Creating a Motivating Environment

How to create a workplace where employees more productive and more involved.

Who should attend this workshop?

Managers who want to increase worker participation and passion
Trainers who want to increase participant involvement and learning
Facilitators who want to enhance team-building activities
Instructional Designers who want to add variety to training programs
Consultants who want to best relate to the needs of their clients

Overview of the program

Organizations around the world constantly talk about increasing morale and motivating workers to perform. They spend millions of dollars each year trying to find the best balance of fun, competitive events, rewards, and feedback as ways of increasing motivation in their work environments. Managers struggle with unhappy employees and disgruntled workers. They even devise new ways of motivating employees that are already “motivated.” Unfortunately, none of these attempts tend to work and they only make matters worse. These techniques focus on extrinsic motivation, which tend to work in the short term, but not the long term. This class takes a different approach. We use the principles of Intrinsic Motivation to provide participants with strategies and tactics for creating environments where employees will be able to find their own motivators, commit long-term working relationships, and become overall more satisfied on a day-to-day basis.

Objectives
(Benefits for individuals)

On completion of this workshop, participants will be able to demonstrate in role-play scenarios, case studies, and in simulated managerial situations how to

List positive employee motivators.
Explain the benefits of employee empowerment.
Differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Recognize the effect of command and control on motivation.
Restate the benefits of establishing interdepartmental organizational relationships.
Develop a plan for enhancing the quantity and quality of motivators in the environment.
Have conversations with employees that support their endeavors.
Summarize the concepts of employee motivation theory.

Benefits for the organization

Improve performance
Increase employee satisfaction
Involve workers
Increase ROI of training and meetings

Workshop content

Basic concepts

Definition of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
What motivation looks like on the job
Attributes of motivation
When to apply an intrinsic/extrinsic intervention
Common misconceptions about employee motivation

How to design a motivational intervention

Pitfall to avoid
Tips for designing an intervention
Some examples

Key Concepts

The pitfalls of rewards, recognition, and punishment (Should you ever use them?)
Understanding how consequences affect motivation
What are autonomy, competence, and relatedness and how do they drive an individual's motivation?
A continuum of motivation and where members of your team or class fit on it
The short term benefits and the longterm detriments of extrinisic motivators
The short term detriments and the longterm benefits of intrinsic motivators

Matt's expertise with creating a motivating environment

After graduating from college, Matt taught martial arts at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. His students ranged from vocalists to percussionists, from pianists to double bass players, etc. Given youth, eternal optimism, and the military-like frame of reference from his own martial arts training, Matt yelled, controlled, extorted, and threatened his students toward greatness. Unfortunately, he had no students... Through trial and error he discovered that his students had to choose to learn rather than be forced. He learned that, in order to have any level of motivation for martial arts, they had to believe they were competent at what they were doing. And he learned to engage them and build a community, valuing their expertise and personalities. The program finally flourished.

Matt has had the opportunity to study as a graduate student with two of the greatest psychologists doing motivation research: Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. He has published several articles applying Deci and Ryan's research to the work environment and has taught workshops on the subject nationally. As a consultant, Matt has worked with countless Fortune 500 companies to improve their work productivity using intrinsic motivation interventions.