WEBVTT 1 00:00:09.015 --> 00:00:14.973 So far, we've talked a lot about the difference between extrinsic motivation, 2 00:00:14.973 --> 00:00:21.210 pay, salary, bonuses, etc, recognition, status, and intrinsic motivation. 3 00:00:22.670 --> 00:00:26.610 And in that category of intrinsic motivation, 4 00:00:26.610 --> 00:00:31.344 we talked about meaning, the significance of our work. 5 00:00:31.344 --> 00:00:36.154 There's some studies that show that among all of the motivating factors that 6 00:00:36.154 --> 00:00:41.186 might motivate someone to perform at a high level at work, the significance of my 7 00:00:41.186 --> 00:00:46.292 work, the relevance, the meaning of my work, actually oftentimes is the number 8 00:00:46.292 --> 00:00:52.230 one motivating factor, ahead of pay, ahead of relationships with other people. 9 00:00:52.230 --> 00:00:53.798 Does my work matter? 10 00:00:53.798 --> 00:00:59.340 Does it mean something to people, the organization, and so on. 11 00:00:59.340 --> 00:01:02.842 Meaning tends to be one of the most important, if not, 12 00:01:02.842 --> 00:01:07.965 the number one motivating factor that we're finding in organizations today. 13 00:01:07.965 --> 00:01:12.472 And so, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the role of meaning and 14 00:01:12.472 --> 00:01:16.707 how you might be able to leverage meaning to motivate either yourself, or 15 00:01:16.707 --> 00:01:19.809 team members, or people that you might be managing. 16 00:01:20.920 --> 00:01:24.416 One of the questions I often get asked is how do we create meaning at work? 17 00:01:24.416 --> 00:01:27.070 Where does this meaning come from? 18 00:01:27.070 --> 00:01:28.527 And so, I'll give you a couple of examples. 19 00:01:28.527 --> 00:01:32.910 One of the pieces of advice that I often give managers in 20 00:01:32.910 --> 00:01:37.388 organizations is to focus on the relevance of the work, 21 00:01:37.388 --> 00:01:41.315 the relevance of the task, to a bigger picture. 22 00:01:42.615 --> 00:01:46.993 How does my little task over here, in my team and my unit, 23 00:01:46.993 --> 00:01:52.115 enable the organization to achieve what it's trying to achieve? 24 00:01:52.115 --> 00:01:56.370 How does my individual task enable my team to be successful? 25 00:01:57.420 --> 00:01:58.712 For individuals, 26 00:01:58.712 --> 00:02:03.963 being able to see the connection between their individual contributions and 27 00:02:03.963 --> 00:02:09.131 the overall contribution of either the team or the organization is one way, 28 00:02:09.131 --> 00:02:14.001 really effective way, to create a sense of meaning and significance. 29 00:02:14.001 --> 00:02:17.971 And you, as a manager, have the opportunity to do that when you talk about 30 00:02:17.971 --> 00:02:22.262 the relevance or the importance of the work you're asking people to engage in, 31 00:02:22.262 --> 00:02:26.427 and being able to connect that to the broader purpose, the broader mission, 32 00:02:26.427 --> 00:02:29.140 the broader task of the team or the organization. 33 00:02:30.460 --> 00:02:31.548 So, that's one way. 34 00:02:31.548 --> 00:02:35.679 Another way, a former doctoral student of ours, good friend, 35 00:02:35.679 --> 00:02:40.900 good colleague of mine, Adam Grant, who's now at Wharton Business School. 36 00:02:40.900 --> 00:02:46.101 When he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, 37 00:02:46.101 --> 00:02:51.001 and still today, he does a lot of work on how to leverage our 38 00:02:51.001 --> 00:02:55.717 impact on other people to create meaning for us at work. 39 00:02:55.717 --> 00:02:59.657 And a couple of studies that he's conducted with other folks, 40 00:02:59.657 --> 00:03:04.490 Dave Hoffman down at University of North Carolina and other individuals from 41 00:03:04.490 --> 00:03:09.360 around the world, I think really illustrate this concept very well. 42 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:13.751 One of the studies they did was with radiologists. 43 00:03:13.751 --> 00:03:17.871 Where radiologists, their prime responsibility at work is 44 00:03:17.871 --> 00:03:21.747 to read radiological scans and be able to tell doctors and 45 00:03:21.747 --> 00:03:27.650 patients whether they have a broken bone, or whatever ailment they might have. 46 00:03:27.650 --> 00:03:30.919 But they're really focused on these x-rays, these radiological scans. 47 00:03:30.919 --> 00:03:36.130 And come to find out, human beings are not perfect, and neither are radiologists. 48 00:03:36.130 --> 00:03:41.570 And they do, they make mistakes when they read these x-rays. 49 00:03:41.570 --> 00:03:46.759 And Adam and his colleagues, actually, went in and tested whether or not they 50 00:03:46.759 --> 00:03:52.027 could improve the accuracy of these radiological scans by focusing on creating 51 00:03:52.027 --> 00:03:58.480 meaning by what Adam called outsourcing it to your customers, or the beneficiaries. 52 00:03:58.480 --> 00:04:03.232 So, for radiologists, what they did is immediately preceding 53 00:04:03.232 --> 00:04:09.040 the radiologist reading the x-ray and making his or her conclusion off of it, 54 00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:13.973 is for half the group, they showed them a picture of a human being. 55 00:04:13.973 --> 00:04:18.773 The human being wasn't necessarily the patient 56 00:04:18.773 --> 00:04:23.815 that the radiologist was looking at the x-ray of. 57 00:04:23.815 --> 00:04:26.095 But it was just a picture of a human being. 58 00:04:26.095 --> 00:04:29.224 And then for the other half, they didn't show them anything. 59 00:04:29.224 --> 00:04:35.401 And what was fascinating is the accuracy of the radiological scans and 60 00:04:35.401 --> 00:04:41.577 the x-rays, the accuracy of the radiologist went up about 46% for 61 00:04:41.577 --> 00:04:46.496 the radiologist who saw the picture of the human being, 62 00:04:46.496 --> 00:04:50.040 relative to those who did not. 63 00:04:50.040 --> 00:04:53.932 And so, what they're doing is they're creating this motivation, 64 00:04:53.932 --> 00:04:58.630 this intrinsic motivation, this sense of significance, meaning, relevance, 65 00:04:58.630 --> 00:05:03.279 by reminding the radiologist that there's a human being and a life at stake here. 66 00:05:03.279 --> 00:05:07.240 And the importance of their work matters to that human being. 67 00:05:07.240 --> 00:05:11.291 And it's not just another x-ray without a face. 68 00:05:11.291 --> 00:05:13.368 And so, that's a classic and 69 00:05:13.368 --> 00:05:18.358 a wonderful example of being able to create meaning by making extremely 70 00:05:18.358 --> 00:05:23.780 salient to the employee why their work matters, in this case, the patient. 71 00:05:24.790 --> 00:05:29.616 A very similar example, Adam and Dave Hoffman did is when they looked 72 00:05:29.616 --> 00:05:34.371 at healthcare professionals, healthcare workers in hospitals. 73 00:05:34.371 --> 00:05:36.413 One of the leading reasons for 74 00:05:36.413 --> 00:05:41.310 getting sick when you're in the hospital are infections. 75 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:45.917 And one of the primary causes of infections when you're in the hospital 76 00:05:45.917 --> 00:05:50.834 is healthcare professionals not washing their hands as effectively as they 77 00:05:50.834 --> 00:05:55.465 should after going to the restroom or after other procedures and so on. 78 00:05:55.465 --> 00:06:00.327 And, there's some data that suggest that north of one-third of healthcare 79 00:06:00.327 --> 00:06:04.590 professionals do not wash their hands as effectively as they need to 80 00:06:04.590 --> 00:06:08.510 to stop the spread of infections and the like. 81 00:06:08.510 --> 00:06:12.938 And so, Adam and his colleagues got really interested in trying to understand, 82 00:06:12.938 --> 00:06:16.390 could they use meaning and this intrinsic motivation to create 83 00:06:16.390 --> 00:06:20.841 a sense of significance and importance to the actual practice of washing hands? 84 00:06:20.841 --> 00:06:26.839 And so, if you reflect on when you walk into a restroom, a public restroom, often, 85 00:06:26.839 --> 00:06:32.302 there's a sign on the wall that reminds you that you should wash your hands. 86 00:06:32.302 --> 00:06:36.763 And Adam and his colleagues played with the language of that sign. 87 00:06:36.763 --> 00:06:41.107 In some of the bathrooms, they had the sign relate to 88 00:06:41.107 --> 00:06:46.160 the consequences of washing your hands for you, yourself. 89 00:06:47.210 --> 00:06:51.778 And then, in the other bathrooms, they had the signs talk about 90 00:06:51.778 --> 00:06:56.108 the consequences of the hand washing practice to patients. 91 00:06:56.108 --> 00:07:00.800 Now remember, why do healthcare workers, many of them, go into this occupation? 92 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:02.778 They wanna make a difference for patients. 93 00:07:02.778 --> 00:07:05.996 That's one of the common intrinsic motives, 94 00:07:05.996 --> 00:07:11.560 values that really drives people to engage in these professions. 95 00:07:11.560 --> 00:07:14.045 And so, imagine these two different bathrooms, 96 00:07:14.045 --> 00:07:18.201 one focusing on the consequences of hand washing for you, the healthcare worker. 97 00:07:18.201 --> 00:07:21.963 The other bathroom's focusing on the consequences of hand washing for 98 00:07:21.963 --> 00:07:23.350 the patient. 99 00:07:23.350 --> 00:07:28.149 Hypothesis being that we're gonna see greater meaning, greater relevance, thus, 100 00:07:28.149 --> 00:07:29.464 greater engagement and 101 00:07:29.464 --> 00:07:33.475 motivation in the bathrooms where it's focused on the consequences for 102 00:07:33.475 --> 00:07:37.570 the patient less so for the healthcare professional in those bathrooms. 103 00:07:37.570 --> 00:07:41.424 And that's exactly what they found. 104 00:07:41.424 --> 00:07:47.207 What we're seeing here on the y axis is, the metric is usage of soap, 105 00:07:47.207 --> 00:07:53.815 if you want to assess how often, or how effectively people are washing hands. 106 00:07:53.815 --> 00:07:58.213 One of the metrics you can use without being too invasive is actually 107 00:07:58.213 --> 00:08:01.920 measuring how much soap is used in the restrooms. 108 00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:06.079 And so prior to changing the signs, they did a pretest and 109 00:08:06.079 --> 00:08:10.337 that measured the baseline, if you will, of soap usage. 110 00:08:10.337 --> 00:08:13.747 And then, they implemented a control condition, no sign and 111 00:08:13.747 --> 00:08:18.537 then either signs focusing on the personal consequences to the healthcare worker, or 112 00:08:18.537 --> 00:08:23.050 signs in different bathrooms focused on the consequences for the patient. 113 00:08:23.050 --> 00:08:26.925 And then, measured the soap usage over the course of time. 114 00:08:26.925 --> 00:08:31.516 And consistent with what you might expect, they found that the soap usage in 115 00:08:31.516 --> 00:08:36.249 the bathrooms that were really focused on patients, was dramatically higher 116 00:08:36.249 --> 00:08:40.911 than the soap usage in bathrooms that focused on the personal consequences of 117 00:08:40.911 --> 00:08:45.310 the control condition where there was no change in the sign. 118 00:08:45.310 --> 00:08:51.057 And so again, this is a classic example and a wonderful illustration 119 00:08:51.057 --> 00:08:56.506 of how you can outsource motivation by talking about the impact of 120 00:08:56.506 --> 00:09:01.559 individuals' work on beneficiaries such as the customer, 121 00:09:01.559 --> 00:09:05.622 the patient, whatever the context you're in, 122 00:09:05.622 --> 00:09:09.606 you always have some beneficiary of your work. 123 00:09:09.606 --> 00:09:13.120 If you're in a restaurant, it's the people eating at the restaurant. 124 00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:15.193 If you're in a hospital, it's the patients. 125 00:09:15.193 --> 00:09:20.240 If you are Volvo, for example, and you're building cars, what is Volvo known for? 126 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:20.923 Safety. 127 00:09:20.923 --> 00:09:26.004 So, if you wanna motivate people on the assembly line to perform 128 00:09:26.004 --> 00:09:31.370 with a greater diligence and motivation, you bring in people whose 129 00:09:31.370 --> 00:09:37.136 lives have been saved by Volvo automobiles when they were in accidents. 130 00:09:37.136 --> 00:09:40.487 Give their work meaning. Give their work relevance, and 131 00:09:40.487 --> 00:09:44.930 you will see an increase in motivation. 132 00:09:44.930 --> 00:09:49.560 No matter what field, no matter what occupation you're in, there's 133 00:09:49.560 --> 00:09:54.975 an opportunity here to outsource this intrinsic motivation to that beneficiary. 134 00:09:54.975 --> 00:09:56.220 At the same time, 135 00:09:56.220 --> 00:10:01.960 I want you to understand that this notion of meaning can be a double-edged sword. 136 00:10:01.960 --> 00:10:05.011 There are both pros and cons, benefits and costs. 137 00:10:05.011 --> 00:10:10.784 One of my favorite studies to this end was conducted by a good friend 138 00:10:10.784 --> 00:10:15.850 Stuart Bunderson and Thompson, published in 2009. 139 00:10:15.850 --> 00:10:21.492 And they were really interested in the impact that meaning and 140 00:10:21.492 --> 00:10:24.973 meaningful work has on the employee. 141 00:10:24.973 --> 00:10:27.386 And they focused on zookeepers. 142 00:10:27.386 --> 00:10:32.042 Zookeepers are people who generally go into this occupation 143 00:10:32.042 --> 00:10:36.250 because they're very passionate about the animals. 144 00:10:36.250 --> 00:10:41.120 They really want to contribute to the well-being of these animals. 145 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:42.536 But they're underpaid. 146 00:10:42.536 --> 00:10:44.400 They get paid very little. 147 00:10:44.400 --> 00:10:48.525 The hours are really difficult, really unpredictable. 148 00:10:48.525 --> 00:10:50.440 The work conditions are tough. 149 00:10:51.720 --> 00:10:57.061 And so by any sort of job standard, this is a tough occupation. 150 00:10:57.061 --> 00:11:02.108 And so, what Bunderson and Thompson did is they interviewed a number 151 00:11:02.108 --> 00:11:06.806 of these zookeepers, asking them why they got into the field and 152 00:11:06.806 --> 00:11:13.000 trying to understand why these zookeepers saw this occupation as really a calling. 153 00:11:14.220 --> 00:11:18.081 Really a calling, an occupation that was filled with meaning. 154 00:11:18.081 --> 00:11:21.500 And what they found was this double-edged sword. 155 00:11:21.500 --> 00:11:27.009 That on the benefits, when you're in these occupations that you see as a calling, 156 00:11:27.009 --> 00:11:31.810 this deep sense of purpose and meaning, you have that sense of purpose, 157 00:11:31.810 --> 00:11:37.422 you see the significance and you're highly committed to the occupation of the job. 158 00:11:37.422 --> 00:11:39.400 You go above and beyond. 159 00:11:39.400 --> 00:11:44.264 That motivation that we're often trying to encourage people to contribute 160 00:11:44.264 --> 00:11:46.548 to our teams, our organizations. 161 00:11:46.548 --> 00:11:50.862 But at the same time, whether this is for yourself or for your employees, 162 00:11:50.862 --> 00:11:54.716 you need to understand that there's another side to that story. 163 00:11:54.716 --> 00:12:01.081 In these zookeepers, for example, they saw the occupation as a moral duty. 164 00:12:01.081 --> 00:12:06.389 They have a hard time leaving the occupation because they see their 165 00:12:06.389 --> 00:12:11.888 contributions to these animals as almost having a moral component, 166 00:12:11.888 --> 00:12:17.980 where they can't get out of this occupation, even if they want to. 167 00:12:17.980 --> 00:12:21.688 Because it's their moral obligation, 168 00:12:21.688 --> 00:12:26.823 their moral responsibility to stay in and contribute. 169 00:12:26.823 --> 00:12:30.302 They're willing to sacrifice pay, personal time, 170 00:12:30.302 --> 00:12:34.780 all of the comforts of life, and they feel almost trapped. 171 00:12:34.780 --> 00:12:39.224 And so, there's a lot of what's today called these high intensity, 172 00:12:39.224 --> 00:12:41.420 high commitment organizations. 173 00:12:41.420 --> 00:12:45.998 Often time, professional service firms, the consulting firms, 174 00:12:45.998 --> 00:12:50.979 the investment banking firms, are these organizations that people will 175 00:12:50.979 --> 00:12:56.020 commit to even though they don't really like the work as much. 176 00:12:56.020 --> 00:12:57.891 And they have a hard time getting out. 177 00:12:57.891 --> 00:12:59.890 This, here, is something different. 178 00:12:59.890 --> 00:13:04.852 This, here, is I have this deep sense of purpose, this deep sense of meaning, 179 00:13:04.852 --> 00:13:09.519 and as a result, I can't get out, even though the conditions are such that 180 00:13:09.519 --> 00:13:13.178 there's a big cost to me personally and professionally. 181 00:13:13.178 --> 00:13:13.771 And so again, 182 00:13:13.771 --> 00:13:17.550 just understand there's a double-edged sword to this concept of meaning. 183 00:13:17.550 --> 00:13:21.494 But at the end of the day, if you're looking for higher commitment, 184 00:13:21.494 --> 00:13:26.662 higher motivation, higher engagement among your team members, among your employees, 185 00:13:26.662 --> 00:13:30.878 the extent to which you can create a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, 186 00:13:30.878 --> 00:13:34.981 you will in return get that higher level of motivation and engagement. 187 00:13:34.981 --> 00:13:38.804 And one really effective way to do that is to focus on the relevance, 188 00:13:38.804 --> 00:13:42.570 the importance of the tasks, the work they're doing. 189 00:13:42.570 --> 00:13:47.408 Help your employees understand why what they're doing at work matters.