Proactive Motivation — Take Charge, Persevere & Perform
Following my earlier article on line of sight to drive individual job performance, this article focuses on motivation. Motivation is a pertinent concept for HR and managers to motivate employees on a day-to-day basis, as well as for individuals to understand what and how to motivate themselves.
Motivation refers to the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort towards achieveing a goal
Robbins, et al., 2016
Early Motivation Theories
Since the 1950s, many motivational theories were introduced, including the Hierarchy of Needs, Theory X and Y, and the Two-Factor Theory. While these theories make sense intuitively, it was interesting to discover that the hierarchy of needs and theory X and Y lack empirical support (Robbins, et al., 2016). The two-factor theory, also known as the motivation-hygiene theory asserts that employers should eliminate hygiene factors (e.g. policies) that cause dissatisfaction. And implement motivation factors (e.g. training and develop) to satisfy employees. This theory is contested for its reliability because people tend to take credit when things are going well and blame extrinsic factors when they fail, which proves to be a challenge when trying to ascertain hygiene and motivation factors.
Current Motivation Theories
Here are some contemporary motivation theories which are relatively well-researched and validated (Robbins, et al., 2016).
Proactive Motivation
Being proactive is about making things happen, anticipating and preventing problems, and seizing opportunities. It involves self-initiated efforts to bring about change in the work environment and/or oneself to achieve a different future.
Parker, Bindl & Strauss, 2010
I came across proactive motivation in my master’s studies which draws upon the self-efficacy, goal-setting and expectancy theories. The model purports that the 3 “proactive motivation states” of “can do”, “reason to do” and “energised to do” explain an individual’s desire and energy towards goal generation and goal striving. Goal generation refers to individuals forecasting future outcomes and developing strategies to achieve those goals. Goal striving requires individuals to keep track of their daily activities and behaviour to attain their goals. An individual’s work plan is a common tool for employees to identify their task/project focus and strategies for the year or 2 (goal generation) and monitor their progress towards the goals (goal striving).
“Can do” Motivational State
Can do motivation draws upon the self-efficacy theory. If an employee has high self-efficacy (the belief that she can achieve the goals), she will likely develop stretched goals and persevere in the face of challenges to achieve them. For someone with low efficacy, the goals developed may be less challenging, and the capacity or ability to strive and persevere is lower.
Bandura (1994) identified 4 sources of self-efficacy:
- Enactive mastery refers to one’s confidence in future endeavours having done similar work and succeeded in the past. Activities that build mastery such as training programmes, manager coaching and learning on the job help increase one’s self-efficacy.
- Verbal persuasion occurs when managers communicate high (and realistic) expectations of an individual’s performance. The Pygmalion effect or self-fulfilling prophecy takes place because it signals to the employee of their manager’s confidence in their abilities (can do), and it increases their self-efficacy. Managers and co-workers can also call out employees’ specific strengths and skills to build confidence and self-efficacy.
- Vicarious modelling occurs when one becomes confident from someone else’s success. I remember formal and informal engagements with my HR leaders who shared their personal challenges early in their career, including how they persevered and overcame those challenging times and progressed in their careers. Hearing those personal stories gave me the confidence that I could succeed too. Hence, I encourage leaders and managers to share stories of your failures, challenges and success to help younger employees.
- Emotional and physiological states refer to one’s physical and emotional states caused by thinking about implementing a new behaviour. A good example is a visit to the dentist; some people fear the thought of it so much that they avoid making an appointment — avoidance behaviour (Brown, 2013). I remember becoming a secretariat for a management team, as part of an initiative to expose new hires to the big picture and strategic discussions. The fear of failing to perform well almost led me to say no to the opportunity. Thankfully I had a supportive line manager and peer mentor who enhanced my self-efficacy through “verbal persuasion”.
“Reason To Do” Motivational State
Reason to do motivational state refers to one’s ‘why’. What is the purpose of pursuing the goal/s? Is the purpose to improve the lives of customers and communities or the recognition and job promotion? At the same time, individuals value different things — some value the rewards, and others get satisfaction from helping others.
From the self-concordance model, work plan goals that are aligned to one’s interest and values provide impetus to goal striving. In this vein of discussion, career anchor is a useful concept for goal striving.
A career anchor is a set of values that ties the individual’s mind and heart to a particular career type.
Medsker & O’Connor, 2015)
Edgar Schein identified eight career anchors (see table below), and these anchors explain an individual’s work motivation through a fit between their career anchors and current/future job roles. For example, my primary anchors before leaving the corporate world to start my own business were general managerial competence and functional competence. These anchors kept me highly motivated for every new work plan that came along because it contributed to building my managerial and functional competences. After over 12 years in the corporate setting, my primary anchor adjusted to entrepreneurial creativity and lifestyle, which explains my motivation and move to chart a new path as an adult educator and business owner. As a manager, being aware of your employee’s career anchors and other motivation factors can help you make informed choices on their job design/structure. Similarly, HR can introduce policies to motivate employees, such as job rotation, flexi-work arrangements and rewards programmes.
Edgar Schein’s Eight Career Anchors (extracted from Medsker, K. L., & O’Connor, S. R., 2015, p. 45)
“Energised To Do” Motivational State
Parker, Bindl & Strauss (2010) stressed that affects (or feelings) activate positive or negative work behaviour towards goal striving. The diagram below shows the 4 quadrants of affects and how they are related to high or low activation of work behaviour. From the diagram, Anxiety and Enthusiasm affects are linked to high activation of work behaviour, and Depression and Content affects are linked to low activation of work behaviour. Enthusiasm affects activate positive work behaviour which enables one to be able to initiate change and persevere in the face of setbacks and challenges. Content affects encourage self-reflection, but not necessarily actions towards goal striving (Parker, Bindl & Strauss, 2010). Depending on individuals, anxiety affects can activate positive or negative behaviours in the process of goal striving. Interestingly, depression affects can lead to self withdrawal or disengagement at work, or at times encourage individuals to take action/s to address the gaps even though the activation degree is low.
4 Quadrants of Job-related Affects and Behaviour (adapted and extracted from Warr, et al., 2014, p. 343)
As an HR professional and manager of others, intuitively, I know that I need to engage employees, listen to their challenges, encourage them to develop coping strategies, and organise team-building activities (among other employee engagement initiatives) to encourage positive affects. I have never thought deeply about employee motivation, and especially how affects/feelings could impact their actions towards achieving goals. I hope this article on proactive motivation has some useful takeaways for you as it did for me.
References
Brown, L. J. (2013). Self-efficacy Theory. Extracted from: http://samples.jbpub.com/9781449689742/Chapter2.pdf
Medsker, K. L., & O’Connor, S. R. (2015). Maximising motivation: Career fit and job characteristics. Performance Improvement, 54(5), 44–48.
Parker, S. K., Bindl, U. K., & Strauss, K. (2010). Making things happen: A model of proactive motivation. Journal of Management, 36(4), 827–856.
Robbins, S., Judge, T., Millett, B., & Boyle, M. (2016). Motivation: from concept to application. In Robbins, S., Judge, T., Millett, B., & Boyle, M. (Eds), Organisational behaviour (8th Ed, pp. 162–199). Melbourne, Victoria: Pearson Australia.
Warr, P., Bindl, U. K., Parker, S. K., & Inceoglu, I. (2014). Four-quadrant investigation of job-related affects and behaviours. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(3), 342–363
