A talk about motivation
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 …
I like to think that my job and my studies are the most important things in my life — because they are. However, motivation works differently in each case.
Studying is the foundation of our achievements. It’s where everything begins. But once you enter the job market, everything changes. Work can become repetitive, even boring. Keeping it interesting is a real challenge.
We have to think about money, purpose, social impact, and personal development. At the same time, we need to find workplaces that offer good salaries — but not only that — they should also be organized and environmentally responsible.
It’s not an easy equation.
What motivates you in your job or studies?
improve myself and having goals to release, on studies i try to get good grades i learn as much as i can meanwhile on work i try to improve my skills and get more experience for the future.
Johanatan Valdez
Seeing students learn and grow, making a difference in student's lives, building connections with students and colleagues and witnessing student's progress and achievements.
Hi There,
i truly liked to topic, because beside being a listening exercise, i consider it as high value source of information .
With my best wishes,
Iyad Boussahel
From my point of view, both approaches work well to achieve an excellent result. Sometimes our tasks require knowledge, creative thinking, and a deadline all at once. Bonuses, flexible schedules, and remote work are all good incentives.
I am motivated by the desire to improve myself and achieve my goals. I like seeing my progress, and it inspires me to keep working hard. Positive feedback from teachers and the support of people around me also give me extra motivation.
Well, a higher salary is still a good incentive, but there are some other good things my boss could offer me. For example, elliminate all those predictions, estimations and work logs. Sometimes, you spend the whole days doing all those stuffs. I think there's no any difference when task will be done, it doesn't affect anything, it's just another entertainment for managers, who think they are very valuable and doing really significant work. Another point is relocation. When company has foreign office it could be a good motivation to work harder to relocate to another country for a short time... Probably, long.
However, promotions, rewards, and bonuses are interesting for me like others, but I prefer other things. For example, flexible working hours are very important to me.
Also, I don't like to be constantly monitored by my supervisor or manager during the work process because it makes me lose my concentration, and anyway, my results will be clear in the end.
It was a really helpful listening exercise
I feel motivated when working in a conducive environment, when I'm been trusted and not been pressurised because I like working at my own peace. Also when there's incentive by the side.