How to Transform a Workplace at Odds with Our Innate Powers

If workplace "motivation" is a product of the industrial revolutions, then what is the digital age workplace anthem? There is a hidden history of motivation, which is not so hidden any more thanks to big data, that will inform us something unexpected about the very notion of motivation. When I discovered it, I decided to write about it because motivation might not be as desired and dignified in the 21st century workplace as we might lead ourselves to believe.

Pause for a moment and think about, "what aspects of your work and workplace are congruent with your innate needs for fulfillment as a human being?" By "congruent" I mean orchestrated to include the facts of our humanness, what makes us tick, what makes us satisfied with our lives. I also mean coherence with the demands and standards of the digital age.

I can think of one aspect of my life that no amount of motivation could have enhanced. In fact, the effect was to the contrary. I'll explain.

We all share a magical innate power: the desire to accomplish. I’ve seen it when people “motivate leadership” in others, instead of motivating tasks. Motivating leadership is the skill of inviting acts of leadership for productive ends, especially in difficult and contentious situations. Motivating leadership does not play on the want for immediate gratification, or people's fears, as common motivation does. Rather, it trusts and relies on one’s internally generated enthusiasm for the desire to accomplish. Making the difference between the two is an act of transformation.

I’ll explain why.

I recently decided to create a seminar on “motivating leadership” because I wanted to help others acquire this empowering ability that I had learned from my Mom. But I knew it was not going to be another basic motivational leadership seminar, the kind where you’d typically hear things like, “The best leaders don't motivate their people. The best leaders excel at learning how to keep their people from becoming demotivated.” But this industrial motivation is not at all what I have in mind because this is precisely what will no longer work in the modern economy of the 21st century.

What best serves the workplace of the 21st century is a work culture that questions what is demotivating “their people” in the first place. A culture that promotes a way of working that is not at odds with our innate powers. The younger generations are readily attuned to their innate powers, and there is plenty of evidence that they eschew the old ways of the workplace.

When we move from externally evoked excitement, positive or negative, to internally generated enthusiasm, an act of transformation is brought into existence. Psychologists distinguish the two as “extrinsic motivation” and “intrinsic motivation”, respectively.

Let me make the contrast felt for a moment. When we say “excitement”, think teenagers. When we say “enthusiasm”, think man or woman on a mission. Excitement is, “Oh ma gad! Look at that thing.” Enthusiasm, “Goooood morning sunshine, let’s go! I can’t wait to get started.”

But there is great difficulty in intrinsic motivation because it requires we awaken our innate power and shift attention to our desire to accomplish in the midst of our workdays overloaded with task-oriented busy schedules. And this awakening is precisely what I focused on when designing the Motivating Leadership Seminar.

So “If this shift is about awakening," you might ask, "then what made this innate power go dormant?”

To begin looking at this question, all you have to do is listen closely and attentively to the sound of the workplace today, with focus on the language utilized in meeting rooms, throughout the industries that serve the workplace, and that of the trade press, which perpetuates the language.

The predominant language is loaded with disembodied metaphors and recycled narratives that don't really mean anything. It sounds something like this: “Think outside the ‘box’ to design a ‘process’ and a ‘framework’ to ‘streamline activities’ and ‘drive efficiency’ so that we ‘disrupt’ our market. And so on. And so on.

It is a language that invites a mechanistic existence because it is disembodied and devoid of real actionable content. One that favors high efficiency and performance, and fueled by a motivation industry that wants to help employers “keep their people from becoming demotivated” — by resorting to extrinsic motivation. Why is no one talking about what is demotivating “their people” in the first place? There must be something in their environment demotivating them, yes?

People get demotivated because the ethos and language of the workplace today is at odds with our innate needs and powers. If we look at ourselves, our bodies, and our social organizations, little that we do to be free and lead a good life has anything to do with driving efficiency or streamlined processes. Our well-being rests on fulfilling our needs to exercise, play, socialize, interact with dignity, act creatively, create aesthetic surroundings, and work together to take care of concerns of family, community, business, and the world.

So how do we replace today’s workplace with what will work best, spreading into the workspaces of the 21st century? People must stop giving importance to sustaining a mechanistic workplace for the sake of high efficiency, and instead, start giving more importance to what feels right for them: a sense of purpose, autonomy, and personal accomplishment, all of which are intrinsic motivators. These are the true human motivators, so powerful, that when exercised by enough people in an organization will transform the workplace into one that is in harmony with their inner powers.

Look for these motivators within yourself, and pay attention to other's strengths when motivating leadership. In my life and line of work, this recipe always produced a much more productive, healthy, and desired context for everyone to be fulfilled in their work.

To my understanding, this is the way transformation happens because, after all, social and business organizations are people interacting, helping, and carrying conversations with one another. The rest is scaffolding: the desk, walls, windows, computers and processes, all are things that do not transform on their own. Transformation only happens within us.

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