Some of those who have posted their opinions on motivation will be surprised to learn that
the conclusions of many studies provide contradictory conclusions. Author, Gene Van Tassel, points out:
"People who are motivated by extrinsic motivation generally show less long-term interest in the activity than those who are intrinsically motivated. Amabile (1985) suggests
that
people who engage in an intrinsically interesting activity in the presence of salient extrinsic constraints will show less subsequent interest in that activity than people who do not work under such constraints. Students who receive extrinsic rewards for their work are less likely to be interested in their work than students who do not receive such rewards. In fact there are numerous studies that show that when people expect to receive a reward for their achievement, they perform less well than those who expect nothing (Edwards, 1994)." Creativity is an imprtant aspect of education which is often overlooked in an attempt by
educators to emphasize subject matter over problem-solving skills. Creativity is stifled by
external rewards and extrinsic motivation. Rewards can lead to increased pressure and
stress for those receiving the rewards to perform well. Rewarding people for the same efforts that would be undertaken otherewise tends to decrease risk taking. This increase of pressure results in a decrease of exploration of new ideas. Creativity can take on may characteristics and attributes. Daniels (1996) details twelve characteristics of creativity:
awareness, independence, risk taking, energetic, senseof humour/playfulness, curiosity, attracted to complexity, open-minded, artistic, privacy, perceptive, and original. Maintaining that creativity requires instruction strategies and dealing with learning challenges which arise from increased creativity of learners.
Trainers and teachers tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time emphasizing facts over skills. Usually, topics are covered in isolation from other topics without reference to
them. This has a biological implication for synaptic connections. It leaves long taxon systems in the brain which remain unconnected to each other. Learners have difficulty
relating training to the job because the classroom and the job are different environments;
one the learner is accountable for, in the other he/she isn't; Learners aren't responsible to trainers. A classroom model or video is a canned example. The emotions and reflexes
of others are absent; not so on the job. This limits the number of pathways in which information is retrieved and used. The is at the root of the transference problem. On the job learning, under the direction and supervision of the boss who is able to tie the learning
to actual job demands and situations, results in myriads of connections of immdiate use to
the learner and moves easily into long term memory. Classroom training recall is limited to
7-15% 30 days following training (Mehrabian, 1993).
Three inferences can be made from the above findings:
1. Intrinsic motivation derives from an individual's perception of their purpose and how their jobs contribute to that. If the individual cannot perceive the relevance of their job to attaining their purpose, no extrinsic motivator is effective. If, however, the alignment is clear, this intrinsic motivator is all that is needed. Adding extrinsic motivators to this is counterproductive. A corporation should spend its training time helping individuals
discover their purpose in life and seek creative ways to marry the corporation's and the individual's purpose. Then the job is hardly work at all - it is a pathway to personal fulfillment. This is enough reward for anyone.
2. Many attempts have arisen to enhance transfer to the job from the classroom. No single effort or combination of efforts has raised the level acceptably. The gulf between
the classroom and the job is still wide. Management training is the biggest culprit here. This is because behavior change is not an educational issue as much as it is an emotional issue. Education does not influence fight or flight reactions. It does not eliminate fear of
personal loss or threat to security. It does not dislodge decades of conditioned behavior.
What changes behavior is a need within the individual to adapt for personal reasons. Those reasons are always rooted in the individual's perception of purpose fulfillment. Until an organization can show an individual exactly how a modified behavior will contrubute to the person's purpose, intrinsic motivation to change is absent. The great controversy of
"nature vs nurture" is resolved by understanding that purpose is part of the nature of the individual. Organizations must nurture that if they wish to see motivation. No one is motivated by someone else's objectives, only their own. People get amazingly creative when their work is seen as part of their life quest.
3. The biggest job bosses have is to help align their staff's jobs with their purpose. Trainers cannot do this for them. It cannot be delegated to the training department. Training's role is to educate bosses to these truths, then provide instructional tools that both nurture and develop their people. We "experts" in training are negligent. Our own purpose has been self-serving and it is mostly centered around visibility and credibility. As such we are off-purpose. Our real purpose is helping others find theirs. If we do that motivation ceases to be an issue. Transference ceases to be an issue. We have been doing the wrong job and doing it the wrong way.
Joe Cox
Diaplan
(800) 350 7526