2min Hack – When Motivation Backfires – Money, Morale and Motivation

bigger income, bigger outcome. That's the mantra in the world of highly paid executives. But does it hold up? What's the link between money motivation and performance, the relationship is senior in the Yerkes Dodson curve. Turns out that money only improves performance in basic jobs. Those which are underpaid, or where money really makes a meaningful difference with living expenses. The ego lives at extremes at the other end power and status defocus from performance for smart jobs where complex skills and individual qualities valued too much money. defocus is a person they literally move their meaningful work from doing a good job to earning more money, why the ego is driven by status and

power and victory. It's always more powerful than the intellect to get more performance from these folks, you need more than money you need meaning purpose and other things tied to the job itself or acceptance for some people in unpleasant and tiresome Bloodsport industries, like consulting, m&a, bankruptcy, and so on. It's all about making ruthless or unpopular decisions or doing work that isn't really meaningful. So they'll turn up and do a great job, but it's because they're either psychopaths or they keep a higher goal in mind, suck it up, make a lot of money and leave in a few years with a big pot of cash works for them. For the rest of us, you need to know two things. Point

one commitment beats motivation, point two to help the people first help the person point one motivation is unreliable. It's an emotion, that's ego. It's not sustainable. It's exaggerated, it's variable and it's distorted. You always imagine more than you can achieve and then you decay. That's why gyms tie you into membership by direct debit, or for a whole year. They know you're too ambitious, sober daily commitment is from the center. It's about turning up to do the work. Regardless of emotions and motivations. The tortoise always beats the hare point to help the person of the people well, beating teams treat people like individuals, everyone has differences in what

makes them go tap into those things individually. But it's not so hard. Everyone has a formula. Look at the wellbeing matrix. Again, every person has levers in there, get to the person and help them lift up at least two of these in a way that they see fit. The key is to make their strengths bigger and overlook their weaknesses. Give them autonomy permission to make their decisions by trial and error, give them purpose to find out why they really want to do a good job, whatever their answer is, celebrate that get huge. It validates their purpose, give them joy and mastery time and resources to find joy and do their own thing. The best teams allowed people 20% of their time to do

exactly what they want learning fitness anything, the data is clear do that. And they'll do a better job in the remaining 80% than they would have done with 100% of the time before and they'll stay with you to give them attention and connectedness make their monthly reviews a genuinely two way street. These people make the team and not the other way around. They will energize and improve things way better than any amount of top down vision crap. Now you have a living, breathing organization where people's strengths come to work, not a dead machine where people have no real individual identity. You probably know about all this in some vague way deep down but now you have

the science and the theory to prove it implemented now or else you'll be no better than the guy who studied how to ride bikes, but never got out and rollin.