Learning and motivation

Secrets to great performer

Every organization has their own mission. Based on their mission and vision statement, every department and individual has to meet certain objectives in order to meet that organizational objectives. And how well these objectives are achieved depends upon the performance of individual employee ultimately. So, every organization wants their employee to be a great performer, but very few succeed. To understand what makes an individual a great performer, we will have to understand what factors impacts the performance. Performance depends upon three key factors. And they are: Competency (KSAs), motivation and environment.

How these three factors impact performance?

1) Competency (KSAs):- How well an employee performs depends upon the knowledge, skills and attitudes associated with the job an employee is responsible for. It's the KSAs that differentiates an average performer from a superior performer. So, if an employee's performance is low, may be you need to assess the required KSAs for a certain job and existing KSAs of an employee associated with that job. You need to correct the KSAs gap if you find any KSAs gap. You can simply provide the employees with the needed training to correct the KSAs gap. On the other hand, you go for the non-training solutions which include job aid, job design, practice with coaching, termination and transfer. To put it simply, you should correct the KSAs gap as KSAs is the key factor that impacts the performance of an employee.

2) Motivation: Sometimes, employee might be competent, yet not meet the expected performance and be a poor performer. In that case, motivation might be the issue with such employee. Lack of motivation might have been caused due to insufficient rewards and incentives. Other times, the employee might not have received any recognition for his/her performance. So, an organization should align the reward and recognition program with the performance of an employee and thus rewarding and recognizing the great performers by motivating them to perform and give their 100%.

3) Environment: What if the employees are competent and motivated, yet having performance gap? In such circumstance, the organizational environment such as policies, procedures, resources, budget etc. might be acting as the hindrance or obstacles to the performance. So, you should analyze the organizational environment as well and take necessary steps if the environment has been the obstacles for good performance.

So, to conclude, analyze and correct these three factors and take the performance of not just employees, but the whole organization to the next level.

How to stay motivated always and ever??

Everyone wants to be a millionaire. Everybody wants to have a fit body. Everybody has their dream job and university. And all these people know what they need to do to turn their dream into reality. Yet very few people show up to act on their action plan on a daily basis. Most people don't even start, and those who start give up within a few days. In the initial few days, they have fire-like motivation in them. But it doesn't last longer. The problem? People simply can't keep going. You might have started working out after watching one of those fitness motivational videos on youtube, but gave up within a few days. And if you are one of those who struggle to keep moving forward persistently to achieve your goals, understanding process theory of motivation can pave a path for you.

Think of anything you keep doing even if you know you shouldn't be doing? Video games, social media, netflix binge watching, etc. might have come up in your mind. What is it that makes you engaged even if you don't want to? In the case of social media, it's simply the likes, comments, notifications and new things every second popping up in your news feed. In the case of video games, it's the score, achievement of level, coins reward etc. All these things have been designed to reinforce us to keep scrolling through social media and playing video games. What if you could do the same so that you would keep moving forward on the way to your goals? The good news is you can do so. But first, you will have to understand two theories of motivation expectancy theory and reinforcement theory. Let’s understand and learn to apply these theories one by one.

1) Expectancy theory:- This theory states that people does anything when they meet three conditions. They are effort, performance and outcome. Firstly, People put efforts only when they think there is chance of success for their effort. Second, their performance should be aligned with the outcome they desire. Third, the outcome should be desirable. Only when these three conditions are met, people are likely to do anything. So, it all starts with your belief to be successful in anything. Then, you should align your actions in a way that would result in the outcome you desire. And then, the outcome associated with what you do should be desirable to you. Once these three conditions are there to you, you will become unstoppable to keep going.

Let's say -you are planning to lose weight and stay fit, then firstly you should believe that you can do it. Secondly, you should plan your diet and exercise routine in way that would be result in losing your weight. Losing weight and staying fit should be desirable enough for you to keep going on daily basis. And lastly, your daily struggle of exercise and strict diet should show progress in losing your weight. if any of these three conditions misses, you are likely to discontinue your action plan of exercise and strict diet. For example, even if you exercised on daily basis and had strict diet, but you didn't see any progress in losing your weight. In that case you are likely to give up. So, for you to keep going, you should manage to fulfil all the three conditions.

2) Reinforcement theory: Reinforcement theory states that every desirable behaviour should be encouraged and every undesirable behaviour should be discouraged. Encouragement can be done through positive and negative reinforcement. On the other hand, Discouragement can be done through positive and negative punishment. In case of our social media addiction, we keep scrolling through Facebook and Instagram simply because we are reinforced every second to keep doing so by likes, comments, notifications and new posts which our brain loves. Similar thing can be done to achieve our goal as well. Let's assume you want to crack the GRE exam for which your desirable behavior would be to study 6 hours on daily basis. On the other hand, your undesirable behaviour might be to sleeping, surfing internet, binge watching etc. In such situations, you can reinforce yourself by associating your 6 hours of study with the things you naturally want to do. For eg. let's say you are to go for shopping. So, you would go for shopping only when you studied 6 hours for the next 15 days. Similarly, let's say you love playing football and you play everyday. In that case, you could punish yourself by not going to play football if you did anything other than study such as internet surfing. Similarly, you can reinforce yourself by having your favourite chocolate for every hour of continuous study. Because you are reinforced for every desirable behaviour and punished for every undesirable behaviour which is must to attain your goal of cracking GRE, you are likely to keep studying persistently on daily basis.

So, using these two process theories of motivation, you can motivate yourself to keep going which is essential to achieve your goals.

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