DB Replies - Elprofessori

The article for this week was by a business journal in Phoenix. I found the topic of motivation in the workplace to be spot on in reference to what the book talks about. It spoke to me better than any of the other articles I came across. I have had a personal struggle to be motivated in a work environment, for example I worked at Sports Authority prior to their dissolution for over two and a half years. I remember working in the receiving department for hours organizing and distributing product throughout the store, seemingly to no end, and increasingly unbearable as the hours crept by. However when I had my coworker, Rick, with me the job became so much more tolerable and even fun at times. This also seemed to provide a contradictory result of better performance, rather than a commonly preconceived result of the opposite. Zender talks about how motivation can be learned through concepts but to my disappointment hints at an underlying theme that motivation is something that is mainly psychologically internal. In a lot of ways the article seems to point toward a demotivational state of current workplace environments causing the imbalance of worker motivation due to a lack of enthusiasm from leadership. This idea that Zender is trying to portray seems to disregard direction and intensity focusing on persistence as the primary force in motivation among employees, however in my experience persistence is easy to come by when someone is working with you. Ideas, direction and goals seem to fall into place when you’re thinking with two heads to complete tasks. For a biblical example one could look to Proverbs 27:17 (NIV), where it is very eloquently put that “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” This in my opinion is especially true considering the more you engage with others in the workplace the more you learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your team. This is almost a perfect metaphor for a motivation in the workplace. People tend to overlook how much they learn and share knowledge between co-workers, but that’s the beauty of it. Even if the information doesn’t seem relevant all the time, motivation to come back to those work relationships is all too important, because if we didn’t have those connections we lose motivation. Proverbs talks of people sharpening one another, not sitting at a grind stone withering away your iron blade, sharpen iron against iron so not only do you get motivated but you also train to fight with purpose and direction.

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References

McShane, S., & Von Glinow, M. (2013). Organizational behavior (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.