Edward Deci
Stop asking how to motivate him
What you can change is not the person but the place he works in
Deci and Flaste, Why We Do What We Do, 1995; Deci, Eghrari, Patrick and Leone, Journal of Personality, 1994; Ryan and Deci, American Psychologist, 2000
They do what they are told and nobody takes the lead. If you want people to want it themselves, what can you actually change?
What actually happened?
In 1995 Deci wrote a book for general readers with the journalist Richard Flaste. Parents ask how to make children study, managers how to make staff try harder, teachers how to make pupils care. It is one question: how do I motivate him? Deci's point was that the question already treats the other person as something to be pushed, and whatever is pushed halts once the pushing does. The better question is what conditions you can set up in which people will motivate themselves. With Richard Ryan he named three.
Autonomy is not being left alone
The first is autonomy. Deci kept insisting it is neither independence nor permissiveness; it is the sense that what you are doing is something you endorse. His studies used three moves: give the reason, acknowledge the reluctance, offer a choice wherever there is one.
The report is due Friday. Say why Friday, then let him decide which part to write first.
Competence: a reachable stretch, feedback about the work
The second is competence. People take on what they feel able to do well and still find a little hard. Feedback should say what worked and what fell short; feedback used to rank people pushes them back to working for the score.
Give a new hire a first task they can finish with effort, neither the hardest nor the dullest.
Relatedness: first the person, then the rule
The third is relatedness. Plenty of tasks are dull: tidying, revising, filling in forms. Deci and Ryan called the slow business of making them your own internalisation, and it mostly happens beside someone who clearly cares about you.
A child tidies his room less because the argument landed than because someone tidied it with him a few times.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the people you lead do what they are told and nothing more; you have raised the bonus and tightened the reviews, and nothing changed.
Ask first: have I told him why this matters, and have I left him the part he could decide for himself?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as 'let him choose everything'. Deadlines and quality bars stay. What changes is how you say it and what you leave open: the reason first, the reluctance acknowledged, then a choice inside the line.
Lines to keep
A pushed person stops when the hand lets go.
A reason and a choice go further than a bonus.
We take on a rule once we have taken on the person.
Same situation, other people are asking
I've tried rewards and I've tried consequences. Neither moved anything.How do I push them without breaking them?I keep restating the standard and nothing changes.Nobody argues with me any more and nothing gets done.The team has gone flat · all 13 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.