Hi everybody. It's been a while. I've been busy. I know, I know there's no excuse, but it's the truth. Anyway, I have been busy with all my classes, the preparations, the assignments and the exams. And I also have other tasks (??) to be completed. On top of that, there are the over-the-weekend motivational courses, workshops, seminars to be attended every once in a while.
Today, I just wanted to raise some issues on motivation. By definition, motivation is the process of arousing and sustaining goal-directed behavior. So, it should provide us the excitement to improve, to make us want to achieve something. But, sometimes organizations make mistakes by giving too many motivational talks or even workshops. The organizations can also make things worse by being selective on their participants. By not including all the members of a certain department in the motivational talks, organizations instead create dissatisfactions and stress. Although in the beginning people can be excited, those who are selected again and again for similar courses would start to question the real motives behind their selection. Are they chosen because they have the potentials to be the top performers or are they actually selected because they are not performing? And they also begin to wonder why certain members of the organization whom they view as non-active are not sent to such courses. Isn't one of the objectives of giving motivation is to make people more productive? Perhaps if the organizations would offer the non-active members an equal chance of attending the motivational talks, they might respond in a positive way. In addition, the act will also create a certain kind of prestige to these motivational talks.
As an advocate of Organizational Behavior study, I understand that motivation is very important to the successful of every organization. But, too many of these talks might in the end make the members de-motivated. Think about it.
3 comments:
This will be my first comment on your blog... I agree with your statement in principal. However For those who being selected over and over again, it probally a way of the company trying to tell the staff, Buckle up!. This could be imporvised a little bit if the management takes the intiative to inform the staff of their intent in further developing the staffs. By this way the staff is also clear why he is being selected for these courses over an over again. No doubt when then the intention is clear it could start to benefit the staff. Wouldn't you agree?
I agree with you 100%. Still, it became de-motivating when the ones sent to all these motivational courses were the ones that were already motivated. The staffs who were not performing were not sent. When asked about the reasons, there were none. There should be a very clear line established between these two groups, don't you think so?
Yes for me this is simply about the capabilities of the manager to make conscious and unbiased decisions. I guess this is where the slide deck that you created from your research on how we change the Boss's behavior comes to play...:)
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