Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the next edition of the Work Healthy Podcast. I'm John Ryan and today it's my absolute pleasure to interview Richard Ryan, who may be a distant relative of mine. We can't quite work that out yet, but Richard, along with Ed Deci, developed the self determination theory that explains motivation in all its forms. Built around the three basic psychological needs of competence, relatedness and autonomy. They developed the five item continuum of motivation, moving from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. In our conversation, Rich explains the supports organizations can put in place to improve employee motivation, how we need to minimize controlling language, why external motivation based on rewards or punishment won't actually work in the long run, and why we need to focus on the quality of motivation to move people from ill being to well being and full heartedness. I started the interview by asking Richard just how many organizations around the world are getting their approach to motivating their people wrong?
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if I could put a number on that though. But you know, I consult with a lot of organizations and you see some have cultures that are really positive for employee engagement and wellness and you see some that are extremely negative. Usually you can find out the dynamics in those corporations that have them not attuned to the, to the true motivators for people.
So again, I can't give you numbers on that, but we still see, we sure see a lot of variation.
[00:01:45] Speaker C: And how much does that affect the performance of those organizations for the ones that aren't actually sort of getting it right?
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Well, I think you see when you don't have a kind of optimal motivational climate, you see people are half hearted in relation to their work efforts or they're only doing the things that they know are being counted or the things that are being recognized. And so those have costs for corporations. You also see lower retention rates. And this is a big thing because retraining and refilling jobs, if they're skilled jobs at all, is a really costly affair. So if you drive your employees out or have them not feeling well in the workplace, they're going to be looking elsewhere. And there's a big cost to that. For most corporations, the days are gone when we have this huge pool of labor that's just available whenever we want to come into the workplace. Most workplaces now require some kind of skill and training in order to get people on board.
I was talking with a sales manager two days ago and he said the average cost of retraining people in his call center to replace and RETRAIN Somebody is $100,000 they don't pay that for an annual sal salary for people in that call center. So the cost of demotivating and leading somebody to be disengaged from your company can be really high. And so this is one of the reasons I think organizations are interested in improving their climates because they'd like to improve their retention rates and affiliation rates.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: Yeah, it's funny you use the word there because I was listening to lots of the interviews you've done over the years and also you're opening to the self Determination Theory conference, which, by the way, I thought it was a brilliant piece that you did. But you talk about full heartedness and it's not a word that I've actually heard too often, but I think it's a really good way of sort of explaining when somebody's doing work, that it's the right work for them.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think we see that in employees all the time when they're. I guess I could use the word full hearted here again. When they're really engaged in what they're doing, you're getting the most out of them. They're putting their talents to work for the purposes of the organization. That's what you really want in every employee.
And of course, motivational climate is what catalyzes that.
[00:04:06] Speaker C: I'm interested. Another word you used is ill being, which is interesting because obviously everybody uses well being, but very few people have used that. And the reality is, if you're in a role that isn't right for you and if you're being led in a particular way that isn't actually in line with your motivators as such, it is actually going to make you sick, isn't it?
[00:04:32] Speaker B: That's right. I mean, we can think about, well being as going from, you know, having a lot of vitality and happiness down to not having it. But you can also go even further down, which is you can now be unhappy and drained and of energy.
So ill being is really this other side of the continuum which can be set in motion by need, thwarting behaviors from managers.
[00:04:58] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's interesting. I'm also wondering, do employees think long and hard enough about what actually motivates them? Why are they motivated by certain things? Because we think about the organization in a lot of cases. But do you think there's a piece that a lot of employees just sort of sleepwalk into roles, into organizations, into doing what they do maybe for 30, 40 years and only then wake up and kind of go, why was I doing that?
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Well, I do think that there's a lot of people who have woken up and thought, why was I doing that? But in terms of employees knowing it, I think employees have a really good sense of whether they feel positively motivated or not. It's not hard to scratch the surface on people's experience in their organizations and find out who's really feeling passionate and positive about their organization and who's feeling like they're just going through the motions or just getting by or just getting around the requirements so that they can keep their jobs. A lot of people feel choice in their jobs, and so they may stay in a job which is not an optimal place for them because they don't see options. And, you know, particularly in a country like the United States where you don't have guaranteed health care, a lot of times people will stay in a job that makes them very unhappy because they can't afford to give up their health care or they can't afford to go back on the market.
So they can be stuck in a position for a long period of time. And I empathize with those employees.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, that makes me nearly panicky myself, thinking about being stuck and trapped in a particular role for those very reasons, which is really scary for people to be in that situation just before, kind of, you know, like it's new news, this model, to an awful lot of people who don't know about the self determination theory. But please. Because I remember interviewing Amy Edmondson about psychological safety, and I was sort of saying to her that, you know, there's a thing about Dolly Parton, about Dolly Parton saying, the only bad thing about having a hit record, you have to be able to be ready to sing it every day for the rest of your life.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: I like that quote. I identify with that.
[00:07:20] Speaker C: Exactly.
So, but, but it is new news, as I say to a lot of people. That's what we want to bring because we want to, you know, share your mission, which is so, so, so important that people understand this. And I think that's, that's, it's brilliant. I mean, can I ask you when, when you started this work with DC originally, I mean, it was the 1970s, was it? Was it? Is that correct?
Sorry, I'm not trying to rub you.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Jared, for pointing that out.
Yeah, it was for, for me meeting it. It was the late 1970 is when we met. He had already been engaged in some, I think, some seminal work on motivation. In the early 70s. He did the original experiments on the undermining effect of rewards on intrinsic motivation. And I met him shortly after that, work was becoming prominent.
[00:08:13] Speaker C: And did you have any idea at that stage that this would be your life's work? I mean, did you kind of go, I love this?
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Well, yeah, actually, when he met, I was in training as a clinical psychologist. I am a clinical psychologist, and my plan at the time had been to be in private practice.
But when we started to do work on motivation in the schools, I could see what an impact it had. Like an intervention with teachers could have an impact on hundreds of students over the next short while, whereas being a psychotherapist, you're working one on one with just a few people.
I think I realized early on that there'd probably be more impact on the world if we could develop a theory of motivation that would be very practical, applicable, and it could enhance people's wellness. And so I turned to that with ed, and our early work was really interventions in education and in organizations.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: Well, thank you for doing the work because it's fantastic, and it's so useful for people to have a model that they can actually follow. And it's funny you talk about, you know, language later on, because we talk about the supports that you can put in place to hopefully, you know, support those basic needs that you talk about. And from the educational point of view, I remember hearing about, you know, some schools, obviously, if somebody's doing a test, they're told you failed. Whereas in some schools around New York, by all accounts, they just don't say you failed, but they say, not quite ready yet. And I think it's a much more positive. It comes from the growth mindset idea. It's a much more positive way of saying that. So the words. Words really matter, don't they?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: I think words do matter. I think the sentiment matters. You know, manager sentiment matters. You get an experience of whether they're behind you, supporting you, or whether they're just being critical and forceful. These things matter in terms of.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: So then who was it sort of focused on the basic needs, psychological needs first? Was both of you working on that together?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Well, in truth, we didn't really voice the concept of basic psychological needs for a good 10 years into our work. We were doing a lot of experimental and field work at the time. And what our experiments were showing was people would not be intrinsically motivated unless they could experience some sense of autonomy and choice in what they were doing doing. People would not be intrinsically motivated if they didn't feel competent at what they were doing. People wouldn't internalize the value of something that wasn't fun or interesting. Unless they had support for autonomy and for relatedness. So we were seeing autonomy, competence and relatedness repeatedly appear as necessary conditions for somebody to be highly motivated or motivated in a high quality way.
But as we were, our focus then was on motivation and engagement. But we saw that when those conditions were fulfilled, when people could feel autonomy, when people could feel competence in what they were doing, when people could feel connectedness and relatedness, they also had higher well being. And so it was at that point when we were saying that these things were essential not only to motivation but to wellness, that we started to use the term basic psychological need. Because they seem essential in all workplaces, in all schools, in all families, in all societies. These things kept reappearing as the fundamental ingredients of what a healthy employee looks like.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: It's amazing because a lot of people, even in our work where we're assessing organizations and you're looking at mastery and the like, and people are kind of going, I thought this was to do with well being. They don't connect those two things at all. And they're pretty fundamental because, I mean, it's interesting. Just looking at underconfidence, you're talking about self efficacy, so obviously Albert Bandura's work and the like, you're talking about capacity, you're talking about opportunities for growth and the development of meaning. So I mean, it's very powerful.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, I think it's true. I think people have not always paid attention to basic psychological needs in that way. It's kind of a fundamental condition, not only for wellness, but also for motivation. But kind of getting back to the connection between the two things, you don't find happy, fulfilled people who also don't have a passion in life, who aren't engaged in something that they think is meaningful and worthwhile. People would like to be engaged in their workplaces. People would like to have a passion and be able to stand behind what they're doing at work. And so it's really about a good management climate that can help them experience those things in their current jobs. That is the, the catalyst, I think, to wellness.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: I come across more and more people who tell me that they don't actually know what their passion is.
Is that because there's too many choices today or is it because people have too high expectations around that whole area?
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Well, you know, of course, the word passion is a funny word. So I guess part of it has to do with what people mean by passion. I think you can be passionate about your work without saying, well, that's my pass. Life So I just want to be careful about the semantics there. But I do think a lot of people have not found a passion. They are, you know, going through the motions in workplace. They're, they're working only in order to live. And hopefully in their life they have some passion. It may not be at work, but they have it someplace. You know, most people I know, if you, if you inquire at all, they have a strong interest someplace.
What is true sometimes is that it's not aligned with what's going on for them in employment.
Employment's crowding out their opportunity to pursue that passion, or they're not finding any of that in their workplace, or they're doing it only on the outside. But I think most people, well, I think it's human nature to be engaged, to be interested, to be curious, to want to grow. If that's not happening, if that's not in your life, that is a statement of ill being.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think many people maybe don't have exposure to different things, so therefore they haven't discovered that they have a skill in a particular area or a deep enjoyment in something. I mean, I'm interested because you talk about the supports that can actually help then in terms of competence and you talk about scaffolding for structure. Could you talk a little bit about that?
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Well, you know, I think everybody wants to feel efficacy and competence in their workplace. Nobody wants to go to work and feel like they're not able to do the tasks that are assigned to them. I think all of us want to feel like we're contributing and good at what we do. When that's not happening, sometimes managers will just be evaluative about that and say you need to do better, but they won't show how. They won't even find out necessarily what is the block or what is the problem. One of the keys to management styles, from a self determination theory point of view is when a manager sees a problem, incompetence, or sees some lack of efficacy in what somebody's doing, the first thing they do is try and understand what's going on. They want to find out from the employee's perspective, what do you see is in the way of your being able to do these things? Sometimes it will be, but sometimes you find surprising blocks that you didn't even know about as a manager. So one of the values of taking your employees perspectives is not just that they feel more connected and more cared for, but also you find out information about where things are going wrong in your workplace that's getting in the way of people's performance.
And so I think scaffolding means you listen, you see where the blocks are and then you either try and remove those blocks or supply the training and skills that are needed so that that employee can come up to performance standards. Standards.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: And so feedback been a key part of that. And specific praise and you're certainly not general praise but very specific to what's been achieved.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think the praise that's most meaningful to people is stuff that they feel is authentic, that it actually reflects the effort that they put in or the special job that they did on something. People love to have that recognized and that's deeply motivating for all of us to have that, to have that acknowledged. And so feedback can be really motivational even when it's negative. If the feedback is oriented toward how you can do better, it's not how you're doing, how I see you, it's not my judgment of you. It's rather how can you have a.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Higher performance here if it's coming from the right place too? Yeah, I'm interested. Like performance management systems.
I don't know if it's quite the same your experience, but the world over, an awful lot of people are, both managers and employees are really frustrated with the systems that are in place. They're kind of tick box and nearly force people into these bell curve ideas. Do you think we need to reassess those in terms of how they affect motivation?
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think a lot of performance management systems I've seen are too sparse in feedback, too evaluative in nature, too outcome focused. You know what I think every employee wants is kind of an ongoing feedback, ongoing sense of I'm doing well and if I'm not doing well, I know that or I know where I can improve that. It's that more what I'll call dense feedback daily dense feedback that I think is really important in a lot of performance systems. You get your every six month or every year review and, and it feels evaluative. It doesn't feel informational in the way that we talk about information that it's going to necessarily point you to how to do better. It kind of tells you where you're sitting in the views of everybody else around you. And it can be really, really demotivating.
And so there's a real art to doing performance reviews. And I think it requires that sense of what are you trying to accomplish in a performance review. And I think what we're trying to accomplish is to keep people really engaged, not to discourage them. But that's not the product that comes out of a lot of performance reviews.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: So the second of those basic needs you identified was relatedness. And obviously, I think probably in workplaces right now you talked about belonging is kind of the word that's used an awful lot there, how you feel. I thought it was interesting. The word you used is that feeling of being significant.
I thought that was really lovely and a lovely way to put it like that you really matter in the workplace you're in and also that you give and, you know, so there's a two way street here.
Talk a little bit about that because I slightly worry about the relatedness right now with regard to a lot of people in hybrid environments and remote working and the like. What's your view on that?
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Well, you know, so a lot of people, when they think of relatedness, they think, well, let's make sure that we have a pizza party on Fridays. We have some kind of social event where we all go to some restaurant or some spot to get there. I don't think that those things typically work or breed any kind of relatedness within corporations. What breeds relatedness is a sense of being respected, being seen, being appreciated in the job that you do. And this is the issue about feeling like you matter or you're significant. Again, you know, I have a company, we wouldn't have an employee in the company if they didn't play a role, if they didn't matter to us. But sometimes it's. People forget that that needs to be spoken about. You know, how we appreciate the role that you play. Whatever that role is, it does matter because it's helping our organization move forward. And that's a, that's a message that helps people feel meaning in their work, helps them feel appreciated, helps them feel seen. That's, that's what connects you with a sense of organization. And so that's why we use some of that phrasing, feeling significant in your job. I want everybody to feel like they are a significant part of our organization and they're helping us move forward.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: And in terms of advice to leaders and managers, I mean, you talk about care and attention, time and warmth, inclusion. And you mentioned patience.
Do you not believe that there's much patience out there anymore?
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Well, patience takes many different forms. But one of them is, I think we think a fundamental skill of all managers is being able to take the perspective of your employees. Being able to understand what, what when you give a directive or when you have a new goal, what, what is the experience of the employee concerning that. So taking that perspective is really important. And if you really care about taking perspective, you open yourself up to hear opinions. Now, one of the things that I think is remarkable is sometimes opinions are negative. People have complaints, people have concerns. And patience means hearing those, not being defensive right away, not trying to close them out, not trying to change people's experience, but really to kind of take it in and see what information that gives you as a manager as to what you can do to improve the work climate.
Also, sometimes people, I think, in the life of all employees are going to have ups and downs. And of course, as a manager, you want to be able to help people ride through those ups and downs while still contributing to the company. So that means again, and sometimes some patience, some giving your employees the space they need to come back to the workplace with the energy that they need.
There's so many things going on in life that can be distracting. And if you can understand those and know their time course, they can really help a manager to keep an employee engaged.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: There's a lot of things going on in people's lives, and they do need a support and a listening ear and to feel that they've been heard. So I think that's really important. So the last of those three is autonomy. And this is the one that you say really differentiates the model.
I hope you've said that.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: Well, I'm sure I have, because the other major theories of motivation do not focus on this issue at all. If you look at Bandura's theory of motivation or Dweck's theory of motivation, they're really competence focused.
Almost every single computational model of motivation I've seen that's always focused on competence because it's in some ways the easiest area of motivation to understand. But the most important area of motivation has to do with volition and willingness to do something. And this is what autonomy is about. So how do we cultivate that sense of, I want to do this task, I'm invested in this task, I care about this task. That's what autonomy is all about. And of course, that's a key part of the workplace.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: And so control and autonomy, are they just hand in hand?
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Are they opposites?
[00:23:36] Speaker C: Typically, I mean, like, you know, the need for control and the need for autonomy and the like.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Okay, well, so sometimes in our literature, we contrast autonomy support with controlling management.
[00:23:50] Speaker C: Sorry.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Kind of bossing people around and not letting him feel on the agency. I do think autonomy and control go hand in hand in the sense of, I'm going to have autonomy with respect to behaviors that I also think I can have an impact on. You need both. And that's why we say you need competence and willingness in order to be fully motivated.
So the control piece is, I think, more about, can I do this? And then the autonomy piece is, do I want to? You need both of those things.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: I think it's good that you clarified that for the listener's point of view, because one of the things when we talk about what are the supports you can put in place to support autonomy, you talk about minimizing the use of controlling language.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: You shouldn't and you should not use controlling language now.
Yeah. I think have to's, musts, shoulds tend to lead people to be. To feel what we call an external internal locus of causality that somebody else is telling them what to do. It's that what you want to inculcate is, I want. I see the need for this.
This is my goal. So you want people to embrace and internalize goals rather than feel like you're imposing them on them. So controlling language can really undermine a person's sense of autonomy in what they're doing. Just like a little example of that. I might cook a meal in the kitchen, but if my wife comes into the kitchen, she starts to tell me how I should do it, the joy of doing that meal can get removed. I'm not picking on her because she's not a particularly controlling person, But I'm just using it as an example of how here I'm excited. I'm intrinsically motivated to be doing something, and somebody comes in and kind of undermines my sense of agency in the midst of it, it can take away from it. The same is true in the workplace, and it's not necessary. I mean, you can still get the same information to people without having them feel controlled.
[00:25:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And it does depend on where you are in terms of, you know, we talk about situational leadership and the like and your skill and the task involved. Because it's just interesting. You should use that as an example. Because I, at 58 years of age, I've decided that I'm going to learn how to cook.
And the last six months has been just an interesting exploration.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: I'm sorry, John, but the critical period for learning to cook was in your 30s.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: I know, I know. I am absolutely late to the party. Listen, better late than never. No, I particularly think it's useful to do it with a bottle of wine in one hand.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. This is what. Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: So it's interesting, I mean, to then Move from the basic three, those basic needs to then this continuum that you developed and the continuum going from a motivation which is like I've known, to intrinsic motivation. Could you just help people understand those different areas?
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, when we started in the field of motivation, Ed and I really, the notion was people who were motivated or they were unmotivated, you thought of motivation just more or less.
And however you could motivate people was fine. So whether you use rewards or a big stick or whatever to motivate people, the more motivation the better. I think what our theory says is that motivation is an issue of quality. You can be highly motivated, but in low quality ways. So I could be highly motivated by a boss who's very threatening or uses rewards contingently, and I'm very motivated to do the things that we will avoid my getting beaten or will get me the reward. But that's not high quality motivation because I'm not caring about anything else other than these particular outcomes. That means all the collateral things I might do at work, all the knowledge sharing I might do at work, all the organizational citizenship that I might engage in, those things get crowded out. In that kind of atmosphere, people tend to do exactly what's required to get a contingent reward and not any more more. So it's motivating, but it's not high quality motivation. You can also have people in the same situation not only wanting to do the task, but go the extra mile. This is because they really care about the value of what they're doing or they're intrinsically motivated. This is where autonomy comes in.
So I say this by way of motivation is not just about amount, it's about quality. And that's why we developed a taxonomy of motives that go from pretty low quality all the way up to very high quality. So that we know what our target is as managers, what we're trying to cultivate in our, in our employees.
[00:28:41] Speaker C: It's interesting, in preparation for this, I was listening to a number of different interviews that you've done over time. And one.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: I'm so sorry, John.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: No, no, no, no. It's, it's. I, I'd advise anybody, I'll put references into them because it's great to listen to you, to you speak on this subject because it's just. The knowledge is fantastic.
But it was interesting where there was like one person was saying, well, if the person is motivated by this, and you were actually saying, well, that's a bit of a sad motivation to have.
You know, if you're, if you're still trying to, I think, you know, satisfy your, your, your mother late in life when you should be past that. But, but do you believe that there's certain people who have questionable motivation and that they might have a better life if they sort of analyzed the things that they're motivated by and actually alter their motivations?
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Oh, I think, I think we have a lot of research that shows that this is the case. We have a lot of research on what people's life goals are about. And there are some people who we kind of, we see, we find indications that their goals in life are what we call extrinsic goals. They're after money, they're after fame, they're after appearance. And what the data shows is if that's your main goals, even when you get them, you're still not happy.
So there are some things that are more fulfilling in life and those are things where your basic psychological needs are being satisfied. So when you are engaged in an activity that you can feel autonomy in, where you feel like you're really having a meaningful impact on the world, these things tend to enrich your life. Life. And so we can see is some people are pursuing goals even when they're successful at it, they still aren't happy. And typically those tend to be pretty extrinsic goals.
You know, even, even, I mean, I like money, I like to make money at the things that I do. But if that was my life goal, it would be a pretty impoverished life.
And so, you know, we can, we, so we can see a lot that you can have goals that really don't satisfy basic psychological needs. In fact, they keep you on a treadmill that has you pressured, has you stressed, has you are always looking for more. And you know, that's, that's just not a key to ultimate life. Happiness.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Happiness, yeah. So, you know, in so many job descriptions you see this term self motivated individual. Right. Is that a cop out? Is that like that the organization just wants somebody who's, you know, I think.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Organizations do want people who are self motivated and they can create the conditions under which that happens, or they can create the conditions under which you're not at all self motivated. You're only motivated by the external figures that are pressuring you. This is part of what we're trying to have an impact in our consultations with organizations. I think everybody wants to be self motivated. If what that means is I'm engaged and I'm vitally into what I'm doing, that's self motivation.
[00:31:48] Speaker C: But I mean, do you believe it's the role of a leader and a manager to motivate people or do you believe that people should be motivated if the environment is right?
[00:31:57] Speaker B: I believe that if you create the right conditions as a manager, people will be self motivated. So on the other hand, when you try and actively motivate people by using rewards and punishments, for instance, you tend to undermine that self motivation and you have more disengaged employees.
So there's something like Susan Fowler and others have book titles based on SDT that say things like don't try and motivate other people. And I think what she means by that is don't try and control the motivation of other people, but rather create the conditions under which it's unleashed.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: I mean, how many people do you. It's a hard question to answer, I suppose, but, but I'm just wondering. In general, I come across an awful lot of people who at the end of the day tend to be in the wrong role in the wrong organization doing the wrong work.
So therefore it's always going to be a problem. I mean, how do you think that's a big issue across the board?
[00:32:58] Speaker B: You know, when you put it, if I met a person who is in that place, I'd be deeply inquiring as to both how they found themselves there and what are those work conditions.
It's not always about the job being perfectly matched with your passions.
I've had many jobs in life where if you ask me like, did you like making widgets? Did you like loading trucks? Trucks? Did you like doing these things? It was like, well, I wouldn't pick that as necessarily what I would have had my career, but I really enjoyed those jobs because I had the right manager at the time who really made me motivated to accomplish the tasks that were in that job.
So again, I think work conditions have a lot to do with this. Managerial conditions have a lot to do with this. The most mundane jobs can be something you look forward to because you like the relatedness you have at work. You feel competent at what you're doing, you feel fairly compensated for it and you feel respected in what you do. If you have those conditions, then you still want to get up in the morning and go to that workplace and put in that full effort.
[00:34:03] Speaker C: I think that stickiness of workplaces oftentimes relates to the relatedness, the people who are there and the way they make you feel. So that has a huge, huge impact on it. So one of the things, obviously if an organization listening to this is actually focused on external motivation through rewards or punishments, the Thing you say there is that that's fine short term, but long term that's going to be a problem because you're going to have to keep increasing those if you want it to still work.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, extrinsic motivation is important in all workplaces. I mean, we all work in order to get some kind of pay. But one of the things that we find all the time is people will be most unhappy with their pay when they're really unhappy with the work conditions. If you're not getting your needs satisfied at work, then your attitude is, well, you darn well better be paying me well and you're unhappy with your compensation. So when we look at compensation satisfaction in corporations, it's often not about actually the level of compensation. You can see that people at that company are being well compensated relative to peers and other companies. But the work conditions are so bad that they think I'm not being paid enough to be here.
So compensation is not enough. It's kind of a necessary but not sufficient condition. And the other thing is, compensation can be used in ways that we call controlling. You can say, well, if you do everything that pleases me as a manager, then you'll get your compensation. Or compensation can be used as a way that signifies no, we recognize your value, we think you're competent at what you do, we like to retain you. It can be a signal of we value you. So how you use compensation is really, really important. What message is it sending to your employees? And it can be sometimes a negative message or it can be a really positive message.
[00:35:56] Speaker C: But short term, it is a way to motivate people externally. But long term, it's not a great strategy.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Yeah, people can be motivated. I mean, if you got a big enough stick or a sweet enough carrot, in the short term it can be strongly motivating. And that's what 50 of behaviorism taught the world before we even came on the scene. No one doubts the power of rewards to motivate immediate behavior. But does it really create a good workplace environment? Does it sustain people over time? The answer to that is no.
[00:36:28] Speaker C: Yeah, the middle one is the introjection, the internal pressure you put on yourself, the focus on approval, which I think there's a lot of that actually around, which is worrying and ego involvement. But you also mentioned fear of shame.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we can be driven by a lot of internal pressures like that. You know, we can have internalized standards that can be very controlling. We can have our self esteem really invested in our work. I think when we get to the shame issue, though, the shame comes closer to the external environment. If you're going feel shame about what you're doing, that's usually accompanied by the fact that you're going to have a shaming manager. You're going to have shaming people around you.
So I think shame comes out in a more controlling setting or it's more potentiated in a controlling kind of setting.
If I have a poor performance in the workplace, there's many things that can be done. One is my manager can make sure that everybody's aware of it. The other thing they can do is they can come and have a conversation with me to say, hey, what's going on, Rich? You know, I've noticed your performance is lower. What can we do about that? The second is not shaming. The first can be really shaming and people think that's a motivator. But shame is usually not a motivator. It's usually a discourager.
[00:37:52] Speaker C: Okay. The one that we're getting closest to intrinsic motivation is that the integration piece and the identification. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because congruence comes in here too, which is something. Something very close to.
I. I just think it's really important.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: Well, you know, when we started the work on looking at high quality motivation, we started with intrinsic motivation when you're doing something because you find the activity itself to be really enjoyable. But in a lot of our work activities, the activities themselves may not be enjoyable. But if we can still be autonomously engaged in them, if we understand, well, they may not be fun, but they are important, they are valuable. And I'm just going to give a mundane example of that here. Every day I end up writing some kind of recommendation for somebody or some kind of evaluation of somebody from somewhere. I really don't enjoy doing those things, but I know that they're important. I know somebody's career and life is being affected by this. I also know that people invest in me the importance of doing that evaluation. So, so I kind of remind myself of this is an important job, even if it's not fun, because I've internalized the value of that.
That's really different from sort of saying, well, you, you know, you have to do. The manager saying, you have to do these things, so you go through and you do your recommendations without that sense of importance, you're going to do a lower quality job on that. So for us, that high integration internalization has to do with how do we come to have value and willingness to do things that aren't always Fun aren't always interesting. But we know our organization needs these things to be done. How can we get behind those things.
[00:39:36] Speaker C: In terms of high performance? You know, the thing everybody wants. Right.
I'm wondering, Mihaly, Czechs and flow concept, where does that only sit in intrinsic motivation, do you think or.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I have a great deal of respect for Csiksi Mihaly Mike. We were acquaintances and friends. Where are you compared notes on different things like that. So I would never want to do anything to take away from his work. I think he really identified the kind of subjective state of optimal motivation as being flow. When you're really so deeply engaged in the task that you're kind of not aware of other things going on, you're really, really focused. I think it was important for him to isolate that and look at some of the determinants of it. When you look at the model of flow that comes from Csikszentmihalyi's work, it's built around the idea of optimal challenge.
And I think optimal challenge is really a necessary ingredient to be in a high quality motivation state. You need to feel like you know what you're doing. And we call that perceived competence. The thing I would just say is it's not a enough. I can look around this room and identify a lot of optimal challenges. It might be optimal challenge for me to fix the electric light that's broken up above me. But I don't want to do that.
I don't have a motivation for that. I'd rather get somebody else to do that particular thing.
You need will you need autonomy in addition to optimal challenge. So I think flow requires both though those things. And Mike at different times recognized that in his writing about the importance of autonomy. But the. But the flow model itself doesn't contain that. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:41:23] Speaker C: It was so sad that he passed, I think during COVID wasn't it?
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it was not. It was not long ago. I think it was just three years.
[00:41:30] Speaker C: Almost during COVID close to the time that Albert Bandura also left us, which is two fantastic people. People. So it was lovely that you. You. You knew. Did you know Albert Bandora actually or.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: One time we had dinner together.
[00:41:45] Speaker C: Did you?
[00:41:46] Speaker B: In Berlin, Germany. That was it.
[00:41:48] Speaker C: But wow. I'd say that was an interesting conversation.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: You know, I. I'll say this, John. You know, I've been a bit st. Self determination. There's been a bit adversarial with social cognitive theory at different times. So. So I would say we've been on. We were on some different sides. Because. Because he explicitly denied the importance of autonomy for motivation and thought it was a nonsensical concept and said so in some of his writings. So we had debates back and forth and sometimes. But when we met, I would say we had a wonderful dinner together. We found that we were politically very much aligned and that's what we talked about. And I really enjoyed the time that we spent together and I felt much less critical after the dinner than I had.
[00:42:33] Speaker C: That's nice.
Just interest. I mean, like it's brilliant. And again, thank you for bringing the model because I think it's just.
It makes so much sense and. But yet it's lovely to have it in a model format that you can actually look at it and kind of see it and go, yeah, I get it.
What's two questions? Number one, where do you think it's had the biggest impact?
Because obviously, you know, there's education, there's work, there's, you know, several different areas.
And I'm just interested to know what's next.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Well, you know, one of the things I would like to recognize is that a lot of the work in self determination in the self determination community came from people who were originally athletes or sport psychologists. Sport has been a big place for the application of STT coaching styles. Also, you know, intrinsic motivation is very important in sports for sustaining a career in sports or a practice of sports over time. So one of the places it's had a big impact is in sport and physical activity.
Also physical education more generally. I think it's had an impact on organizations because I think managers have seen the value of this and there's been a lot of, I guess prove outs of the theory that you can really increase performance and productivity and profits by creating a good work climate. But I also think we've had a big impact on education and it's growing because there are now pretty standardized and accessible interventions you can do to increase autonomous support in classrooms. John Marshall Reeve and myself and some other colleagues recently came out with a book that teachers can bring into their own school and do a workshop to increase autonomy support. And the data has shown that it really has a positive impact both on the, the students in classrooms, their motivation, but also on the teachers themselves. They have a higher quality experience after engaging in the techniques of self determination theory.
So those are three areas where I think we've had big impact. Sport organizations and especially primary and secondary education.
[00:44:44] Speaker C: Yeah, fantastic. And then that final kind of question, what's next in terms of your research? What are the things you really want to get your teeth in into.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: Well, we're doing a lot of research on technology use and technology engagement and its association with basic psychological needs.
You might know, John, that I did a lot of work on video games and why video games are so motivating. But a lot of the reason for doing that work was to understand the principles through which an online environment can either satisfy or frustrate people's basic psychological needs and either lead to engagement or disengage engagement. That work in video games has had a lot of transfer over to other technologies. So that's an area that, that I have a lot of interest in. I've been working with Rafael Calvo from University College London, who's an engineer on this topic. So that's one that's exciting to me.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: And are you positive about the future with regard to the likes of the integration of AI and, I don't know, robotics and where we're going?
[00:45:49] Speaker B: No, I'm neither positive nor negative. I'm myself a consumer of AI. It's hugely helpful in almost all the work that we do. So I see it as a tool that can really contribute a lot to organizations into what they're trying to accomplish.
Of course, I worry about the future in terms of how that's controlled, how that's regulated, who has access to information, how information flows. So I think there's a lot of issues out there about how technology can compromise people's autonomy, sometimes without them even knowing it, placing constraints and limiting their freedoms in ways they haven't consented to.
So I think that's an area where there's going to be a lot of action coming up.
[00:46:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I think we have to be very, very careful with where that comes goes.
Again, thank you so much for giving me the. The time today.
And I have to say, like, I mean, 1977, about sort of 50 years.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: You'Ve been doing it.
[00:46:53] Speaker C: It's wonderful that you haven't lost your own motivation.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: It depends on the day, John. It depends. Yeah.
[00:46:59] Speaker C: Well, of course, for all of us. For all of us. But listen, keep up the brilliant work and, and thank you on behalf of everybody who's inspired, inspired by your work. Please keep, keep doing it and hopefully one day we'll meet in person the.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Wonderfully charismatic and charming Richard Ryan, giving us a wonderful insight into the drivers of motivation which have helped managers and leaders across the world achieve high performance. Until next time, thanks for listening to the Work Healthy podcast.
