How to motivate people to motivate themselves

Sanghapala, a fellow member of the Triratna Buddhist Order (formerly the FWBO) brought this video to my attention. It’s a really fascinating insight by Dan Pink into what really motivates people to excel.

We learn:

For mechanical skills, the higher the reward, the better the performance. But, for even moderately demanding cognitive skills, a larger reward leads to poorer performance.

The way money works as a motivator is that if you don’t pay people enough, they won’t be motivated. Once people are comfortable with the amount they’re being paid, money isn’t an issue and they can concentrate on their work. Once the money issue is dealt with, there are three factors that lead to better performance:

1. Autonomy: if you want engaged workers, they have to be self-directed.
2. Mastery: people like to develop excellence. It’s satisfying to do something well.
3. Purpose: They also like to make a contribution beyond creating profit.

Examples given of purpose-driven individuals are the cofounder of Skype, Niklas Zennström (“Our goal is to be disruptive, but in the cause of making the world a better place”), and Steve Jobs (“I want to put a ding in the universe”). As Pink says, these are the kinds of things that would get you racing to work in the morning.

The absence of this kind of thinking is seen in the recent banking collapse, where profit was unhinged from purpose, and those who were paid literally millions in bonuses had no interest whatsoever is achieving anything beyond walking away with a large chunk of money. Pink emphasizes that this research encourages us to treat people as people, and not as horses who need carrots and sticks.

This is all great stuff. It helps me to reconnect with the mission of Wildmind, which is to spread compassion and mindfulness through the practice of Buddhist meditation in order to make the world a better place.