Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivators for Your Employees

This post explores how employees motivate themselves from within or outside themselves

I attended a national convention two weeks ago. During a problem solving session, two people at our table highlighted the same problem even though they were from different states. The problem: how to motivate employees. Motivating the workforce challenges many business owners. This post will examine motivations from within the employee and motivations outside the employee. The next post will examine motivational quirks unique to the five generations currently working in America.

People Motivate Themselves

Many studies indicate that managers, leaders, and others cannot motivate people. Studies emphasize that motivation must come from within. The University of Michigan wrote

“People who appear to be motivated in everything they do have just been successful in understanding how to motivate themselves in a variety of settings and tasks.  Two things contribute to your motivation for any task: what you expect from yourself and what value you place on achieving a goal.  The key to motivation is understanding that you have the power to change both your expectations of yourself and the value placed on a task.”

People respond to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from values and ideals within you: helping people, changing the world, and making a difference. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside: more money, vacations and trips, praise and awards from others.

Carter McNamara wrote an article on Understanding Motivation. He lists several links to other articles. You may also enjoy Steve Chandler’s book 100 Ways to Motivate Others.

Additional Scholarly Research

You may want to read some of the articles listed below:

• Mark R. Lepper, Sheena Sethi, Dania Dialdin, and Michael Drake wrote Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: A developmental perspective
• Brent D. Russo, Kathryn H. Dekas, and Amy Wrzesniewski authored On the Meaning of Work: A theoretical integration and review
• James L. Perry published Introduction to the Symposium on Public Service Motivation Research
• Adam M. Grant researched Does Intrinsic Motivation Fuel the Prosocial Fire? Motivational Synergy in Predicting Persistence, Performance, and Productivity

Thursday we analyze what motivates Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Millennials