How Can You Motivate Employees?

The conventional view that rewards and punishments are the only ways to motivate workers is an overly simplistic – and sometimes flat-out wrong – approach for managers to adopt, keynote speaker Daniel Pink said to CompTIA Breakaway attendees on Tuesday.

Pink, author of The New York Times bestseller Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, said that a “carrot and stick” approach oversimplifies people who do work that requires them to be creative and cerebral.

“Management is a technology from the 1850s,” he said. “It’s a technology designed to get compliance. For more sophisticated things, you don’t want compliance. You want engagement.”

Pink cited studies where the promise of a reward actually caused people to take longer to do an intellectual task, and where the threat of punishment actually increased specific behaviors.

“Human beings are a lot more complex than we think that they are,” he said.

Research backs up the view that workers to have autonomy, mastery and purpose in their work lives in order to be successful and productive, he said. That means sometimes working on projects of their own choosing, getting thoughtful feedback and feeling like they are a valuable contributor to something larger than themselves.

Many managers have a faulty assumption that their workers are inherently lazy, only motivated by avoiding trouble and getting monetary bonuses, Pink said.

“If you start with the wrong assumption, you’re going to run into problems,” he said.

Managers who start with the assumption that their workers want to be active and engaged in the workplace naturally will encourage autonomy and facilitate progress, leading to more successful and productive companies, he said.