You Can't Motivate People

There. I said it. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in the context of pay for performance and the development of incentive compensation plans. Mostly I've been living it at home with my children.

There's no shortage of expert opinions when it comes to giving kids an allowance. I'm an allowance advocate. I say it helps children understand the value of money, and therefore helps to create sensible spending habits and the building blocks for financial awareness.

But you're probably wondering what this has to do with motivation and incentive pay. Everything!

You see, in my household, I take it one step further. The allowance is the "base pay" -- consistent from week to week, and tied to my kids' basic job duties (translation: chores). But I've instituted an incentive program, too. Sometimes there are things that need to be done -- like washing windows in the spring or pulling weeds. But I've got a full-time job, a bad back and an aversion to yard work. So I attach extra money as an incentive for the completion of specific jobs.

For years my plan was foolproof! My now 14-year-old daughter was clearly motivated by my incentive program. She would create a list of the various jobs and total the amount of money she could earn from them, checking off each job as she completed it, and collecting her reward. Perfect!

Until I tried it with my 10-year-old. First, let it be said that the jobs are always age-appropriate. But I came to learn that the 10-year-old wasn't motivated by money. It's not that she doesn't enjoy having her own money to spend. She does. But apparently not so much that she was willing to forego a repeat episode of iCarly long enough to earn an extra five bucks.

I couldn't understand why my plan - whose effectiveness I believed to be self-evident and empirically substantiated - wasn't working with her. Then she said the unthinkable. I can't recall exactly what I had asked her to do. But when she finished she said (and I quote): "Mom, I feel such a sense of accomplishment!"

That was my "a-ha" moment. It wasn't the money that motivated her. It wasn't me who motivated her. The source of the motivation was something instrinsic. She felt some sense of achievement. Maybe she enjoyed some aspect of the work itself (much the way I find ironing to be cathartic).

There are several theories of motivation. I happen to like Frederick Herzberg's. Herzberg theorized that money was not a motivator, but a "hygiene factor." In other words, salary and benefits have to be adequate (I'll say competitive) but beyond that, in and of itself, they won't noticeably improve the level of motivation. The important factors, according to Herzberg, the true motivators, are instrinsically-oriented: recognition, achievement, growth, responsibility, advancement/promotion, and the work itself.

I'm not saying that incentive pay doesn't have a place in your total rewards program. What I am saying is this: think about your people -not simply as a collective workforce but as individual parts of a whole. What conditions or what sort work environment or opportunities will help jump-start their self-motivation? Those are the things that you can influence. The rest is up to them.

I like the way Stephen Covey describes it: "Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly."

Authored by Sandy Turba