00:28 I love motivation.

00:34 It's given me a good life.

00:37 And every place I look, I see motivation or lack thereof.

00:47 So, what is this thing I love? This thing called motivation.

00:53 It's the energy for action.

00:56 It's what gets you up in the morning and moves you through the day.

01:04 Traditionally, psychologists, economists, people on the street have thought about motivation as a unitary concept. That

01:17 is, they see it as something that differs only in amount.

01:23 You can have less motivation or more motivation.

01:29 And of course, our teachers, our bosses, our parents want us to have more motivation for the behaviors they want us to do.

01:42 It's a simple and straightforward way of thinking about motivation, and I have no doubt that if you measured

01:51 the amount of a person's motivation, you could predict the amount of that person's behavior.

01:59 But I've never believed that the amount of behavior was the most important thing.

02:07 What I think is the important thing, actually, is the quality of behavior, not the quantity.

02:17 And you can't get to that by looking at the quantity of motivation.

02:25 Let me give you an example to illustrate the point.

02:29 You have two women who work for you.

02:32 Recently, you found a bunch of new material that seemed very relevant to your work.

02:39 So, you give the material to both of these women, and you ask them to spend 2 hours learning it.

02:46 They do, and they both put in considerable effort.

02:51 The first person goes through the material, and then through it again, and through it again,

03:00 and during the 2 hours, she memorizes every single fact that's contained within it.

03:08 She did a lot of learning.

03:10 But the second person reads it, and she's looking for the themes that are emerging. She's addressing it in a more

03:21 conceptual way, trying to understand the big picture. What is this really about?

03:29 And along the way, she learns a few facts, but she's interested in knowing how the facts fit together, and how they relate to the big picture.

03:42 The quality of their learning, even though it may have been exactly the same amount, was very different, and you

03:52 can't explain that with the amount of motivation.

03:56 For more than 30 years, my best friend Rich Ryan and I have been working on a theory of motivation that we call

04:04 self-determination theory, SDT for short.

04:10 And one of the central tenants of SDT is that you have to differentiate types of motivation.

04:19 And the distinction that is most important for us is between controlled motivation and autonomous motivation.

04:28 Controlled motivation is essentially the carrot and stick.

04:33 When you're controlled in your motivation, you've either been seduced into behaving, perhaps by a offer of a reward, or

04:43 coerced into behaving, perhaps by threat of punishment.

04:48 But in either of those cases, you feel a lot of pressure. And within you is a sense of tension and anxiety.

04:57 And all of those things have negative consequences for your performance and well-being.

05:07 There's another thing about controlled motivation that's interesting.

05:12 And that is that when your motivation is controlled, you tend to take the shortest path to the desired outcomes.

05:25 Remember Enron?

05:28 The directors of that company had the goal of making the company stronger and more productive.

05:37 So, they gave stock options to the top managers as a way of motivating them to achieve the goals.

05:47 Well, managers were pretty clever fellows, and it didn't take them long to realize that the shortest path to the

05:56 outcome of making gazillions of dollars from their stock options was to artificially inflate the value of the company stock.

06:07 And we all know how well that worked out.

06:11 In contrast, we have autonomous motivation.

06:15 When you're autonomously motivated, you will experience a full set of volition, willingness, and choice about what

06:25 you're doing. At the moment you're doing it, you're endorsing the doing of that behavior.

06:34 Autonomous motivation comes in two flavors. The first has to do with interest and enjoyment.

06:42 If you're interested in some activity and you enjoy doing it, the motivation is right there inside you, ready to come out and move you into action.

06:56 Have you ever watched a 2-year-old play?

07:00 2-year-olds love to play.

07:05 And when was the last time you heard a parent ask, "How do I motivate my 2-year-old to play?" It's a silly

07:14 question. The motivation is right there when you're interested and enjoy the activity.

07:23 The other type of um autonomous motivation has to do with your deeply held values and beliefs. If you really have something that's

07:35 important to you, something that you truly value, you're perfectly willing to engage in the behaviors that are consistent with that.

07:45 So, both of these things, these two types of autonomous motivation, are all about being fully willing to behave.

07:56 There are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds now of scientific investigations that have shown when you're autonomously

08:09 motivated, your behavior will be more creative.

08:13 You'll be a better problem-solver.

08:17 When you encounter obstacles, you'll be able to think outside the box and figure out what to do about them. Your

08:26 performance will be better, particularly at heuristic activities, and your emotions will be much more positive.

08:36 And very importantly, autonomous motivation is associated with both physical and psychological health.

08:48 So, I'm arguing that autonomous motivation is a much more effective motivation than the carrot and stick,

08:56 the controlled motivation. So, what does autonomy support mean, which is the way of getting people to be more

09:04 autonomously motivated?

09:07 You begin by taking their perspective.

09:11 If you're dealing with a child, with an employee, whoever it happens to be, can you begin by trying to understand

09:21 how that person sees the situation? What is the internal frame of reference?

09:28 And if you do that, you're in a position to move forward from there to do whatever it is that needs to be done.

09:37 It also involves providing people with choice, allowing them to be engaged in the decision-making process. It means

09:45 supporting their exploration, letting them try new ways, encouraging them to be self-initiating, to be a

09:53 self-starter, if you will. And very importantly, if you're asking somebody to do something, you need to provide them with a meaningful rationale.

10:05 Because that way, they will understand the importance, and they may actually internalize it and make it a part of their value system.

10:17 So, what happens when people are autonomously motivated?

10:22 When teachers are autonomously motivated, their students learn in a deeper, more conceptual way.

10:30 The students enjoy learning more, and they feel more confident and competent about themselves.

10:38 When doctors are autonomy supportive, their patients live healthier lives.

10:44 They take their medications more reliably.

10:48 They eat healthier diets, and they exercise on a more regular basis.

10:54 When coaches are more autonomy supportive, the research shows their athletes persist longer at the activity,

11:03 they feel better about themselves while doing it, and they work together better as a team.

11:11 When bosses are more autonomy supportive, their subordinates perform better at the job.

11:19 They also are better adjusted in the workplace, which has important implications in terms of absenteeism, turnover, and so forth.

11:30 And when parents are more autonomy supportive, their children have stronger mental health, they do better in school,

11:40 and they cooperate more around the house.

11:45 Now, all of these relationships that I've been talking about so far have an implicit differential in terms of authority.

11:54 But many of our relationships aren't like that. We have relationships with peers, relationships that are more

12:02 mutual, our romantic relationships, our best friends.

12:08 There are people that argue that in order to have a high-quality relationship, you have to relinquish your autonomy in the service of the diet.

12:22 But in fact, the research shows that you won't have a high-quality relationship if you don't feel autonomous within it.

12:35 What does that mean then in terms of your close relationships?

12:40 Let me ask you this.

12:42 Are you really interested in your partners?

12:48 Do you give to them freely?

12:52 Are you clear about your your own needs in the relationship, so they're out there on the table?

12:59 And do you negotiate in good faith?

13:04 And then importantly, do you do all those things fully willingly?

13:10 If not, may I suggest you try it and see what happens.

13:17 So, what am I trying to say in all this?

13:21 The take-home message is don't ask how you can motivate other people. That's the wrong way to think about it.

13:33 Instead, ask how can you create the conditions within which other people will motivate themselves?

13:45 And the answer, quite simply, is autonomy support.

13:56 Thank you very much.