Unlocking Motivation: Creating the Right Conditions for Employee Engagement (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: One of the questions that I've been asked the most over my entire career of training is, Joe, how do I motivate people? How do I get people to be fired up about their work and to show up every day with an energy and a zest for the work that we do? How many of you here struggle with that question? How do I motivate people? Well, a couple of years ago, I decided that I needed a better answer to this question. I wanted to take an answer to that question and integrate it into the leadership and management training I had been doing for years, because it's a question I heard over and over again at every level in health care. So I turned to a wide body of research on the psychology of motivation, and you know what I found out? The answer to the question, how do I motivate people, is really only two words. You want to know the answer? I said, do you want to know the answer? You can't. Stop trying. Boy, that feels good, doesn't it? Wait. Did I hear you right, Joe? Did you just tell me to stop trying to motivate people? Bask in the glory of sweet relief, people. That's got to feel good, right? You're off the hook a little bit. If you'd like to high five your neighbor, go ahead. You can do that. All right. The truth is, you cannot reach inside someone, flip a switch, and ignite a drive to perform that wasn't there previously. When you look at the wide body of research on motivation, and what it takes to move people to action, and what it takes to create an emotional and psychological commitment to the job, what you discover is that motivation isn't something you do to people. It's something people experience when they are in the right conditions. That is why, again, you are the most important people in health care, because it's up to you to create those conditions.