Motivate People by Encouraging Them to Make Choices
Motivation can be challenging, but research shows that there is one important factor that can be extremely effective in developing motivation: decision making. As psychologist and writer Angela Duckworth explains, this is why it’s important to offer people choices when you’re trying to motivate them.
Maybe you’re trying to motivate your coworker, friend or kids – you should offer them a choice. Duckworth cites a study published in Advances in Positive Organizational Psychology that encouraged workers to look for ways to make their current job more interesting and meaningful. The study concluded:
Job creation makes an important contribution to this area, seeing employees not as passive recipients of job characteristics, but as active participants in shaping the meaning of their work and themselves.
At MarketWatch, Duckworth discussed how to use the findings to motivate others. Children, for example:
Sounds a little naive and pathetic. But after a few weeks, people were more satisfied with their jobs thanks to this tiny intervention, and their managers said they were doing better … Children need a choice. There is a really amazing theory of human motivation – all people want three things. One must be competent, one must belong, and one must be free, that is, have a choice, not to be told what to do, but to choose what to do. Children will never fully develop a passion for something unless at some point and in some way they feel that they have chosen what they are doing, and not that it was chosen for them.
This idea goes hand in hand with what I learned from Charles Duhigg’s new book . He cites a 2012 study from the journal Problems and Perspectives in Management, which found that people who believe their actions influence their destiny tend to have higher levels of motivation. As Duhigg pointed out, if you can associate tasks with choices you care about and then make those choices meaningful, that will go a long way in motivating you to complete them.
For more information on this, check out Duckworth’s full interview at the link below.
Do This To Help Your Children Develop Firmness | MarketWatch