Motivating Employees

While I was doing the research for my book, one of the aspects of motivation I looked at was motivation in the work place. One of the models I studied was created by Thomas L. Quick, in his book, The Quick Motivation Method. In his model the manager determines what makes a positive choice in a particular situation, that is, the manager makes a determination as to how he wants his employee to act when certain conditions arise on the job. The manager’s goal in this model is to make his employee see that the choice the manager believes is the right choice is the same choice that the employee believes is the right choice for himself. The question the model answers is, “How does the manager motivate his employee to make that same choice?” The answer is, he increases the motivational value of that choice.

Even though the focus of the Quick Motivation Method is outward, that is, it is used by one person, the manager, to motivate another person, the employee, we can still learn a lot from the model that we can apply to motivating ourselves.

Quick provides five pointers for increasing the motivational value to the employee of any giving choice. The words in bold are Quick’s pointers. The words in italics are my analysis of the pointer, showing what we can learn about motivating ourselves from Quick’s five pointers.

1. People have reasons for what they do. This pointer means that because people have reasons for what they do, if we can figure out the reasons why people do a certain thing, we can get them to do that thing. This is a another way of saying people can be motivated. Similarly, in the self motivation model, we recognize that we do things for reasons, and once we figure out those reasons, we can create and write a plan for motivating ourselves, so that we, too, will make the right choices.

2. Whatever people choose to do, they do it to gain something they believe is good for them. The achievement must be sufficiently important for them to choose it. From this pointer we see why the vision is the foundational factor of the model for self motivation. One’s vision, becoming all he or she can be, is the ultimate life achievement.

3. The person has to perceive he or she can attain the goal. This pointer describes the second factor of the self motivation model, successability, your confidence in your competence. Just like the employee being motivated by his manager, you must believe you are capable of achieving a goal, or you will not be motivated to achieve it.

4. The conditions under which the job (the activity) is done (the situation) can affect its value to the doer or his expectation of success. This pointer is addressing physical environment, part of the third factor in the self motivation model. In the model for self motivation we add social environment, the people and organizations that surround us or are available to us. By creating an environment that enhances our successability, we automatically increase our motivation. We can enhance both our physical environment and our social environment to increase our motivation.

5. The manager can increase the employee’s motivation by increasing the value of the goal to the employee, increasing the employee’s expectation of reaching it, and enhancing the situation surrounding the performance. This pointer relates to all three factors of self motivation. The value of the goal relates to the vision, the first factor. The greater the value of your vision to you, the higher your motivation will be to manifest that vision. Increasing the employee’s expectation of reaching his goal means increasing his successability, the second factor. Enhancing the situation means making the employee’s environment more motivating.

By applying Quick’s five pointers, a manager can ensure that his employee makes the right choices. Similarly, by using the three factor model for self motivation to create a unique plan for ourselves, we can make sure that we make the right choices, moving forward, doing the work we need to do, to make all our wonderful dreams come true.