Drive by Daniel Pink
“Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.”
3 Main Messages:
Control leads to compliance, autonomy leads to engagement
Most people are motivated by purpose more than money
People want to feel trusted and respected more than rewarded
In August 2021 Reese Witherspoon sold her company ‘Happy Place’ for an estimated $900 million. Five years prior to this she set up the company, which has produced celebrated shows such as Big Little Lies and The Morning Show, and Reese’s Book Club, as part of her “mission to empower women and the people who celebrate them”.
We may ask ourselves what we would now do, if we were in Witherspoon’s position - perhaps take our many millions and move to the Bahamas? But since then she has continued to have great success directing Where the Crawdads Sing and Daisy Jones and the Six, amongst many other projects. I imagine we will be seeing more, not less of Witherspoon, who is clearly not driven by money, but by something else.
The study into ‘something else’ is at the very core of Daniel H. Pink’s book which considers what drives us and how we can motivate and inspire others. He cleverly explores why intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic rewards and where we are going wrong in schools and in the workplace. Forbes Magazine even went so far as to suggest that we would “... do well by kicking out pay consultants and reading Pink’s conclusions instead.”
Certainly Pink’s conclusions made me re-evaluate my previous approaches to rewards systems in school and professional development. No-one goes into the teaching profession to become rich. While job security, a familiar environment and summer holidays may be the pull for some, the majority of teachers I know are looking to make a difference. They are driven by a desire to improve lives and opportunities for others. The research in Drive would suggest, therefore, that performance related pay, tightly regulated work hours and a lack of autonomy may be significantly contributing factors to the fact that 1 in 12 teachers left the profession in 2020 (Forbes).
When protesting about the lack of funding in the NHS recently, one Liverpool-based doctor responded to his 3% pay rise by saying “My duty, my goal in life is to look after the sick, and I would do it for less”. Drive suggests that once an employee’s basic financial needs are met, rewarding with pay can have the opposite effect intended, and that we should be seeking to maximise intrinsic, rather than external rewards, through allowing autonomy, mastery and purpose in the workplace.
I highly recommend that anyone working in education or business leadership reads this book. Its findings and suggestions make you reconsider how you organise, lead and reward your employees and create interesting discussion points and actions to improve morale, expectations and outcomes. In other words it will teach you how to transform your workplace into a happy place, without a $900 million price tag!
