A talk about motivation

A talk about motivation

Listen to the talk about motivation to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

So, we think we know how to motivate people, right? Offer them a reward. Do this and you'll get this. Do this faster, earn more money. Do this better than everyone else, here's a promotion. We offer incentives when we want people to do things. We do it at work, at school, even at home with our kids. Tidy your room and you can watch TV.

But when social psychologists test whether incentives work, they get surprising results. Sam Glucksberg, from Princeton University, America, set people a problem to solve and told them he was going to time them to see how long they took. Then he put them in two groups. He offered one group a reward for finishing fast. Five dollars for anyone finishing in the top 25 per cent and 20 dollars for the person who finished the fastest of all. To the other group he offered no incentive, but he told them he was going to use their times to calculate an average time.

The first group, the ones with the reward, solved the problem faster, you'd think, right? Well, no, they actually took three and a half minutes longer than the group who just thought they were being timed. Incentive didn't work. In fact, it made them slower. This experiment has been repeated, with the same results, many times. But in business we still offer bonuses, promotions and rewards to staff.

That's fine if we want them to do something simple, like chop wood. We'll pay you more if you chop the wood faster. An incentive works then. But if we want someone to do something complex, something creative, something where they have to think, rewards don't work. They might even have the opposite result, and make people perform worse. Another study, by Dan Ariely, showed that the bigger the reward, the worse the subjects performed on a complex task. The reward made them focus so hard on the result that they couldn't think creatively any more.

And this all matters because more and more simple jobs will become automated. We'll be left with creative, problem-solving jobs that computers will never do. And we need to find a way to motivate people to do those jobs when we've proved the traditional incentives don't work.

So what does work? Giving your workers freedom; freedom to work on the things they want to work on, freedom to choose when, where and how they work. Want to work from home three days a week, get up late and work into the night instead? Fine. Just do the job well. And evidence shows people who choose the way they work get results. Companies that give employees time during the week to work on things that interest them and are not part of their regular job achieve amazing things. Some of the big tech companies are good examples of this, with ping-pong tables and areas to relax in …

Task 1

Task 2

Discussion

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Average: 4.4 (122 votes)

Submitted by SOBHI on Mon, 06/01/2020 - 07:00

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Hello, could you please advise why question 5 is true? I couldn't find anything about future jobs in the passage. thank you,
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Submitted by Peter M. on Tue, 07/01/2020 - 07:19

In reply to by SOBHI

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Hello SOBHI,

The speaker explains that non-creative jobs will become automated, leaving creative jobs for people to do:

And this all matters because more and more simple jobs will become automated. We'll be left with creative, problem-solving jobs that computers will never do.

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

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Submitted by dollarsee on Wed, 01/01/2020 - 20:00

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Hiya! I appreciate what the contents you've got on this site. But I/we would be more appreciative if you should make those audios and videos downloadable for offline use. I love those mellifluous voices. Please be kind to consider my earnest request. Best wishes.

Submitted by cs on Fri, 06/12/2019 - 20:09

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In my opinion a requirement to produce a better performance is to enjoy the job, this means, the person need to enjoy the activities that him / her performs. Then, when they have flexibility in the job schedule and have opportunities to relax in the workplace, the posibilities that the people don't enjoy the job is decreased and therefore the performance is increased. That is my experience.
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Submitted by pzou on Wed, 06/11/2019 - 08:46

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Hope i can get better and better for listening skill, it is a step by step progress

Submitted by Himanshu on Thu, 31/10/2019 - 12:42

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Really appreciate your work . hey Peter M ,this is Himanshu . what you share that add value to others life . I love your website and hope this will grow in future . you can check my website where I share valuable contents and also I am working on the topic https://------------------------------------- hope you like this. Thank you

Hello Himanshu

Thanks for your comment. I'm afraid we don't generally allow links to other sites, except for dictionaries, the Wikipedia or other similar reference sources. This is why the link you posted has been edited.

All the best

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by hamo0ody on Tue, 22/10/2019 - 06:34

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Someone please tells me why It's false 6. People always work better when they start the day later and work into the night.

Hello hamo0ody,

The final paragraph says that people work best when they can choose how to work.

So what does work? Giving your workers freedom; freedom to work on the things they want to work on, freedom to choose when, where and how they work. Want to work from home three days a week, get up late and work into the night instead? Fine. 

In other words, people should be able to choose. Starting later and working into the night is one possibility, not something that everyone should do. It is given as an example, not a solution for everyone. Therefore the claim that people 'always' work best in this way is not true.

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by nikisyazwani on Wed, 02/10/2019 - 16:38

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I have completed the lesson for 'A Talk About Motivation' . The level I chose was Upper Intermediate B2.