Theories of Motivation

Theories of Motivation and Relative Needs

When an employee is underperforming , the employee runs the risk of setting in motion a ripple effect that will harm the greater whole of the network that comprises the field in which he or she is performing In other words , a poorly motivated and poor performing employee can lead to a contagion ' that will dramatically effect the performance of other employees

In certain environments , this can be catastrophic . If one is to examine the example of a surgical environment , an underperforming employee can not be

tolerated . There are a number of ways that such underperformance can be addressed , the worst of which being utilizing an authoritarian draconian means of reversing poor performance . Such a method is a mistake

Usually , when an employee is slacking or performing below expectations it is not terribly difficult to reverse the negative trend provided a decent manner in which to coax a better performance is used . Far too often , a supervisory will try and coax a better performance out of an employee by way of dropping an authoritarian hammer on the person . While this may work in the short term , it ultimately backfires as the moral of the employee hits an all time low and eventually returns to a substandard level of performance that is next to impossible to reverse Even worse , the employee may become single focused on just doing the bare minimum of acceptable standards and getting the

employee to increase an average performance is much more difficult that increasing substandard performance as average ' is something the employee can usually get away with (Hence , the reason why the employee will steer himself towards the safety net of `average

Under Maslow 's HIERARCHY OF NEEDS , one of the spheres of needs is that of self esteem needs . Under this theory , it is suggested for a person to feel a sense of self worth , there needs to be an emphasis in the person 's life on either professional or hobbyist pursuits to where the person places a great deal of said emphasis on things the person is talented

In other words , by taking a great deal of self esteem from duties and tasks one performs well will keep a person motivated to continually perform better . When the person is removed from tasks that the person has exceptional talent , then the person will suffer from a lessoning of self esteem . This eventually will set in motion a decline in performance as the person is not able to measure up to professional standards as the duties and tasks the person is assigned are outside of the scope of the individual 's talent . This is why it is exceptionally important that those assigning duties and tasks to an employee must make sure that the employee 's strengths are being played to . If not , the person will start to suffer from a loss of self esteem and that will be soon followed by a drop in motivation

Theories of Motivation and Relative Needs...