Using stick or carrot?
Think about the best way of motivating people. Is tempting people by a variety of attractive rewards and displaying them the visions of the bright future an efficient method? Are the threats of inevitable punishment more motivating? And what motivates you most?
Some people will say that it’s better for them when they imagine the benefits of some action, the others that only when they are under compulsion they get down to work and they do it effectively. Behaviour of others depends on the situation.
It all depends on the place on the scale of towards-away from in which the person is in a given situation. When you learn another person’s values and criteria, the determination of the course of his/her motivation may prove helpful for you. Does the training of communication methods serve as a way of attracting new clients or of avoiding conflicts between chief and collaborators?
It’s simple, you just have to listen carefully how people determine their goals. What do they want to achieve? (Towards) Do they tell what they want to avoid? (Away from)
- This order will help us increase the sale and raise salaries
- This order will help us to avoid the crisis and the being ousted by the competitors.
- In the future I would like to have a wonderful house and to earn a lot of money.
- In the future I wouldn’t like to live in this quarter and to be unemployed.
I think that these examples are sufficient and that you understand everything :)
Which of these two motivation directions is better?
It is impossible to state this unequivocally because as I told you there are no better and worse programs. It can be assumed that Towards will be more useful in many situations since in this case we are focused on positive matters, on goals and not on obstacles. On the other hand, the ability to perceive the potential obstacles and difficulties is also indispensable.
When you know in which place on the scale Towards-Away from the person that interest you is, you can effectively use this to motivate him/her to action.
Perhaps in the future you happen to use exclusively either rewards or the punishment as we tend to make use of methods which have beneficial effects in our case. If you have the Towards program it could have seemed to you that people are more motivated by rewards.
Now, you know that the motivation of a person depends on his/her metaprograms. Do your best to adjust in a proper way.
It could be useful for you if you organise and manage teams of people. If you for example organise a team composed of “towards” people they may not notice some serious problem.
On the other hand if people are directed to avoiding, they may have problems with getting down to work unless the threat of serious defeat occurs. That’s why the best solution is to mix these two groups together (recall yourself the Walt Disney's Strategy)