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What is your motivation?

Matt Keating

The path to genuine fulfilment blends the personal and the material.

WHAT IS my motivation? It is the clichéd question that a washed-up schlock actor, appearing in a dire U.S. detective show as a, erm, washed-up schlock actor, might ask the soon to be bunked-off character playing the theatre director.

Hackneyed script-writing aside, it is also a question that few of us bother to ask when stuck in front of our computer screens, or on our commutes to and from being stuck at our computer screens.

But even if it’s not a question to reflect on out loud, in public places, we should consider what motivates us at work. What really made you get up this morning and trundle into the office with the sweating masses to knuckle down until five or six in the evening (and probably for the foreseeable future)? In theory, we work to clothe, feed, and shelter ourselves. But we also toil for money, power, recognition, and status.

Cupidity and narcissism are workplace drivers we all recognise — especially, it must be said, in management. Just look at the contestants who genuflect to Alan Sugar and Donald Trump on The Apprentice.

That bunch would have sold their grannies into slavery if they thought they could get away with it. But, do you think they make for happy and dedicated workers? I’d say it’s unlikely — those who over-value material success, status and power are more likely to hate office life, and be less committed at work, than those for whom helping colleagues and developing talents is a must.

Materialistic workers are doomed to misery. They feel exhausted, want to quit, experience more work-family conflict and are more dissatisfied with life in general. So says Maarten Vansteenkiste of the Centrum voor Motivatiepsychologie, University of Leuven, Belgium.

In fact, his study of 885 workers — published in this month’s Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology — goes even further, suggesting that seemingly covetable benefits, such as annual bonuses, are act ually counterproductive.

“Although these benefits may appear to be great motivators, paradoxically they are not,” says Mr. Vansteenkiste. “Material rewards divert employees from recognising and attaining other less tangible goals that are important for maintaining good mental health, such as good working relationships, autonomy and job satisfaction.”

These less tangible targets that Mr. Vansteenkiste identifies as important, are known as “intrinsic goals.” And according to Tim Kasser, an American psychologist, these intrinsic goals satisfy inherent psychological needs; examples include helping the wider community and friendship, things that go beyond material gain and personal power.

To become more satisfied workers, we need to focus on fulfilling these often-overlooked human needs. But no one is motivated by intrinsic goals only — those who claim to denounce materialism completely tend to be self-righteous in other ways.

To be a contented worker you need extrinsic goals, such as material gain or status, in combination with your desire to interact and grow as a person: a happy workplace needs both camps. To suggest the office “do-goods” play swap-shop with the office “do-bads” would result in a variant-free environment that would be a hell on earth. We need the money-makers and the community builders. Because, if nothing else, if we got rid of one lot, where would all the gossip come from? —

Guardian Newspapers Limited London 2007

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