Motivational Management: Inspiring Your People for Maximum Performance

Internal vs. External Motivation

Frederick Herzberg, a leading expert on the psychology of motivation in the workplace, points out the importance of one's own internal motivation when he says, ''I can charge a man's battery, then recharge it, and recharge it again. But it is only when he has his own generator that we can talk about motivation. He then needs no outside stimulation. He wants to do it.'' As the manager of others, you definitely do not want to feel like you are having to pour your own energy into them all the time to keep them going. You'd far rather have them operating off the energy they generate internally!

What most managers want today is employees who are internally—or to use the technical term, intrinsically—motivated to do ...