What motivates a person to work ?
"Amar, if we implement this new performance evaluation system,
all the kids would be demotivated and frustrated. It has a
negative effect on morale!!!"....
Now this is something I have heard so many time in my life. And
maybe I get very frustrated just hearing the word
"frustrated" :-D
The first question to be answered here is what motivates a
person to work ?
According to many these are the reasons that motivate people to
work -
-> Work Environment and colleagues. ->Salary, status and
security ->Achievement ->Recognition for achievement ->Interest
in the particular assignment ->Growth and advancement to higher
levels
So now the simple question is that even if we have all the above
at your work place we get so "frustrated and demotivated".
Here's what I hear about it.
->Repetition in the job we do i.e. we are do the same thing
over and over again
->Lack of appreciation
->Lack of an environment to learn new technologies
Here are some situations that could happen to anyone of us.
Consider that your Mom is running a high temperature and you
take her to the doctor. When you reach there the doctor says
that "This is the 125th fever case this month, I refuse to treat
your mom... Nobody appreciates my job, I will not get a lot of
money for treating you and this is repetitive work." If this
leads to something fatal, I am sure you would not be very happy
with what the doctor did. But if the doctor thinks like us, he
has all the right in the world to be frustrated and demotivated.
Many of us think that doctors are supposed to be more services
oriented. Doctors needs to understand their "Job
Responsibility". Hence, they have to look after their
patients under all circumstances.
Let's move the story further. The doctor was a nice and
understanding man. You went to the nearest drug store to buy the
medicines the doctor prescribed. The guy there is really
frustrated because he does not get any appreciation for his
work. He feels that he is sick and tired of giving the same
medicines for fever so instead of paracetamol he gives rat
poison. You did not notice it and gave the medicine to you
mom... Let's not even think what happened next... :(
Let's take another example where you are sending your mom on a
flight to London. The aircrafts maintenance engineer is
"frustrated" with his job because all he has to do is handle the
same Boeing 737, 747 and Airbus 320. His dream job was to work
in NASA, but unfortunately NASA had other dreams... The
maintenance engineer feels that there is nothing challenging in
his job and it was repetitive. So on this day he decides not to
check the aircraft well and the flight crashes. I am sure you
would not like him..
So now I again I wonder what is the most important aspect that
should motivate us to work. Well here's what I could figure out.
The first and the most important aspect is to understand our
responsibility. We must understand that for each job there
is a customer and he comes to us because he needs us. We have to
cater to this need, else this job would not exist in the first
place.
For every profession there is a role and responsibility and we
have to live up to it. I remember reading an interview of Shah Rukh Khan , the famous Indian actor, on Reader's
Digest once. Here's one question which drives home my point very
well.
RD: Besides the fame, what pleasure do you get out of
acting?
SRK: For 21/2 hours I am able to control people's
emotions in the sense that I lend a smile to their faces and
take them away from everyday problems. That's a great
achievement. The rest is peripheral--the labels attached to me,
King Khan, Badshah of Bollywood, XYZ...
For somebody in the entertainment business it is essential that
he understands that people come and watch his movies to forget
their tensions and worries in life and they want to go back
happy. Money, fame, new challenges is secondary. I think Shah
Rukh understands his responsibility. When he works he works from
his heart. He does not work with the intention of getting an
award or any recognition. And I guess that is the reason he is
King Khan...
A distraught man approached the Zen master. "Please, Master,
I feel lost, desperate. I don't know who I am. Please, show me
my true self!" But the teacher just looked away without
responding. The man began to plead and beg, but still the master
gave no reply. Finally giving up in frustration, the man turned
to leave. At that moment the master called out to him by name.
"Yes!" the man said as he spun back around. "There it
is!" exclaimed the master.
Sometimes we need time to understand our true responsibility. We
must be patient and it is essential that we fall in love with
our work.