What is motivation: how to influence others or yourself?

What is motivation? The simplest and most precise definition of this concept is formulated in the literature as: "motivation for action". For example, if an employee is struggling to overfulfill a plan in order to get a significant increase in his salary this month, then it can be said that he is "motivated". And the motivation for action came from his leadership and was expressed in the appointment of interest from the transaction.

The role of needs

Similarly, you can motivate any person, relying on important for him needs. But you need to know which ones. Not every employee is important salary, someone will be more and better perform their duties, if he is constantly praised. And all because the recognition of those around him, and even more so of such an important person as a leader, is more important for him at a given moment in time. However, human needs have a property to change, and not always a pleasant word to the employee will give the same effect. As soon as the motive (motivation) ceased to work, it's time for the employer to change his tactics.

The same applies to parents who want to improve the evaluation of the child, and spouses seeking to get more help from each other, and friends, friends, girlfriends, other relatives. It is clear why the question, what is motivation, interests everyone.

Motivation is a powerful force that allows you to manage people. And to find out exactly what will bring it into action is quite simple. You just have to carefully monitor the person, listen and remember. In large enterprises for this purpose, even carry out surveys and psychological tests, and after finding out the actual needs of employees make a plan for motivation for work.

Determining signs

The concept of motivation in its expanded form includes all the above subtleties. It allows you to break the psychological phenomenon into the following criteria:

• Emotionally colored condition;
• The presence of need, through which a change in the state of the organism (for example, from passive to active);
• The urgency of the need for a given period of time (otherwise the emotion that has arisen has not escalated into the fulfillment of specific actions).

Of these related elements (conditions), there is an understanding of what motivation is.

Self-motivation

The impact can come from the person himself. Then we are talking about self-motivation. It is thanks to this phenomenon that we act even when absolutely we do not want this: it is only necessary to change the attitude towards the problem. For example, many people want to quit smoking, but no weighty argument encourages them to abandon this harmful habit. Those who are still able to quit are called so individual motives that it remains to be surprised. For example, young girls refuse to smoke only when they understand that men with whom one could create a family prefer women without bad habits ...

Motivation for work

The most studied to date is labor motivation, since theoretical information in this field is really necessary for practical application. There are already many theories about motivation, within which specific recommendations have been developed on the impact on employees in order to increase labor productivity or profit.

In this area of knowledge, the motive is often confused with the stimulus. Social benefits, benefits, fines, punishments for violation of discipline - all this is only an incentive, but whether he will grow into a motive - is unknown. And yet at every enterprise there should be developed not only a motivation system for employees (in accordance with any theory), but also an incentive system to maintain an adequate standard of living for employees.

Sometimes it is difficult to understand what motivation is, given the multifaceted nature and complexity of the phenomenon. But it is very important to come to a common term, so that the divergence in understanding does not harm the main goal - to learn how to motivate ...