Monday, April 8, 2013

Values and Motivation

We said we will talk about motivation here, but first let's take a look at values and how it has been framed into a group's statement of values.

So why are we talking about values? Is there anything left of values in political life?

Values


I was exploring the question of what drives people to take up public service? To be a politician? There has to be a driving force, a motivation to join politics. What is that?

In Tony Blair's book "A Journey", he describes a point in the beginning of his journey, in attempting to transform the Labour party in a revolutionary and undeniable way, sought a balance between traditional beliefs including their central foundation - the commitment to social justice - and the need to modernize its outlook in keeping with the needs of the 21st century. He finally came up with a statement of values that read as follows:

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavor, we achieve more than we achieve alone so as to create for each of us the means to realize our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.


Motivation


Of course, most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money - the carrot-and-stick approach. That is a mistake, Daniel H Pink says in "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us". The secret to high performance and satisfaction - at work, at school, at home - is the deep human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation - autonomy, mastery and purpose - that is, autonomy in how we do our work, time and money to invest in the tools required for mastery of the skills required, and the freedom to work towards a purpose or greater good.

autonomy - the desire to be self directed
mastery - the urge to get better at stuff
purpose - making a contribution



If that is the new paradigm, for a political force to take root, we need to create the environment that will facilitate the enablers of motivation - autonomy, mastery and purpose - to grow and flourish.

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