Whether manager or leader, project manager or workpackage manager, there always comes a time to motivate people, even as they may be self-motivational in some circumstances. That said, is there anything new to report about how to do this?
No, not really, but Mike Clayton has pulled together the top twenty motivators in a nice posting that I bookmarked on Delicious.com for convenient recall
(Digression: I also use Evernote.com for a lot of sundry notes and stuff -- and Evernote is good for that sort of thing on mobile -- but I like Delicious for its facility to search all the other bookmarks by other subscribers)
Among the twenty are these four that caught my eye. Clayton calls them transformational motivations:
11. Mastery - becoming competent and then truly excellent at something is highly motivating - 'autotelic' means intrinsically motivating.
12. Growth - ...but even as a master, who wants to stand still - the opportunity to continue to grow is a motivator.
13. Purpose - but why do we want to master something and grow - we all need a purpose: to answer the BIG question: why?
14. Contribution - for some people the need to contribute is their purpose and for others it is a motivator that supplements their primary needs.
Of course, many have written about #11, Mastery. This is close to what celebrated author Malcom Gladwell (and others) have described as the 10,000 hour rule: until you put 10,000 hours into mastery, you're really not an expert.
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