted to a managerial position and reverted back to coming in full time to the office.

Another friend of mine chose to leave her job and work as a freelancer while caring for her infant, which coincided with a move to a rural area to be closer to her husband’s job. After her freelancing business failed to get off the ground, she eventually took part-time work at a major corporation 50 miles and a ferry ride away from home. Each Sunday she would make the 2-hour trip, spending half the week at her parents home where they watched her child during the day and drove back each Thursday night to spend the weekend with her husband while still putting in a full day of work on Fridays.

What I realized, was that none of these women’s experiences were ones I would want to emulate. What I’ve seen is that unless you are willing to endure serious sacrifice in both your personal and professional life, an equal balance between career and motherhood is rarely possible.

In my opinion, there are several reasons for this, all illustrated in the above stories:

• The standard employment model is structured around the single income family
• There is a negative stigma attached to stay-at-home parents
• For-profit child care is expensive and quality care is hard to find
• There has been a de-centralizing of extended families, with relatives living hundreds of miles apart
• The art of parenting has shifted from the primary and secondary caregiver model, to a more shared or “co-parenting” one

Not yet having had children of my own, I do not know what solution to this inequity I would propose. Women in my family have always relied on help from grandparents or other relatives. But what if the grandparents live far away or have no desire to raise any more children?

Perhaps the answer is better access to quality and affordable child care. But who should provide that? Employers? Government?

Maybe the answer is to restructure employment models to allow for more flexible schedules, part time work and job sharing. But is this in the best interest of employers? Is it even feasible considering the nature of certain work or current benefit models that rely on full-time employment?

I would be interested in hearing how other parents have survived “the juggle” and possible solutions for better integrating parenthood and careers.