Motivation is the “forces coming from within a person that account, in part, for the willful direction, intensity, and persistence of the person’s efforts toward achieving specific goals that are not due to ability or to environmental demands” (Hitt, Miller, & Colella, 2006).
What is the relationship between motivation and job performance?
Motivation is one of the factors that can influence the job performance of an individual. When motivation is equal between employees, job performance will increase or decrease as a result of other factors like individual abilities and environmental factors. Likewise, if factors like abilities and environment are similar for employees, performance can increase or decrease in relation to the motivation of the individual.
Give an example where you were motivated to do a good job.
About 10 years ago I was asked to take over the management of a relationship with an external IT support vendor. The contract had been in place for about a year and my company was very unhappy with the quality of support they were receiving from the vendor. I accepted the assignment and immediately dove into researching the causes of the dissatisfaction and developing recommendations.
Discuss what the specific motivation was and describe whether motivation was enough to accomplish the job you wanted to do.
In this project I was motivated in two areas. First, I was motivated by my desire to improve the quality of support for those within my organization (institutional power). Employees had suffered poor technical support for a number of years. The outsourcing was an attempt to fix the problem, but just made things worse. In addition, I was seeking an opportunity to fulfill my potential as a leader and to maximize the use of my unique skills and abilities (self-actualization).
Although I had significant motivation to resolve the service problems, motivation was not enough. I knew very little about the call center industry when I first took on the job and had to spend a significant time learning about best practices and analyzing the situation. Ultimately I felt we could build a higher quality support organization if we were to bring it back inhouse. My proposal was approved and within one year we were providing world-class technical support for my organization. The support was so good that formal organizations like the Help Desk Institute would bring members to tour our call center to learn about what we had implemented. It was a huge success. But as I mentioned, motivation was not enough. Without developing the skill and knowledge needed to succeed, we would not have achieved our objectives.
Sources
Hitt, M. A., Miller, C. C., & Colella, A. (2006). Organizational Behavior: A Strategic Approach. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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