You Don’t Have What It Takes When I was 23 years old, I was a management-trainee at a corrugated box plant in Orlando, Florida. If you’ve ever seen The Office that’s EXACTLY where I worked – right down to the […]

It was inevitable. Enterprising managers would notice some of the benefits of a work from home (WFH) team and declare it the “New Paradigm” going forward.  I’ll admit it is tantalizing – greater productivity, lower travel costs, higher morale, lower […]

If you are a manager and you are freaking out right now because you can’t see what your working-from-home team is doing, it may have nothing to with remote workers and everything to do with how you manage performance data. […]

This article was originally posted on propertycasualty360.com. Read original article. I’m a work-from-home veteran; I’ve been working from home for about a decade. Are people more or less productive when they work remotely? Like most things in life, it depends. […]

The intrinsic motivator of Progress is all about movement.  Promising Career Unpromising Career “He’s getting ahead” “I’m stuck, there’s nowhere else to go here” “She’s shooting straight to the top” “It’s a dead-end job” “It’s got a lot of upward […]

What is it? Gamification is often defined as “using game-like mechanics such as points, scoring, and competitions in a non-game setting”. This is a pretty dry description for a word that contains “game” within it. I take a slightly more […]

Next up on our round-the-mind tour of intrinsic motivators – Contribution. We are social creatures who thrive in an environment in which we can interact with others in a group. Numerous studies have shown that some of the happiest and […]

The intrinsic motivator of Mastery relates to our desire to be awesome at something. It feels good to know that you are a “rock star” at a skill. But it’s not just about being good, it’s about continuously getting better. […]

Extrinsic and intrinsic motivators appear to be contradictory of one another. Extrinsic motivators are tangible, controlled by a third party, and are not directly connected to the work itself. On the other hand, intrinsic motivators are intangible, originate from within […]

Compensation management is an extremely sophisticated endeavor. I routinely hear senior managers complain that their company’s compensation plan does not seem to properly motivate all or parts of their sales team. Attempts to drive motivation by tweaking the compensation plan […]

I recently wrote a blog about Autonomy that describes the importance of giving your team latitude in how they complete their jobs.  By granting that latitude you make it possible for them to find faster, more efficient, and more effective […]

I know the best way to do my job. Next up on our tour of intrinsic motivators – Autonomy. In the simplest terms autonomy is the ability to do what you want, the way you want to do it. Various […]

You can count on me. Initially it may not seem that Accountability would be considered a motivator. The word “Accountability” is usually used negatively in the business world when describing someone who is not doing what they are supposed to […]

My Work Matters. How do we motivate our teams to do the best work they can by using an intrinsic motivator?  I’m going to start with what seems the hardest, but really is just a matter of communication — Meaningfulness […]

Remember, motivation is just a fancy word for wanting, so whether it’s an intrinsic or extrinsic reward, you can’t make somebody want something. However, there are ways that you can move the intrinsic motivations (feed the fire) that already exist […]

Motivation is a broad term that encompasses many different types of motivators (also referred to as “rewards”). These motivators can be loosely grouped into two categories, Extrinsic and Intrinsic. When most of us think about why we work, the extrinsic […]

What is motivation? The general desire or willingness to do something. Amazon.com lists over 50,000 titles on the topic of “Motivation” with 366 new titles “coming soon”. One might conclude that a topic with tens of thousands of literary discussions […]