As business owners and business leaders, we all remember with great nostalgia the day we started our business or finally sat in the role where we felt like we could make a difference. We came in with our list of goals to accomplish and where it would take the business or department. Maybe you’re like me and even wrote down how it would feel to achieve all those things.
Now, fast forward a few years, and for some, that sense of purpose has faded into the monotony of day to day tasks and projects. That fire in our belly to make a difference stops being fed and that burning fire we came into the role with has become an ember looking for kindling to stay alive.
One of the reasons that fire stops burning within us is because that sense of purpose is gone and we are often being driven by what’s called extrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivators can be positive or negative, and usually stem from the choices of others. Examples of positive extrinsic motivators might include a pay raise or a one time bonus, whereas negative extrinsic motivators would be things like fear of failure or embarrassment.
This was Greg’s story. Greg was an engineer who had decided to start his own company. He and his partner started and grew a strong company, but over time Greg’s passion began to dwindle and he was wondering if this company that he loved and built was really providing him the fulfillment he wanted from it. Emotionally, Greg was running on fumes.
I started working with Greg to uncover what was happening. We discovered his initial motivations to make a difference in the world had been overshadowed by external motivators like “getting the job done” or “making sure that his employees had a place to work.” While these are important motivators for a business owner, they need to take 2nd place to more personal driving factors of fulfillment.
Greg’s situation highlights more deeply our discussion of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Intrinsic motivators focus on personal purpose, goals, and satisfaction. Extrinsic motivators focus on external factors that are outside of yourself. Greg’s biggest motivators were no longer his intrinsic motivation of purpose and fulfillment.
There’s nothing wrong with having extrinsic motivations. They’re an important part of running a business and your life, but once the basic needs are met, rewarding extrinsic motivators can actually lower their value and hurt performance. When we, as humans, are not trying to live based on our personal belief of purpose, it doesn’t matter how much we are rewarded because in the end, we’re still going to be spinning our wheels in hopes of finding some connection, drive, and purpose to bring about true motivation. Studies show that when you are rewarded for extrinsic motivations, over time, the ROI on that reward fades and actually can have negative consequences.
Greg’s story is not uncommon at any level in the workplace. Whether we’re individual contributors or sit in the seat of CEO, we all can have the external motivators overshadow the intrinsic ones. In a recent study, it’s been found that our work environments aren’t helping this issue, with over 80% of conversations focusing on task completion and whether or not the “job is getting done.”
As company leaders, we too often focus on those extrinsic motivators when hiring or promoting. We talk about salary, benefits, and job responsibilities without matching up those extrinsic motivators with the intrinsic motivations of the individual, which is a great recipe for creating turnover.
As emotionally aware leaders, we MUST take an active role in keeping ourselves and our team focused on intrinsic motivations to bring about success. We have a responsibility to be aware of what our motivations are and how our role is fulfilling those. We also have the responsibility of making sure our teams are connected to their own internal motivations.
In working with Greg, we really had to go back to the beginning and find out what were his intrinsic motivators. In the end, Greg developed a personal purpose statement that really resonated to his core. Simply put, his personal mission is to “bring people together to create beauty that they could not create alone.” After putting these pieces together, Greg became a whole new leader and because he was living and acting on his intrinsic needs and goals, his company flourished.
Like Greg, we need to spend the time connecting to what drives us and to help our team find what drives them. If we are unable to do that, we’ve created a great recipe for turnover within our organizations.
I’d like to leave you with three tips for helping your teams find purpose:
Create clarity around how each role contributes to the greater vision of the company. This helps limit the focus on extrinsic motivations like getting the job done, salary, etc., and brings the focus back to purpose for the individual and purpose for the company.
Talk about the why. Talk about the why until you’re blue in the face, and then talk about it more. When there is a clear understanding of the “why,” it helps every individual in the company have a clearer understanding of their purpose for being there and the purpose of their role within the company.
Help everyone in the company reflect more on how they, personally, want to bring value to those around them. As leaders, we have the opportunity to help those we lead understand what those needs are and how they can meet them in the workplace. By helping our teams uncover their internal motivations, we build better teams who are able to get more done.