Motivation: What Moves us to Action?

It has often been debated, how people become inspired to do something. The idea of motivation suggests a perspective wherein someone is likely to do or fulfill a task in return for something which pleases them. To provide an example, sex presents the required motivation to a couple to cohabitate.

It has been observed throughout the history of mankind that people tend to work lazily when they have more freedom or are not bound by an obligation. This gives rise to competition from others who are motivated by the ‘chance’ to pass ahead of the lazy ones. The rabbit and tortoise story aptly fits in here.

The question then arises, how does one ensure productivity rise if members of a team feel lazy? The answer is: Proper management of the team. One can always take pleasure in mentoring workers under him/her and see the team growing thereby adding to the overall development of the organization; but it sometimes lead to unpleasant experiences and conflict management opportunities as pushing a person too much isn’t always straightforward or simple.

Maslow's Needs Hierarchy

Studies and research have been done on motivation and two popular theories that came out are Maslow’s and McGregor’s. The former’s theory talks about hierarchy of worker needs and the latter’s divided into two parts:  Theory X and Theory Y. These theories had a sense of self explanation and reasoning in them and they seemed quite logical to be followed.

Talking particularly about Theories X and Y, McGregor divided the managers into two kinds — one who has quite some faith in his team (Theory Y) and the other who is either skeptical or completely in distrust about the members (Theory X).

In Theory X, the kind of approach adopted by a manager is similar to offering a combination reward and punishment, whereas Theory Y gives preference to participation from all members. There was another theory on which McGregor was working (Theory Z) but he died during the process.

Looking at the two theories listed above, one may think that a Theory Y manager would be immensely successful, but it could be an illusion and there are many failed stories of managers trying to be too kind. The reason could have been that the employees tend to take him for granted at times.

In today’s world, Theory X dominates heavily and, in most organizations, work is assigned to workers with (possibly) harsh deadlines and severe consequences in the event of work not being completed within the deadline. This could be deemed a good strategy to get the job done in time, but it only infuriates the workers towards the organization and they start to do work halfheartedly with no particular interest or passion. This is an unfavorable scenario for a company and its development.

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