Motivating Achievement

Do you ever… get involved in something so deeply that nothing else seems to matter, and you lose track of time? Please describe a situation where this has occurred in your life in 2-3 sentences. 1 in 5 Americans said this happens to them often, as much as several times a day. Only 15% of people said that this never happens.

What is flow? Flow – a completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of time and self, resulting from optimal engagement of one’s skills. Flow is reached by intrinsic motivation. You love what you are doing and you are “in the zone” when you are in flow.

For the most part, people are happy not because of what they do, but because of how they do it. Happy people tend to immerse themselves in their daily activities and are generally motivated intrinsically.

How to achieve flow: Step 1: Have a clear goal. Step 2: Practice the habit of doing what needs to be done with concentrated focus. Even routine tasks such as cleaning or driving to work can become rewarding if performed with focus. Turn to your neighbor and name a routine task you use/are planning to use more concentration when performing.

Harnessing people’s flow Personnel psychologists aim to match people’s strengths with work that enables them and their organization to flourish. They identify people’s strengths through ability tests, personality tests and “assessment centers” to observe behaviors on simulated job tasks.

The Unstructured Interview An unstructured interview can provide information about a candidate’s personality, expressiveness, warmth and verbal ability. Interviewer Illusion: interviewers tend to feel confident they can predict future job performance from an unstructured, brief interview. They believe they can “read people” well. These predictions are quite error-prone.

The Structured Interview A structured interview asks questions that pinpoint strengths that distinguish high performers in a specific line of work. Such as a job specific scenario and then ask the candidate, “What would you do?” Structured interviews have double the predictive ability than unstructured interviews.

*Complete Handout 12-19* Reverse numbers in front of questions 7 and 9. Add your scores for each subscale.

Work: the desire to work hard and do a good job Mean scores were 19.8 for males and 20.3 for females.

Mastery: The preference for difficult, challenging tasks and for meeting internally prescribed standards of performance excellence The mean scores were 19.3 for males and 18.0 for females.

Competitiveness: the enjoyment of interpersonal competition and the desire to win. The mean scores were 13.6 for males and 12.2 for females. Overall, how do you feel about your scores? Would you hire you?

achievement motivation: a desire for significant accomplishment: for mastery of things, people, or ideas; for attaining a high standard. People with grit (a passionate dedication to an ambitious long-term goal) tend to be more successful than their equally talented peers. As the saying goes: 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

There are three types of employees: actively disengaged – unhappy workers undermining what their colleagues accomplish not-engaged – putting in the time, but investing little passion or energy in their work. engaged – working with passion and feeling a profound connection to their company or organization. Industrial/Organizational Psychologists try to help all employees to be engaged employees.

There is a positive correlation between organizational success and employee engagement. Engaged workers: know what is expected of them they have the tools to do their work they feel fulfilled they have opportunities to use their best skills they feel they are part of something significant they have opportunities to grow and develop in their workplace.

How can management motivate workers? task leadership: setting standards, organizing work, and focusing attention on goals. Directive style keeps the group on task. social leadership: mediating conflicts and building high-achieving teams. Democratic style delegates authority and welcomes the participation of team members.