Tuesday 22 September 2009

Intrinsic motivation and performance leadership

 

Dan Pink TED   I’m a bit late on this one, but it occurred to me while I was preparing my slides for the performance management event in Greece next month, and thinking back over a recent client project, that Dan Pink’s points on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, made in his recent TED session, link to the differentiation I’ve made previously between performance management and performance leadership.

This hadn’t clicked for me before, and so in my HR Zone article last week, I just referenced Pink’s perspectives, and what I thought was a very compelling rebuttal from Paul Herbert.

But of course, they’re just two very different things:

  • Performance management is about doing something that an organisation needs doing; about working to SMART objectives; cascading and alignment - and motivation for this has got to come from extrinsic reward.

 

  • Performance leadership is based on the individual – their dreams and aspirations; and how these can be met by doing work for the organisation.  It focuses on the creative work vs simple problems that Pink described in his presentation.  And it comes from the unique interests and motivations of the individual so performance is its own reward.

 

 

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    1 comment:

    1. Lydia Hirt25 September 2009 at 15:35

      Hi Jon:

      Thanks for posting about Dan Pink- we’re also inspired and motivated by his work and appreciate your interest in the man behind the groundbreaking bestseller, A WHOLE NEW MIND. I’m excited to let you know that December 29 marks the release of Pink’s latest book, DRIVE. I've pasted a quick synopsis, below, but please contact me at lydia.hirt@us.penguingroup.com if you'd be interested in an advance reading copy for review consideration!

      Bursting with big ideas, DRIVE is the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.

      Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

      Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:

      *Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives
      *Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters
      *Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

      We hope Daniel Pink’s DRIVE will open your eyes and change the way you think in 2010!

      Please visit www.danpink.com and www.riverheadbooks.com for additional details.

      Best,
      Lydia

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