Unmaking myths about motivation

By VICKI JAYNE

Getting people to go that extra mile and eliciting the best of brain and brawn is an evergreen issue for management. But the "motivating manager" is a myth, says a visiting specialist in behavioural technology.

"You can never really motivate anyone - what you do is tap into the motivation they already have and make a connection with your objective," says Wyatt Woodsmall, president of US-based Advanced Behavioral Modeling.

You do that by knowing what makes people tick, he says.

"To be effective in motivating other people, you have to connect to values that are important to them. So you have to figure out what they care about, then present something to them in a way that either connects to what they want to have or to what they want to avoid."

What managers rate as the ultimate motivational challenge is not business relations, but how to get their own kids to clean their rooms, says Mr Woodsmall.

"Traditionally, you either bribe them or scare them. First thing to figure out is which they respond best to - bribes or punishment - which [approach] works for them, and then you have to follow through.

"People who are used to bribing don't like to punish and often can't do it congruently so it is effective."

The same applies in the workplace, he says.

People are going to do things not because you give them logic and reason but because they care about it.

"Inspiration has to do with understanding the other person well enough to see what their hot and cold buttons are and give them a 'ha-ha' experience - help them to make the connection between the external objective and what's going on inside them."

The tool Mr Woodsmall uses to make those connections is neuro-linguistic programming or NLP.

Often described as "software for the brain," it offers a system of behavioural and linguistic clues that helps you tune into someone else's wavelength - or in NLP-speak, to "calibrate your communication."

Apart from more obvious body language, these clues include "micro-movements" - particularly of the eyes - other facial or body patterns (head tilts, for example) and ways of expressing thoughts.

These represent a "primary representational system" or a tendency to think in specific sensory modes, the most common being sight, sound and touch.

It's a matter of learning to observe characteristics of communication that most people are not aware of, says Mr Woodsmall.

"NLP is largely a communications technology - it teaches you how to communicate more effectively and efficiently with less misunderstanding."

Four principles are involved, says Mr Woodsmall.

"You need to know your outcome; have enough sensory acuity to see if you're getting what you want; enough flexibility to vary your behaviour in order to gain rapport and optimise your communications; and you have to take action."

NLP dates back to enthusiastic early flowerings of the human potential movement in the mid-70s when it was developed by mathematician Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder as a study in human excellence.

The aim was to codify the way effective people did things so this learning could be transferred to others, giving them the "ability to be [their] best more often."

Recognised as a leading international expert in NLP, Mr Woodsmall now conducts training programmes in 17 countries and says that while there are cultural variations in communication behaviour, there is much more similarity than difference.

Business consultant Mark Klaasen says that apart from modelling, NLP can be used to re-pattern unhelpful thoughts and behaviours, helping people achieve more.

"We use it a lot in performance appraisal and in working with people on improving their performance, both in their engagement with others and their own self-talk - how they process their own thoughts and emotions."

Mr Klaasen, managing director of Communication Plus and a certified NLP trainer, runs regular courses for business - including Mr Woodsmall's four-day New Zealand workshop on leadership training and systems thinking.

Leaders need to take account of systems theory, as it has to do with how the various parts of an entity interact, says Mr Woodsmall.

"Businesses are complex systems and one of the big problems is that people are rewarded for optimising the performance of their particular unit. But if you want to optimise the whole system, you don't optimise the parts but the interaction between them. What matters is the output of the whole."

Achieving good outcomes also depends on combining human solutions with technological ones, says Mr Woodsmall.

"Business has generally done a good job in keeping up with machinery-based technology, but it has ignored the human technology because it's harder to quantify and it doesn't feel as comfortable and confident in dealing with it."

* vjayne@iconz.co.nz