Its great to see
Michele Martin blogging on the work of
Alfie Kohn when she talks about
De-Grading the Workplace as I hugely admire Alfie and his work and frequently
quote from him.
We have a tendency to want to find "incentives" that will encourage people to learn and engage in new workplace behaviors, but these incentives are often external, such as prizes, financial incentives, good performance reviews, etc. Kohn's research indicates, though, that linking learning to external rewards actually has impacts that are the opposite of what we are generally trying to achieve. Instead, we need to appeal to intrinsic motivators, such as people's desire to help others, getting enjoyment out of the task, feeling like they belong to a cohesive group and feeling like they're contributing to something meaningful.
Michele is talking about the negative impact of external rewards on social media participation; I talk about it more in the context of KM while Alfie tends to focus on education but Alfie's views apply right across the board. Let me conclude with one of my favorite quotes from him (the bolding is mine):
Many of the familiar principles of Quality management amount to an elaboration of this simple truth: an innovative, healthy organization requires that we work with people rather than do things to them.
