My latest leadership reading was the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
I first heard of Daniel Pink when he spoke last summer at Willow Creek during the 2011 Global Leadership Summit held locally in South Barrington, IL and simulcast by satelitte to many other locations around the country. I was very impressed with his talk about the science of motivation or, as he calls it, Motivation 3.0. I was so impressed I brought back some of his concepts and have been doing what I can to implement them ever since. I have had some good successes and at least one person, so far, I have been able to move into a role where she entered a zone of 'flow', that state where a person is so involved in what they are doing that all consciousness of time is lost, and finds work to be fun. Prior to reading the book, I had also listened to him on TED which was also a very interesting talk.
The book covered the same topics as his talks but with added detail. I was able to find out more about the underlying science behind his premises which help me better understand his points.
His main idea is that, once our basic needs are met, the way creative individuals are motivated is by the three legged stool consisiting of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is our desire to work in the way we want, mastery is our innate drive to become very good at something we enjoy doing, and purpose is a higher mission for our lives. Do we create software to make money or do we create solutions to improve the quality of life.
If you want to get an overview of the concepts then I recommend watching the TED video. If you are like me, in that you learn better when reading and want the background to the theories, then the book is the way to go. Of course, you could experience both the book and the TED video and get the best of both worlds.
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