What happens on a "great" workday? It's not recognition, incentives, or even doing work that is deemed "important". A great day at work is making progress, according to a just completed multi-year study tracking the day-to-day activities, emotions, and motivational levels of hundreds of knowledge workers by Harvard professor Teresa A. Amabile and independent researcher Steven J. Kramer.
The study found that on days when workers have the sense they're making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they're spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest. Our experience is that this is true regardless of industry, sector, size of organization, or staff level - from senior managers to line workers.
This should be welcome news for leaders and managers because the key to motivation turns out to be largely within your control - the power to influence events that either facilitate or undermine progress. You can provide meaningful goals, encouragement, resources, and protect people from irrelevant demands. Further advice from the study includes:
Avoid impeding your team's progress by:
- changing goals autocratically
- being indecisive
- holding up resources
Pave the way for your employees' daily progress by:
- taking great care to clarify overall goals
- ensuring peoples' efforts are properly supported
- refraining from exerting time pressure so intense that minor glitches are perceived as crises rather than learning opportunities
- creating a culture of helpfulness
- celebrating progress, even the incremental sort.
2010 Copyright © Moore & Associates
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