Ellen Besso Coaching

Does motivation come from inside  or outside ourselves? We’re not all the same when it comes to this.

Intrinsic motivation, or the motivation from inside, refers to the impetus to do something from an interest in and/or enjoyment of the task. It’s something that lives inside us. When we work from intrinsic motivation, we believe that we can be effective in reaching our desired goals (i.e. the results are not determined by luck).

Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes from outside the individual. Rewards like money and grades, coercion and threat of punishment are thought to be extrinsic motivators, so is a crowd cheering on athletes.

Researchers have found that too much reliance on outside rewards can lead to reduced intrinsic motivation. In one study children who were rewarded with a ribbon and a gold star for drawing pictures spent less time playing creatively than the children who were assigned an unexpected reward or no reward.

Daniel Pink, a one-time speech writer for Al Gore, explains this in his book, Drive; he says that while we need a baseline of extrinsic motivation on the job, a threshold amount, such as a salary, after that we fare best when our work allows us to self-motivate, from within. This is particularly true for creative work.

Fast results can be delivered by those who respond enthusiastically to external rewards, but intrinsically motivated people achieve more in the long run, Pink goes on to say. This is  because ultimately the “carrots and the sticks” have what he calls “The Seven Deadly Flaws”: they can extinguish our intrinsic motivation; diminish performance; crush creativity; crowd out good behavior, encourage cheating, shortcuts and unethical behavior; become addictive and can foster short-term thinking.

When I worked in a toxic, unstable environment I didn’t have the flexibility to be creative in the ways I wanted and needed to be. I enjoyed working with my clients, but the uncertain funding, the scare mongering way the boss talked about this, and the decreasing options (e.g. we were strongly discouraged from using a particular technique we’d been trained in, something that should have been our professional call), meant that the job had a low level of intrinsic reward, the reward I needed. That’s why I’m a good candidate for self-employment. Every day is a new day of self-propelled productivity when I’m running my own business.

We do, however, need some balance between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. If I am receiving no external rewards for working in my business, such as sales of products and services, and positive feedback from clients, that makes it harder to maintain the internal motivation.

Are you intrinsically or extrinsically motivated?

Are you satisfied with the balance in your life?

If not, what steps can you take to change it?

You may enjoy some of Pink’s articles. Here’s an interesting elevator versus stairs study.

Other Pink blog articles.

The article Enhance Learning with Technology posted on a teachers’ site called enhancelearning.ca, talks about motivating children.