The Motivation for Change - Essay Example

THE MOTIVATION FOR CHANGE Motivation is always about change and change is what most people go through at one time or another in their life. Change does not just happen to an individual as some people may think. Change is brought on by strong desire and this desire triggers an individuals motivation to do something differently in their lives. There are a variety of different changes that people make whether it is in their career, their life or in the circumstances they live within. These changes are motivated both by internal and external situations. These changes also motivate an individuals behaviour as to what they will do and how. Because change is important and must be dealt with in a persons life, it is important to take a look at theories of motivation. We also know that motivation may be internal but it also has external social factors. Motivation can be defined in many ways but it is basically why people do what they do. We talk about how people are motivated by food and shelter needs or because they want a good job or because they want to change their circumstances. Many people will note that self-esteem is built into the existence of motivation because you must have it in order to engage in many situations. As an example, when you achieve something you want to do it makes you feel good. At the beginning of this situation if you have a strong self-esteem, you may be motivated to do a task to get what you want. You might decide to go back to school in order to gain a degree that will move you forward in your profession. Self-esteem is important in this situation because it creates the catalyst that you will use to get to your goal. On the other side, once you have achieved your goal and received your degree, your self-esteem is at play because in feeling good, you are able to share your good fortune with others. Hence, self-esteem is very important to developing a solid place in life. No one has been able to define what motivates people though many have researched the issue. Researchers have found that there are many different ideas, thoughts or processes that motivate people and generally no two are alike. For this paper, we shall examine several theories and then examine how the theories work in social situations. Need Achievement Theories There are a variety of theories that tell us why and how an individual is motivated to change. A basic theory of motivation was Abraham Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. According to Maslow (as quoted in NetMBA, 2007) an individual has certain basic needs that must be fulfilled before they can begin to work on higher level needs. As an example, all people have a need for food, shelter and safety. When these needs are met, they can more fully participate in the social needs of finding friends and having relationships. However, if these needs are not met an individual will become motivated to satisfy these needs. Maslows Hierarchy of Needs is represented in this chart: Source: (Atherton, 2005) Another example using the chart above, says that once an individual has their social needs fulfilled they can move onto self-esteem issues. NetMBA suggests that because Maslows theory has no scientific proof and because there are so many variables that make it impossible to use (e.g. the levels can be repeated, higher level needs may be fulfilled before lower needs if there is a specific purpose) that there are other theories that may be more appropriate. Although this may be true, it is important to understand that what Maslow has suggested does play a part in everyones need to thrive. Some researches suggest that people are motivated because of a need to achieve. According to Ribideau (2005, p. 1) "motivation can be defined as the driving force behind all the actions of an individual." He goes on to say that emotions and ones ideas of achievement have something to do with how motivated they are to perform in certain situations. He also points out that there are different needs for motivation that include extrinsic, intrinsic, and physiological and achievement forms and that these will depend on an individuals need for success. In the need achievement theories the motive is usually for the individual to achieve success so that they can avoid failure. They will seek tasks that challenge them and at the same time bring them to the success they seek. Other individuals may do similar things to achieve a high level of performance so they do not fail. Covington (2001, p. 159-160) studied students in higher grades and found that they were motivated to learn because of something in the subject matter. They were not striving for grades necessarily. What they were more interested in is making sure that by studying they learned something about the subject matter and they did not fail in their studies. McClelland expanded on Maslows theory and created what he called the "Three Needs Theory" (cited in Braden, 2000, p. 1). In this he suggests that people are motivated by three needs which include: 1. Need for achievement - these individuals have a need to succeed because they have a set of standards that will not let them do anything except strive for success. 2. Need for power -- these individuals want to achieve power over others by making them "behave in a ways they would not have behaved otherwise." 3. Need for affiliation -- some people are motivated by the need to have friends and relationships. The challenge is that people have to define which aspect motivates them and then work through that motivation. McClellands research has been primarily used within leadership and management because it lends itself to answer questions about why people are motivated to work. Braden suggest that people who have these various needs are motivated differently as we would perceive to be true. As an example, a person who has developed high achievement needs may need rapid feedback about their performance, they like to feel they have control over their success and they seek out results all the time, whether they have a reason to do this or not (Braden, 2000, p. 1). This theory also suggests that people need to have a reason to be motivated to do something and without that motivation they do nothing. Attribution Theory Attribution theory incorporates many different theories into its concepts. It emphasizes that individuals can be motivated by how they feel about themselves when they are done. In otherwise, their behaviour is based on how they will feel in the end about doing the task. This theory also looks at the idea that the ways an individual will interpret success are due to how they feel about themselves and how they feel they have done the task. An important aspect of this is that people will interpret their environments in the way that it will best suit a positive self-image (Attribution Theory, n.d.). Attribution theory has been widely studied in education and leadership. Barry (2007) studied the different methods that music students bring to the study of music and how each individual will have a different experience based on how they perceive their need. She noted that although some children study music because they are attempting to accomplish a certain task, this is not the only way that children are motivated. Some children need the extrinsic motivation of a future performance or an attainable goal outside of school. Others need to know that what they are doing will have positive results later. Still others are looking for a way to intrinsically adopt the idea that they are "good enough" to perform or to even learn an instrument. These various aspects of motivation show that sometimes the social issue is bigger than the value that an individual places on a situation. As an example, a child may understand intrinsically that they will perform better in public (which is their extrinsic motivation because of all the fun and accolades they will get because of the performance) if they practice at home. However, practice may not be the strongest motivator for a child if they are too shy to perform. This study concluded that if children were to get the most out of their music study, they should also gain enjoyment while playing. Another study by Hall, N. C., Hladkyj, et. al (2004, p. 591 ) asserts that Attribution Theory suggests that the way students understand their successes and failures will have a direct correlation to how they continue to achieve or not achieve. They did a study to see whether they could influence how these students who performed poorly thought about their studies. Their hope was to change their perception so these students would be motivated to achieve more. In effect, they wanted to retrain the perception using Attribution Theory, using what they termed "attributional retraining" AR). Their project included 203 students who took an initial questionnaire that assessed their "elaborative learning" and then presented three different treatment conditions -- no AR, Writing AR or Aptitude AR. (Hall, Hladkyj, et. al, p. 591). What they found was that at the end of the year, many students had changed the way they perceived their success, they were feeling differently and they felt they had more control over their success. In summary, the Attribution Theory has been used to help individuals and groups create a more intrinsic reason for doing certain tasks. Studies have shown that individuals must have a reason for doing something. A few limitations of these studies say that it tells more about what is going wrong instead of how to correct the situation. Roberts (1992, p.22) states that …any comprehensive theory on motivation must integrate affect and cognitions and explain how they interact in order to affect the energy and direction of achievement behaviours. Now that we understand some of the basic theories, is there more to self-esteem and motivation? How do people continue throughout their days when they are not achieving their goals? Is there something more developed in them that makes them move forward anyway? If so, how is this tied to self-esteem? The answers to these questions are not necessarily easy to find because humans can be such complex creatures. Motivation and self-esteem Self-esteem does many things to motivation and it can help or hinder a persons thoughts as to what they will do in any situations. McCrea (2008) designed studies to take a look at the idea of self-handicapping. He was most interested in seeing whether studies on what he called, counterfactual thinking and how it works with self-esteem and motivation. Counterfactual thinking is, according to McCrea (p. 274), involves how a person things about a past event and how it could have been better or worse. He defines those thoughts that show how an event could have been better as "downward thoughts" and how they could have been better as "upward thoughts". What researchers have found out about this is that those upward thoughts are more connected with positive self-esteem because these are where greater effort and greater performance on the part of an individual lay. These thoughts can be so compelling that an individual will actually do things like lie in order to protect their self-esteem. He suggests that self-esteem will fluctuate based on an individuals perception of what is going on in their environment. As an example, some people use the attribution theory when they are considering what happened in certain situations. An individual who received a poor grade on a test may attribute the fact that this grade happened because they did not study. In this case the failure can lead to a lower self-esteem when the individual has attributed their failure to an intrinsic idea such as their lack of ability. On the other hand, when they use the extrinsic idea that it was because the test or the certain item on the test was too difficult, they are prone to have a better self-esteem largely because they were able to save their self-esteem by using this extrinsic factor (McCrea, p. 275). The extrinsic factor becomes what they define as a self-handicapping feature in that they find something that they can use (generally unconsciously) if they should fail. This is a very important addition to the study of motivation because it was found that people regularly use these self-handicapping ideas to protect their self-esteem by placing blame not on themselves, but on the self-handicap. This also shows that self-esteem is largely based on how an individual perceives themselves and the world around them. Sports have generally been an area where self-esteem and motivation have merge because in order to create a winning team, coaches must make sure that their team wants to win. Waldron (2007) explored The Model of Competence Motivation as a way to discuss how young girls in sports perceived their achievement and why it motivated them to take their place on a team. This model is similar to McCreas (2007) model because it is based on a similar premise. The Model of Competence Motivation is based on the idea that people experience successes and failures any time they start a program where mastery is necessary. When they have success in this area, their self-esteem improves because they feel pleasure. When they experience failure, this failure produces failure and anxiety which can make the individual avoid the mastery because they are afraid they will fail again. Another challenge is that parents or friends will often evaluate the individual and their performance. When the evaluation is positive, the individual continues to pursue the mastery but when it is not, the individual may avoid making another attempt. In order for a child to develop competence in motivation they need more positive reinforcement from parents than punishment as they work through mastery. As children grow cognitively, they are expected to internalize the competence standards that have been set by their parents, in order to create their own idea of what competence is and what it means to their self (Waldron, p. 521). As Waldron progressed through the study they conducted with 93 girls who participated in a Girls On Track (GOT) program, they found that because of the nature of this program, the girls continued to have a strong self-esteem. They concluded that the girls were given support and encouragement throughout the program and these were the reasons they were able to continue to succeed. When we look at motivation and how it works with humans it is clear that those who receive the attention and social support they need are able to complete tasks that allow them to succeed. This seems to say that there are both intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are at play for each individual. In some respects this method can also be associated with Reinforcement Theory in that an individual who is in a mastery situation could come to expect that they would always be reinforced. Adults and children seem to always be more motivated to perform a task when they are being reinforced for it. As an example, an employee who works hard and is praised by the boss or given a bonus will continue to work hard expecting that they will again be rewarded. Again, this is an extrinsic value that they have placed on their performance. When they are not rewarded in the same way, they may show a lack of self-esteem or choose one of the self-handicapping ways to preserve their self-esteem. In examining these various theories and ideals it seems that an individual must be intrinsically motivated to appreciate the extrinsic opportunities. Furnham, A., Petrides, K. et. al (2005) examined how personality traits influenced work values and what influence they had on motivation. They created questionnaires for several different types of workers. The results of the study showed that workers had both intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influenced how they saw work and that these factors were not related to personality traits. Conclusion This paper discussed earlier some of the challenges that are inherent in education and how motivation reacts within the walls of education. As nations move forward to embrace globalization education will be more important on many levels. Central to the movement forward will be finding employees who are intrinsically motivated to continue their employment in any company. The reason it will be important is because individuals who are motivated internally always have a way to make situations work positively for them. They do not rely on the extrinsic social motivators because these can change and often they will not have control over that change. As an example, some employees will work in a corporate setting and do very well. However, when the company decides to make changes they do not talk to the employees about this change. An individual who is internally motivated will have other ways to move forward if they are laid off. Those who have depended on the external social factors will have more difficulty finding something else because they relied on the job always being available. Students in college will also have to be intrinsically motivated because professors are not always predictable and students cannot always decide their grades unless they are internally motivated to do a good job. If they rely on the professor to give them external motivation, they may not receive this and therefore may not do well in their studies. Motivation is an interesting concept and it really seems to be a combination of both the internal factors and external social factors. Without this combination life does not seem to be as balanced. References Atherton, J.S. 2005. Learning and Teaching: Motivation. [WWW] UK: . [Accessed: 11 September 2008]. Covington, M. and Müeller, K. J. 2001. Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation: An approach/avoidance reformulation. Psychology Review. [ONLINE] 13 (2). pp. 157-176 Available: Academic Search Premier database. (4545912) [11 September 2008]. Furnham, A., Petrides, K. V., Tsaousis, I., Pappas, K., and D. Garrod. 2005. A Cross-Cultural Investigation Into the Relationships Between Personality Traits and Work Values. The Journal of Psychology [ONLINE] 139 (1)1 (January 1): 5-32. Available: ProQuest database (Document ID: 80536530) [Available: September 12, 2008]. Hall, N. C., Hladkyj, S., Perry, R. P., and Ruthig, .J. C. (2004). The Role of Attributional Retraining and Elaborative Learning in College Students Academic Development. The Journal of Social Psychology, [WWW] 144(6), 591-612. Available: ProQuest database. (Document ID: 737725411). [Accessed 10 September 2008]. McCrea, S. M. 2008. Self-handicapping, excuse making, and counterfactual thinking: Consequences for self-esteem and future motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, [ONLINE] 95(2), pp. 274-292. Available: PsycArticles database (AN: psp-95-2-274). [Accessed 12 September 2008]. NetMBA. Maslows hierarchy of needs. 2007. Internet Centre for Management and Business Administration. [WWW] Read More