Nutshell: Towards self-determination – autonomy, mastery and purpose

Daniel Pink’s Motivation 3.0 model builds on self-determination theory to show why intrinsic motivators are best suited to our knowledge economy.

In his 2009 book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink asks us to question one of the key tenets of needs or satisfaction-based theories of motivation: the idea that if we reward someone, we’ll get more of the behaviour we want and, if we punish someone, we’ll get less of the behaviour we don’t want. 

He quotes a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in which students were asked to carry out a series of challenges in return for three levels of financial reward, often a common form of incentivisation in organisations, even today.

In the study, these extrinsic (or external) rewards worked well where the tasks were mostly mechanical and required little thinking or initiative.

However, as soon as a task became more cognitively challenging, that link between motivation and reward was broken: in fact, the larger the reward, the poorer the performance.

It's an apparent paradox that even has its own name: the overjustification effect. And its basis? That being rewarded for something can actually decrease our intrinsic (internal) motivation to do it. The reward becomes the justification, even feeling a bit coercive, rather than our own internal drive to get it done – with predictable results.

It’s an effect that has made Pink question whether extrinsic motivation is fit for purpose in a world of work defined, for many, as a knowledge economy.

His sense is that, to fully understand motivation, those extrinsic rewards will only take us so far. There are other factors at play that we need to consider.

That’s why Pink believes that “carrot and stick” tools for motivation are “so last century”.

But what are those “other factors”?

Self-determination theory

Enter two American psychologists, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci.

In the 1980s, Ryan and Deci developed their self-determination theory (SDT) of motivation, the first big challenge to the dominant belief that the best way to get human beings to perform tasks is to reinforce their behaviour with rewards.  

Underlying SDT are two key ideas:

• People’s need for growth is essential to their sense of self.

• Autonomous (intrinsic) motivation is what really drives us.

Specifically, we are motivated to grow and change by three innate and universal psychological needs:  

Autonomy
We need to feel in control of our own behaviours and goals.  

Competence
We need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills. When we feel on top of our game, or are getting to grips with something new, we’re more likely to behave or act in ways that help us to achieve our goals.  

Connection or relatedness
We need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment to other people.

For Ryan and Deci, creating the conditions that satisfy these basic needs is a key predictor of positive mental health. We tend to be happier when they we are intrinsically motivated to achieve a goal. It makes us feel more responsible for the outcomes and to focus our time on what we really want to do.  

Daniel Pink: Motivation 3.0

SDT underpins Pink’s Motivation 3.0 model. 

For Pink, human motivation was originally about the struggle for survival (Motivation 1.0). As the world became more complex, a second driver was identified: the desire to earn rewards and avoid punishment. Pink calls this Motivation 2.0.  

The problem is that these carrot and stick motivators are increasingly out of step with the modern world of work.

They have their place, of course. Pink is clear that we need to get our “baseline rewards” (hygiene factors like basic terms and conditions of employment) under control before we have a hope of more positive motivation. And even then, as the MIT study showed, they can work well for more routine tasks.

But, on their own, or if we rely on them in the wrong contexts, they can lead to a range of unintended consequences Pink identifies as his “seven deadly flaws”: 

1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation: that over-justification effect again.

2. They can diminish performance.

3. They can crush creativity: “rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus” rather than encouraging us to lift our heads and think more widely.

4. They can crowd out good behaviour such as wanting to complete a task on its own merits or for the greater good.

5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts and unethical behaviour: just think of those bankers and the 2008 financial crisis.

6. They can become addictive, offering “a delicious jolt of pleasure at first” – but one that comes to requires “even larger and more frequent doses”.

7. They can foster short-term thinking: if we’re only focused on rewards, we are more likely to make decisions that help us to achieve those rewards, which might not necessarily be in the best long-term interests of our organisations.

Rather than just focussing on the extrinsic, we need to go further. We need an upgrade to acknowledge other factors that influence motivation.

Motivation 3.0 introduces us to three factors that, together, create the right conditions for motivation:

• autonomy

• mastery

• purpose

   

Autonomy

We need to feel that we have a degree of control, of agency, over our work to be most productive. This helps us to retain interest and drives motivation because we feel more like collaborators than cogs.

As leaders, we should, where possible, give people some say over what they do and when they do it. We need to provide parameters for work that allow some creative freedom while still moving us towards our goals. This is an important consideration when we delegate tasks. It can also help to think outside the box.  

For example, the sandwich and coffee chain, Pret, encourages its employees to indulge in “random acts of kindness”, offering a free cup of coffee to whoever they feel needs or deserves it. The decision about who gets a freebie is left to individual team members, making it a win-win: good for customer relationships and empowering for Pret’s people.

Pink reminds us that self-direction like this is a key to motivation. He gives the example of Australian software company, Atlassian. In a version of the (in)famous Google 20% time, the company encourages its developers to spend a day working on whatever they want once a quarter. These “FedEx” Days (so named because of the need to deliver something overnight) have resulted in innovations and fixes that might not otherwise have been developed.

Mastery

The basis of Pink’s second factor is simple: we tend to be more motivated to tackle and complete tasks we can do well or that interest and develop us.

The level of challenge is also important: too hard, and we’re likely to give up; too easy and we can become bored and demotivated. Mastery is about becoming better at something that matters. It requires not just compliance (doing something because we’re told) but engagement (doing something because we want to).

 Dan Ariely’s research suggests that that the harder a project is, the prouder we feel of it. He gives the example of the IKEA effect. We might curse those flatpacks, but once we’ve built the furniture ourselves, we value it more.

Finding the right balance between stretch and overwhelm is a key leadership judgement.

It helps if we have the right people doing the right things, with the skills, experience and conditions to tackle new things, even if they are a challenge. Giving people opportunities to learn and improve with the right support is motivational; setting people up for failure is not.

Purpose

When we are clear about what an organisation is looking to do, and we share that purpose, we’re more likely to be motivated.

Pink believes that when the profit motive “becomes unmoored from the purpose motive”, people are more likely to be demotivated.  

Examples of the motivational power of purpose abound. When, in the 1960s, John F Kennedy asked a cleaner at NASA what he was doing, the cleaner replied “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

Even if this is a myth, it’s a powerful example of purpose in action.

Like others before him, Pink’s Motivation 3.0 model encourages us to take a wider view of what motivates us rather than focusing solely on extrinsic factors.

If we can build autonomy, mastery and purpose into our planning and processes, if we can identify what drives our people and provide the conditions they need to succeed, we’re well on the way to meeting people’s intrinsic needs - and motivating them to do and be their best.

Test your understanding

• Explain why Daniel Pink thinks that “carrot and stick” tools for motivation are “so last century”.

• Identify three of Pink’s “seven deadly flaws” of extrinsic motivation.

What does it mean for you?

• Review and reflect on Daniel Pink’s three Motivation 3.0 factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose. To what extent do these conditions already exist in your team. What else could you do to build a more motivating environment?