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New location, our seminar room has scaffolding this week apparently. It was well hidden, I was glad to find other people trying to find it as well as me :p I got a chance to talk to A., who is working with volunteers doing student-ey things and had some interesting things to say about channelling energy and burnout.
Quick recap of what we skipped out on last week:
Organisational Commitment is characterised by three mindsets, self-interest (continuance), loyalty (normative) and idealism (affective). I am approximating here and trying to find a single word that describes a more complex relationship. We build these types of commitment though Justice and support mechanisms, Shared Values, Trust, Organisational comprehension (knowledge of org + communication) and Employee involvement. I get a bit fixated on trust but have a relationship with all of them.
We did a fun exercise talking about different types of trust where you had to stand in a line based on your organisational trust values (1 = never trust anyone, 2 = trust is earned, 3 = trust can be lost, 4 = trust always). I started at 2 which says a lot about how my work functions but after some discussion about work versus personal values, switched to 4 which is how I try to live my life, and how I function with AD&T. To my surprise, almost no-one else switched when given the chance. I was also very impressed by guy_1 asking guy_4 how he coped with constant betrayal and guy_4 saying, ‘dude, it doesn’t work like that’ followed by ‘don’t you get tired, being suspicious all the time?’
A psychological contract is a belief ‘about the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange between that person and other party’ which in workplace terms means you have expectations that may or may not be met. Or more simply, I believe because I did A, that I am entitled to B. Yeah, it’s not a very sensible way to live, but we do it a lot without realising it. *is totally not a baby boomer* Transactional contracts (like temporary consultants) are characterised by having clear economic rewards, being short term, stable (static), narrow in scope and well defined. Relational contracts (permanent employees) which are characterised by being about money and socio-emotional contracts, can be open-ended and indefinite in term, dynamic rather than static, have a pervasive scope (meaning your job changes over time) and some of the inputs/outputs will be more subjective. These vary across cultures (see power distance) and across generations (baby boomers assume more loyalty, GenX & GenY assume more employability)
Motivation: 'the forces within a person that affect their directions, intensity and persistence of voluntary behaviour' which, given what complex little beings we are, can be challenging to create in the workplace. Once again needs vary across the generations and diverse values means what motivates employees can be correspondingly broad.
We saw a slide on what motivates people in their career versus what their age was but, honestly, it looked like something someone who was 65 might agree with and nothing like my life. I mean 2 possible jobs/careers in 35 years? Eh? What?
Content Theories of Motivation describe why we humans have different needs over time. We covered Maslow's Needs Hierarchy briefly, I'm told it doesn't stand up to empirical testing but is historically significant as so much work sprang from it. I love it despite that for putting self-actualisation at the top and for making reference to a 'need to know' and a 'need for beauty' oh humanity, I love you so. Four-drive-theory says we have four drives that are innate, independent of each other and comprehensive. They are Acquiring (seek, take control, retain, hierarchy, status), Bonding (relationships, social identity), Learning (satisfying curiosity, basis of self-actualisation) and Defending (protect self, reactive). These drives filter incoming information and hook to your feelings - are you going to respond to a new work tool by trying own it, understanding it or fighting it? Or a mixture of competing feelings because hey, they are independent of each other. At this point computers crash and humans giggle nervously which is the final interesting thing about this; your social skills determine how well you handle all of those drives going off (social norms, personal values, past experience).
So drives sit there all lurking-ey, things happen (or don't happen as the case may be), you use your social skillz on them and this produces need and effort.
I'm told four-drive-theory does a decent job of moving on from Maslow - includes learned needs but still doesn't fully explain them. What are learned needs you may ask? I admit I didn't, this knowledge was forced on me /o\ ! American behavioural psychologist David McClelland wishes to say they are three dominant needs we all have and which are subject to training/learning. They are Achievement (nAch) the need for challenges, risks, reward and recognition; Affiliation (nAff) the need for approval, relationships and low conflict; and Power (nPow) the need for control of one's environment (for self or others). The idea being that you can use these concepts to work out how people function in teams and what kind of tasks they will do well (or to re-train people with the 'wrong' profile).
The implications for these theories is that employers need to provide opportunities for the different needs to be met and attempt to balance those opportunities. Well for four drive theory, for Maslow you encourage self-actualisation.
Process Theories of Motivation describe how needs turn into behaviours which is simultaneously awesome and creepy. I like that we want to understand/predict/influence and at the same time I dislike reducing people to measurable processes. Expectancy Theory is all math-ey and is actually hiding some quite cool stuff under it's weird little symbols. Here our motivation is a function of what we believe about three things
We can leverage (1) by training staff, making sure they have time+resources to perform, giving them time to learn, coaching and buddying; (2) by accurately measuring performance, being clear about outcomes, linking performance to outcomes and visibly rewarding people, and (3) creating rewards employees value, customising rewards to individuals and minimising negative outcomes. There is a graph, let us not speak of it.
Goal Setting is probably the process theory we're all the most familiar with, especially a room full of MBA students and I just want to tangent briefly off to the Big Hairy Audacious Goal because she's a lady I'd love to get to know. Anyway, goals are easier to work with if they have various qualities: Specific / stretching (know what you're going to achieve and set it high), Measurable (know when you've done it and how well), Attractive (want it... preferably badly), Realistic (there goes my Mars trip... again) and Time bound (have a start and a finish) which also forms the appealing acronym SMART. I'm told there is a sweet spot where high performance and high difficulty meet just before task difficulty starts to approach impossible. We like challenges :) Also has the advantage of stimulating planning.
We diverged a bit here and talked about Feedback for a while. Yay feedback! It's relevant to goal setting because in order to be effective you have to get regular feedback showing your progress. The best feedback is Specific (connected to your goal), Relevant (something the person has control over like their behaviour), Timely (as soon as possible), Frequent (regular enough to have the desired effect) and Credible (come from someone trustworthy). I'm ah, practising this at work in conjunction with behavioural modification (extinction and punishment) to stamp out sexist jokes with what appears to be reasonably good success (at least in my earshot, which is all I ask).
Equity Theory is the idea that we can explain people in terms of distributive justice, or what we put in and get out. We can compare Outcome-input ratio: how much are they paying me to work this hard?, Comparison other: are other people being paid the same to work this hard? and Equity evaluation: are other people suffering as well as me? and use these to understand how people behave when faced with perceived inequities.
Since we were sneakily talking about justice we switched to talking about Distributive Justice where you care about how fair it is, Procedural Justice where you care if the forms were adhered to, and Interactional Justice where you care about how you were treated. This totally explains fanwank rage-fests to me. If you don't get distributive justice, you can say 'oh well, at least they followed the rules', but if you don't get procedural justice the rage starts to build and after that if you can't even say 'oh well, at least I was treated with respect' then phew, let the flames begin. This is called the impact of justice perceptions on motivation to act and the moral of the story is always, always, always treat people with respect.
Our last topic for the night was Cognitive Evaluation Theory where we talked briefly about how extrinsically rewarding someone for something that was previously intrinsic tends to decrease motivation which is a wordy way of saying we like doing things we have some control over (I think).
Quick recap of what we skipped out on last week:
Organisational Commitment is characterised by three mindsets, self-interest (continuance), loyalty (normative) and idealism (affective). I am approximating here and trying to find a single word that describes a more complex relationship. We build these types of commitment though Justice and support mechanisms, Shared Values, Trust, Organisational comprehension (knowledge of org + communication) and Employee involvement. I get a bit fixated on trust but have a relationship with all of them.
We did a fun exercise talking about different types of trust where you had to stand in a line based on your organisational trust values (1 = never trust anyone, 2 = trust is earned, 3 = trust can be lost, 4 = trust always). I started at 2 which says a lot about how my work functions but after some discussion about work versus personal values, switched to 4 which is how I try to live my life, and how I function with AD&T. To my surprise, almost no-one else switched when given the chance. I was also very impressed by guy_1 asking guy_4 how he coped with constant betrayal and guy_4 saying, ‘dude, it doesn’t work like that’ followed by ‘don’t you get tired, being suspicious all the time?’
A psychological contract is a belief ‘about the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange between that person and other party’ which in workplace terms means you have expectations that may or may not be met. Or more simply, I believe because I did A, that I am entitled to B. Yeah, it’s not a very sensible way to live, but we do it a lot without realising it. *is totally not a baby boomer* Transactional contracts (like temporary consultants) are characterised by having clear economic rewards, being short term, stable (static), narrow in scope and well defined. Relational contracts (permanent employees) which are characterised by being about money and socio-emotional contracts, can be open-ended and indefinite in term, dynamic rather than static, have a pervasive scope (meaning your job changes over time) and some of the inputs/outputs will be more subjective. These vary across cultures (see power distance) and across generations (baby boomers assume more loyalty, GenX & GenY assume more employability)
Motivation: 'the forces within a person that affect their directions, intensity and persistence of voluntary behaviour' which, given what complex little beings we are, can be challenging to create in the workplace. Once again needs vary across the generations and diverse values means what motivates employees can be correspondingly broad.
We saw a slide on what motivates people in their career versus what their age was but, honestly, it looked like something someone who was 65 might agree with and nothing like my life. I mean 2 possible jobs/careers in 35 years? Eh? What?
Content Theories of Motivation describe why we humans have different needs over time. We covered Maslow's Needs Hierarchy briefly, I'm told it doesn't stand up to empirical testing but is historically significant as so much work sprang from it. I love it despite that for putting self-actualisation at the top and for making reference to a 'need to know' and a 'need for beauty' oh humanity, I love you so. Four-drive-theory says we have four drives that are innate, independent of each other and comprehensive. They are Acquiring (seek, take control, retain, hierarchy, status), Bonding (relationships, social identity), Learning (satisfying curiosity, basis of self-actualisation) and Defending (protect self, reactive). These drives filter incoming information and hook to your feelings - are you going to respond to a new work tool by trying own it, understanding it or fighting it? Or a mixture of competing feelings because hey, they are independent of each other. At this point computers crash and humans giggle nervously which is the final interesting thing about this; your social skills determine how well you handle all of those drives going off (social norms, personal values, past experience).
So drives sit there all lurking-ey, things happen (or don't happen as the case may be), you use your social skillz on them and this produces need and effort.
I'm told four-drive-theory does a decent job of moving on from Maslow - includes learned needs but still doesn't fully explain them. What are learned needs you may ask? I admit I didn't, this knowledge was forced on me /o\ ! American behavioural psychologist David McClelland wishes to say they are three dominant needs we all have and which are subject to training/learning. They are Achievement (nAch) the need for challenges, risks, reward and recognition; Affiliation (nAff) the need for approval, relationships and low conflict; and Power (nPow) the need for control of one's environment (for self or others). The idea being that you can use these concepts to work out how people function in teams and what kind of tasks they will do well (or to re-train people with the 'wrong' profile).
The implications for these theories is that employers need to provide opportunities for the different needs to be met and attempt to balance those opportunities. Well for four drive theory, for Maslow you encourage self-actualisation.
Process Theories of Motivation describe how needs turn into behaviours which is simultaneously awesome and creepy. I like that we want to understand/predict/influence and at the same time I dislike reducing people to measurable processes. Expectancy Theory is all math-ey and is actually hiding some quite cool stuff under it's weird little symbols. Here our motivation is a function of what we believe about three things
- Effort-Performance (E-P): I believe if I put in more effort I will perform well
- Performance-Outcome (P-O): I believe if I perform well I will get an outcome
- Valence (V): I believe the outcome is desirable
We can leverage (1) by training staff, making sure they have time+resources to perform, giving them time to learn, coaching and buddying; (2) by accurately measuring performance, being clear about outcomes, linking performance to outcomes and visibly rewarding people, and (3) creating rewards employees value, customising rewards to individuals and minimising negative outcomes. There is a graph, let us not speak of it.
Goal Setting is probably the process theory we're all the most familiar with, especially a room full of MBA students and I just want to tangent briefly off to the Big Hairy Audacious Goal because she's a lady I'd love to get to know. Anyway, goals are easier to work with if they have various qualities: Specific / stretching (know what you're going to achieve and set it high), Measurable (know when you've done it and how well), Attractive (want it... preferably badly), Realistic (there goes my Mars trip... again) and Time bound (have a start and a finish) which also forms the appealing acronym SMART. I'm told there is a sweet spot where high performance and high difficulty meet just before task difficulty starts to approach impossible. We like challenges :) Also has the advantage of stimulating planning.
We diverged a bit here and talked about Feedback for a while. Yay feedback! It's relevant to goal setting because in order to be effective you have to get regular feedback showing your progress. The best feedback is Specific (connected to your goal), Relevant (something the person has control over like their behaviour), Timely (as soon as possible), Frequent (regular enough to have the desired effect) and Credible (come from someone trustworthy). I'm ah, practising this at work in conjunction with behavioural modification (extinction and punishment) to stamp out sexist jokes with what appears to be reasonably good success (at least in my earshot, which is all I ask).
Equity Theory is the idea that we can explain people in terms of distributive justice, or what we put in and get out. We can compare Outcome-input ratio: how much are they paying me to work this hard?, Comparison other: are other people being paid the same to work this hard? and Equity evaluation: are other people suffering as well as me? and use these to understand how people behave when faced with perceived inequities.
- Reduce input - work less
- Increase outcomes - ask for pay increase
- Increase other's inputs - encourage co-workers to work harder
- Reduce other's inputs - as boss to stop giving preferential treatment
- Change perceptions - stop desiring perks (sour grapes)
- Change comparison - compare to someone more like you
- Leave - quit
Since we were sneakily talking about justice we switched to talking about Distributive Justice where you care about how fair it is, Procedural Justice where you care if the forms were adhered to, and Interactional Justice where you care about how you were treated. This totally explains fanwank rage-fests to me. If you don't get distributive justice, you can say 'oh well, at least they followed the rules', but if you don't get procedural justice the rage starts to build and after that if you can't even say 'oh well, at least I was treated with respect' then phew, let the flames begin. This is called the impact of justice perceptions on motivation to act and the moral of the story is always, always, always treat people with respect.
Our last topic for the night was Cognitive Evaluation Theory where we talked briefly about how extrinsically rewarding someone for something that was previously intrinsic tends to decrease motivation which is a wordy way of saying we like doing things we have some control over (I think).
no subject
I really love these entries of yours. It's really interesting, even if I don't always understand everything. +g+
no subject
I think I've been told the SMART thing a lot before but most of my goal setting is not done consciously. Doing this first assignment I had a whole bunch of goals strung out over the assignment process designed to get me to particular points (
I work quite hard to make tasks in AD&T attractive by describing them a lot and, well giving them dimensions - I have always known they have to be bounded (approachable, owned, time-frame etc) but haven't had a specific framework in mind when I do it. I may well try harder to apply this particular model to them :)
Oh my, if you ever have questions and/or feel like discussing something please do jump right in. These are my study notes and encouraging me to investigate/discuss will significantly improve my study - you will be doing me a favour :)