Chapter 11

Motivating to Win

Motivation

Motivation is the willingness to achieve organizational objectives. Through the motivation process, people go from need to motive to behavior to consequence and finally to either satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Role of Expectations

Remember the Pygmalion effect? Your expectations and your treatment of people affect their motivation and hence their performance. If you have high expectations for your staff and treat your workers as high achievers, you will get their best.

Performance Equation

Performance =Ability x Motivation x

Resources

Pat Summitt

Pat Summitt constantly looks for ways to improve her team’s performance equation. If her team’s ability is not up to snuff, she lasers in on specifics, adjusts their training accordingly, and recruits to fix holes in the net.

Content-Based Motivation Theories

Identify and understand people’s needs:Hierarchy of needs: People are motivated by five levels of needs: physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization (Maslow). ERG: People are motivated by three needs: existence, relatedness, and growth (Alderfer).Two-factor theory: Motivator factors (higher-level needs) are more important than maintenance factors (lower-level needs) (Herzberg).Acquired needs: People are motivated by their need for achievement, power, and affiliation (McClelland).

Figure 11.2

Hierarchy of Needs

Self-actualization needs: Develop workers’ skills. Give them more control over the work. Encourage creativity. Expect achievement. Give them chances to grow.Esteem needs: Help people excel at their work. Give more merit raises. Recognize excellence.Social needs: Design jobs so that people have opportunities to interact with each other, to be accepted, and to make friends. Encourage togetherness through parties, picnics, trips, and sport teams.Safety needs: Provide safe working conditions, salary increases to meet inflation, job security, and fringe benefits (medical insurance, sick pay, pensions).Physiological needs: Require breaks, and provide safe working conditions.

Process-Based Theories

Focus on how people choose behaviors to fulfill their needs:Equity: People are motivated when their perceived inputs equal outputs (Adams).Goal setting: Difficult but achievable goals motivate people (Locke).Expectancy: People are motivated when they believe they can accomplish the task and the rewards for doing so are worth the effort (Vroom).

Reinforcement Theory

The focus is on consequences for behavior (Skinner):Positive reinforcement: Attractive consequences (rewards) for desirable performance encourage continued behavior.Avoidance: Negative consequences for poor performance encourage continued desirable behavior. Extinction: Withholding reinforcement for an undesirable behavior reduces or eliminates that behavior.Punishment: Undesirable consequences (punishment) for undesirable behavior prevent the behavior.

Figure 11.5

High Need for Affiliation

Effective teams typically have a good number of high nAffs. Often the hearts of great sport teams are nonstar players who are every bit as important as the stars. The nonstars are easy to get along with, take good care of fans, and are willing to play numerous positions—they are the glue that makes the team a team. They are role players, and they emphasize their nAff, even though they have high need for achievement (nAch), or else they wouldn’t be pro athletes.

Equity Theory

One reason Tennessee Titans management rewarded Jevon Kearse with an incentive-laden contract was to demonstrate that the club thought he was underpaid compared to similar NFL players. Titans management chose to reward Jevon with an equitable contract in order to help negotiations with his future contracts.

Positive Reinforcement

There was another reason Jevon Kearse signed a revised contract full of incentives to keep him performing in the last year of his multiyear contract. In Kearse’s contract, different levels of incentives were triggered at different numbers of sacks. The incentives were also based on playing time, interceptions, fumble returns, Pro Bowl selection, the Defensive Player of the Year award, and the Super Bowl MVP award. Jevon would earn between $1 million and $2 million extra if he achieved his incentives.

Figure 11.7

Punishment

Pat Summitt yells at her players, which is normally a form of punishment. However, in her case players understand it is her method of motivating players. For being late to team buses and for arguing with the Boston Red Sox manager, the club punished Carl Everett by ordering him to miss games and docking his pay. Unfortunately, the punishment did not change Everett’s behavior; he continued to be a detriment to team morale, and he was eventually traded.

Overrewarded

Some pro athletes negotiate extremely lucrative contracts that suddenly become hard to fulfill because of injury, age, or declining skills. The athlete may still be motivated to excel, but physical ability no longer warrants his or her compensation. Management has to accept the responsibility of the large contract and find alternative methods to make the team competitive.

Goal-Setting Theory

Goal-setting theory proposes that achievable but difficult goals motivate employees. The idea behind goal setting is that behavior has a purpose—to fulfill needs. Goals help us marshal our resources to accomplish a given task.

Motivating With Goal Setting

Lou Holtz, coach of Notre Dame’s 1988 championship football team, described a “circular key ring” with three keys to success: a winning attitude, positive self-esteem, and high goals. Winning attitudes lead to positive self-esteem, which in turn motivates us to set high goals, which in turn gives us an even more positive attitude and self-esteem. Every year Holtz had players set personal goals and the team set team goals, which he wrote in his notebook.