Motivation Mastery for Managers

The Hawthorne Experiment – conducted by Elton Mayo – is one of the classic experiments that led to an important part of our understanding of motivation. It leads to a simple, yet fundamental, process model of how motivation works in the workplace.

Victor Vroom offers us a powerful process model of motivation: expectancy Theory. It’s less well-known than it should be. Expectancy Theory won’t tell you what motivates people. But it will tell you why motivation sometimes works, and why it sometimes fails.

Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory of motivation is, perhaps, my favorite model of how motivation works. But Edward Lawler expanded on it in a small, but important way. He gave us ‘Vroom Enhanced’ with two types of expectancy.

Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory of motivation is extremely successful. But Lyman Porter and Edward Lawler found that predict or explain everything about the relationships among the effort we put in, the performance we achieve, and the satisfaction we feel. Porter & Lawler’s Expectancy Model is far more complex, but if you are prepared to spend some time with it, it offers some valuable insights.

John Stacy Adams built a simple yet exceptionally powerful motivation model around a simple fact: human beings are motivated by fairness. He called this model Equity Theory, and that’s what I’ll take you through in this video.

Douglas McGregor offers us two theories for the price of one: Theory X & Theory Y. But, in truth, they largely represent two ends of a spectrum of approaches to management and motivation. They are the logical development of the work Elton May did and his conclusions on Scientific Management.

Theory Z was developed by William Ouchi, to describe the adoption of Japanese ideas of management in the United States.

Rensis Likert studied different systems of management and the things that ‘high-producing managers’ do to achieve the results they get. His conclusions build a helpful model of motivation and how to get the best from the people who work for you.

Chris Argyris offers us a more sophisticated view of McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y model of motivation. His conclusion is that we need to treat people as adults.

Edwin Locke was interested in the way goals and goal-setting motivate us in the workplace. People strive to achieve their goals. So, a worthwhile goal is intrinsically motivating.

John Goldthorpe and his colleagues offer us a sociological model of workplace motivation: Work Orientation Theory.

Abraham Maslow’ Hierarchy of Needs is possibly the best-known model of motivation. As a motivation theory, the hierarchy of needs is useful, but probably over-used.

But it’s an important motivation model to know and understand, so, we’ll go through it in this video.

Clayton Alderfer created a variation on the best-known needs theory of motivation: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Alderfer’s model is known as ERG Theory. ERG stands for the three primary needs that Alderfer identified:

• Existence

• Relatedness

• Growth

In many ways, this simpler model is better than Maslow’s.

Motivation is not the opposite of de-motivation. That’s the conclusion that Frederick Herzberg came to. Rather, he recognized there are two sets of factors:

1. Motivators, and

2. Hygiene factors

I this video, we’ll examine Frederick Herzberg’s Two-factor Theory. It is one of the most important models in the psychology of motivation. So, it’s a vital model for every manager to know about and understand.

For my money, David McClelland gave us one of the most useful models of motivation, for use in the workplace. McClelland identified three motivational needs. Each of these allows us to motivate different people to do the same task, by appealing to the need that they feel most strongly.

Daniel Pink is not a researcher or a manager: he’s an author. But his assessment of modern research and motivation theories in his book, Drive (https://geni.us/uq3EBO), is valuable. He gives his concept of Motivation 3.0.

How do the characteristics of the task at hand affect motivation? This is the question that Hackman and Oldham tackle in their Job Characteristics model of motivation.