Motivators
Our last team building was an exercise in determining whether the members in our group are more motivated by Intrinsic or Extensive recognition.
Intrinsic being internal - desire to learn for the sake of learning, wanting to be challenged, etc.
Extrinsic being external - public praise, payment, promotion, etc.
We each checked off a list of 20 motivators. Ten were intrinsic, ten extrinsic. We then totalled up the number of responses in each category.
Here are some of the options:
You're asked to take on a tough assignment.
You're invited to a tennis or golf weekend with other star employees in your company.
The boss invites you to a BBQ at his/her house.
You're featured in a local or corporate newspaper article.
You're asked to work on finding a solution to a major problem.
Not surprisingly for an IT group, we were much more motivated by intrinsic items. A couple of us (including me) were called 'attention whores' because we checked off a lot of items on both sides. However, the vast majority of our group had only a few extrinsic picks and a whole bunch of intrinsic.
Most of us have gotten into our field because we like nothing more than to figure out why things work the way they do and are convinced we can make things work better with a little tinkering (tinkering as in hardware configuration, programming, process improvement and the like).
An interesting conversation point was what we considered demotivators. One guy talked about getting effusive praise for just doing his job. I told a story about a guy in our company who thanks everyone...all the time...for coming to meetings, for completing an assignment, for basically doing our jobs. He's totally sincere but his thanks have lost their power. We actually mock him for it instead of appreciating it. It's a tough crowd...
Hopefully, we'll carry forward what we learned and try to motivate each other by inviting each other to help with tough issues, giving due praise and challenging our peers to step up and solve problems.
Intrinsic being internal - desire to learn for the sake of learning, wanting to be challenged, etc.
Extrinsic being external - public praise, payment, promotion, etc.
We each checked off a list of 20 motivators. Ten were intrinsic, ten extrinsic. We then totalled up the number of responses in each category.
Here are some of the options:
You're asked to take on a tough assignment.
You're invited to a tennis or golf weekend with other star employees in your company.
The boss invites you to a BBQ at his/her house.
You're featured in a local or corporate newspaper article.
You're asked to work on finding a solution to a major problem.
Not surprisingly for an IT group, we were much more motivated by intrinsic items. A couple of us (including me) were called 'attention whores' because we checked off a lot of items on both sides. However, the vast majority of our group had only a few extrinsic picks and a whole bunch of intrinsic.
Most of us have gotten into our field because we like nothing more than to figure out why things work the way they do and are convinced we can make things work better with a little tinkering (tinkering as in hardware configuration, programming, process improvement and the like).
An interesting conversation point was what we considered demotivators. One guy talked about getting effusive praise for just doing his job. I told a story about a guy in our company who thanks everyone...all the time...for coming to meetings, for completing an assignment, for basically doing our jobs. He's totally sincere but his thanks have lost their power. We actually mock him for it instead of appreciating it. It's a tough crowd...
Hopefully, we'll carry forward what we learned and try to motivate each other by inviting each other to help with tough issues, giving due praise and challenging our peers to step up and solve problems.
