How to Motivate Learners

Back in 2019, Work Life (an Atlassian online newsletter) asked Daniel Pink, author of “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” five questions about motivation, and how motivation makes the difference when it comes to human performance – including learning. Here are excerpts from that interview:

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Work Life: “Do you believe in the power of intrinsic motivation (and the limited efficacy of carrot-and-stick) as strongly today as you did 10 years ago when ‘Drive’ was published?”

Pink: “Absolutely. What we know is that the more traditional kind of if/then motivators are still pretty good for simple, algorithmic tasks. For short time horizons, those kinds of motivators are effective. But I am convinced even more that they’re really not effective for work that requires creativity, conceptual thinking, judgment, and discernment. Things that involve more interactions with people.”

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Work Life: “One of the ingredients for intrinsic motivation is autonomy. In order for autonomy to succeed in the workplace [or learning organization], individuals and teams need to be self-directed. Unfortunately, not everybody has a great capacity for self-direction (or maybe they did once, but it’s been conditioned out of them by schools, parents, etc.). How can…leaders help their people strengthen their self-direction muscle?”

Pink: “It’s a bit like learning a second language. If you acquire that language when you’re young, you’ll speak it fluently without an accent. If you acquire the language of self-direction early, you’ll operate on it fluently and without an accent. If you’re learning self-direction as a second language when you’re 25 or 30, it’s a little harder to learn and a little creakier, but people can still master it.”

“Human beings are, by their nature, self-directed. You can see it in kids. Are they curious? Are they autonomous? Of course they are. I think that’s true for every kid. Not being self-directed is learned behavior. Certain social structures and certain social expectations can cause that muscle to atrophy.”

“When it comes to strengthening the self-direction muscle, you have to meet people where they are. One simple thing leaders can do is to make fewer statements and ask more questions. ‘What do you think of this goal that we’re pursuing? How do you think we’re best able to meet these goals? What are the three things that should be your priorities in meeting these goals? Again, certain people will respond to that better than others. But it’s a good starting place.”

“Giving people feedback on how they’re doing can also promote self-direction. This is where the ideas of autonomy, mastery, and purpose, are not separate entities. They work together. It’s a dynamic system. Let’s take mastery. If mastery is getting better at something that matters, the way you get better is by getting feedback from those around you.”

“So if you’re a leader and you’re having regular conversations with your people, you’re giving them specific feedback on how to get better. You’re in what seems to be a constant conversation with them on what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, how they can get better. That will strengthen their self-direction muscle. A better sense of mastery will make them more self-directed.”

“The same thing is true with purpose. One reason people aren’t self-directed is that they’re not sure which direction to go. So, if a manager explains, ‘This is how your piece fits into the big picture of what we’re doing; here’s how your piece makes a difference in the world,’ that strengthens the self-direction muscle, too.”

“In terms of autonomy, leaders can choose to give their people a goal and then step back. You want to reach a point where you can say ‘Here’s the result we need. How you achieve it is up to you.’”

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Work Life: “…let’s round this out by talking about remote work, which is being driven underground in some places. On one hand, we have big-name companies [schools] making headlines because they’ve banned remote work, at least ‘officially’. But then other companies are embracing it to the point of being remote-only. How is this tug-of-war going to play out?”

Pink: “It’s part of a broader reckoning about many aspects of work, and sometimes we go too far to the extreme. For at least one of those big-name companies, banning remote work was an overreaction. They were struggling, and remote was not the culprit. But executives got frustrated and felt the need to change something.”

“Getting back to the principles of intrinsic motivation, with remote work, you do have autonomy. You have sovereignty over how you configure your day. That’s really important for doing good work and reducing your stress level. The trick is not to shortchange the other principles. With mastery, you have to make sure remote employees get feedback on how they’re doing so they can get better at their job. With purpose, you have to make sure they understand how their work is making a difference. It’s all possible, it just might be a bit harder in a remote environment.”

“To me, it’s a matter of each company [learning organization] finding the right balance. We shouldn’t frame remote work as a binary choice.”

Traditional schools struggle with providing autonomy, mastery, and purpose for their students. There is a way to teach these three very important skills to our young learners, but the traditional school is probably not the right vehicle to depend on.

If we are going to create a self-directed learner, then we need to create a new system of learning to accomplish that goal.

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. Til then. SVB