I recently heard a tip from an older colleague on managing a department. ‘Everyone is primarily interested in one of three things,’ he said. ‘To motivate them, all you need do is discover which one drives them most.’
People want some leeway to apply their imagination, creativity and knowledge
What are the three? They are power, money and autonomy.
I wish I had heard this 20 years ago, as it explains a great deal about the stark differences between colleagues’ working motivations which had often baffled me in the past.
A huge amount is written about power and money, but very little thought is devoted to autonomy. Yet it is probably the need for autonomy that drives people to become entrepreneurs much more than greed. The neuroscientist Paul Rock lists it as one of five primary drivers of human working behaviour. In his SCARF model, the five emotional hot buttons are Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.
I suspect autonomy is often unfairly perceived as disobedience.
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