REAL WORLD - What Really Motivates People?

REAL WORLD is a series of Intermediate English lessons based on real world issues.

Lesson 02 - What Really Motivates People?

Lesson created by Paul Ponce, PLS teacher

FOCUS: Business English (Management, Productivity)

What is the secret of motivation? What drives some people to excel at what they do? Why are some organizations better at motivating their employees to stay and innovate, while others simply have employees who show up to do the work and leave as soon as possible.

Business writer and speaker Dan Pink believes that certain conditions and situations fire up the spark of motivation for many people in work environments. However, he doesn't believe those conditions are always related to the economics of their relationship with an employer.

In this lesson, we will enhance and empower our use of the English language by learning about the secret of motivation. Our focus will be a hand-drawn animated video where Dan Pink explains what he believes this secret is all about.

KEY VOCABULARY: Let's become familiar with it.

1. a little bit freaky: somewhat strange and unusual
2. we've seen this movie before: it's fairly common situation
3. cognitive skills: ability to think creatively and critically in order to solve problems and generate new solutions
4. the top tier of the economics profession: the most prestigious economic professionals
5. The Federal Reserve Bank ("The Fed"): the central bank of the United States of America
6. behavioral physics: how people behave
7. anomalous: something that is not supposed to happen
8. take the issue of money off the table: remove (and ideally resolve) the issue of money so that we don't even need to talk about it
9. fricken: a socially-acceptable version of the f-word, usually to stress an idea... a lot!
10. unmoored: separated

VIDEO: Let's WATCH it once and ANSWER the following questions?

1. What do the studies that Dan Pink talks about call into question?
2. What did the study at MIT consist of?
3. Why were the results of the MIT study unusual?
4. What happened in India?
5. How were staff members at Atlassian given autonomy?
6. What hypothetical example does Dan Pink give when he talks about mastery?
7. According to the author what happens when profit becomes unhitched from purpose?

TRANSCRIPT: Let's READ it and check to see if our answers are correct. Groups can delegate different members to read. Optionally, you can watch the video again after reading the transcript. You WILL NOTICE how much more you understand. 

Later, you can also try to FIND the target vocabulary within the script and PRACTICE making your own sentences with it.

DAN PINK: Our motivations are unbelievably interesting, I mean... I've been working on this for a few years and I just find the topic still so amazingly engaging and interesting so I want to tell you about that. The science is really surprising. The science is a little bit freaky. OK? We are not as endlessly manipulable and as predictable as you would think. There's a whole set of unbelievably interesting studies. I want to give you two that call into question this idea that if you reward something you get more of the behavior you want. If you punish something, you get less of it.

So let's go from London to the mean streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts the northeastern part of the United States and let's talk about a study done at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here's what they did: They took a whole group of students and they gave them a set of challenges. Things like memorizing strings of digits, solving word puzzles, other kinds of spacial puzzles even physical tasks like throwing a ball through a hoop. OK, they gave them these challenges and they said to incentivize their performance they gave them 3 levels of rewards. OK? So if you did pretty well, you got a small monetary reward. If you did medium well, you got a medium monetary reward. And if you did really well, if you were one of the top performers you got a large cash prize.


Ok, we've seen this movie before. This is essentially a typical motivation scheme within organizations right? We reward the very top performers we ignore the low performers and other folks in the middle. Ok, you get a little bit. So what happens? They do the test. They have these incentives. Here's what they found out. 

1. As long as the task involved only mechanical skill bonuses worked as they would be expected the higher the pay, the better their performance. Ok, that makes sense, but here's what happens. But once the task calls for even rudimentary cognitive skill a larger reward led to poorer performance. Now this is strange, right? A larger reward led to poorer performance. How can that possibly be? Now what's interesting about this is that these folks here who did this are all economists: 2 at MIT, 1 at the University of Chicago, 1 at Carnegie Melanie: the top tier of the economics profession. And they're reaching this conclusion that seems contrary to what a lot of us learned in economics which is that the higher the reward, the better the performance. And they're saying that once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill it's the other way around which seems like the idea that these rewards don't work that way seems vaguely Left-Wing and Socialist, doesn't it? It's this kind of weird Socialist conspiracy.


For those of you who have these conspiracy theories I want to point out the notoriously left-wing socialist group that financed the research: The Federal Reserve Bank. So this the mainstream of the mainstream coming to a conclusion that's quite surprising seems to defy the laws of behavioral physics. So this is strange, a strange funny. So what do they do? They say... This is freaky. Let's go test it somewhere else. Maybe that 50 dollars or 60 dollars prize isn't sufficiently motivating for an MIT student, right? So let's go to a place where 50 dollars is actually more significant relatively.

So we take the experiment, we're going to Madurai, India. Rural India, where 50 dollars, 60 dollars whatever the number was, is actually a significant sum of money. So they replicated the experiment in India roughly as follows: Small rewards, the equivalent of 2 week's salary. I'm sorry, I mean low performance 2 week's salary. Medium performance about a month's salary. High performance about 2 month's salary. Ok, so these are real good incentives so you're going to get a different result here.

What happened though, was that the people offered the medium reward did no better than the people offered the small reward but this time around, the people offered the top reward they did worst of all. Higher incentives led to worse performance.

What's interesting about this is that it actually isn't all that anomalous. This has been replicated over and over and over again by psychologists by sociologists and by economists, over and over and over again. For simple, straight-forward tasks, those kinds of incentives: if you do this then you get that, they're great! With tasks that are an algorithmic set of rules where you have to just follow along and get a right answer "If-then" rewards, carrots and sticks, outstanding!

But when the task gets more complicated when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking those kind of motivators demonstrably don't work. Fact: Money is a motivator, at work. But in a slightly strange way if you don't pay people enough they won't be motivated. What's curious about, there's another paradox here which is the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough, so they are not thinking about money and they're thinking about the work. Now once you do that, it turns out there are 3 factors that the science shows, lead to better performance not to mention, personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed: to direct our own lives. Now in many ways, traditional methods of management run afoul of that. Management is great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement which is what we want in the workforce today as people are doing more complicated, sophisticated things self-direction is better. 


Let me give you some examples of this of the most radical forms of self-direction in the workplace, that lead to good results. Let's start with this company right here, Atlassian an Australian company. It's a software company and they do something really cool.

Once a quarter on Thursday afternoon, they say to their developers "For the next 24 hours, you can work on anything you want. You can work at it the way you want. You can work at it with whomever you want. All we ask is that you show the results to the company at the end of those 24 hours." and this fun kind of meeting, not a star chamber session but this fun meeting with beer and cake and fun and other things like that. 

It turns out that one day of pure undiluted autonomy has led to a whole array of fixes for existing software a whole array of ideas for new products that otherwise have never emerged. One day. Now this is not an "if-then" incentive. This is not the sort of thing that I would have done 3 years ago before I knew this research. I would have said "You want people to be creative and innovative?" Give them a fricken innovation bonus. If you could do something cool, I'll give you 2,500 dollars.

They're not doing this at all. They're essentially saying you probably want to do something interesting. Let me just get out of your way. One day of autonomy produces things that never emerge.

Now let's talk about mastery. Mastery is our urge to get better at stuff. We like to get better at stuff. This is why people play musical instruments on the weekend. You have all these people who're acting in ways that seem irrational economically. They play musical instruments on weekends, why? It's not going get them a mate. It's not going to make them any money. Why are they doing it? Because it's fun. Because you get better at it, and that's satisfying.

Go back in time a little bit. I imagine this: If I went to my first economic's professor a woman named Mary Alice Shulman. And I went to her in 1983, and said "Professor Shulman, can I talk to you after class for a moment?" "Yeah." "I've got this inkling. I've got this idea for a business model. I just want to run it past to you.

Here's how it would work: You get a bunch of people around the world who are doing highly skilled work but they're willing to do it for free and volunteer their time 20, sometimes 30 hours a week." Ok, she's looking at you somewhat skeptically there. "Oh, but I'm not done. And then, what they create, they give it away, rather than sell it. It's going to be huge."

And she truly would have thought I was insane. All right, you seem to fly in the face of so many things but what do you have? You have Linux, powering 1 out of 4 corporate servers and Fortune 500 companies. Apache, powering more than the majority of web servers. Wikipedia...What's going on? Why are people doing this? Why are these people, many of whom are technically sophisticated highly skilled people who have jobs, ok? They have jobs! They're working at jobs for pay doing challenging, sophisticated, technological work. And yet, during their limited discretionary time they do equally, if not more, technically sophisticated work not for their employer, but for someone else for free! That's a strange economic behavior.

Economists who look into it "Why are they doing this?" It's overwhelmingly clear: Challenge in mastery along with making a contribution, that's it.

What you see more and more is a rise of what you might call the purpose motive. It's that more and more organizations want to have some kind of transcendent purpose partly because it makes coming to work better partly because that's the way to get better talent. And what we're seeing now is, in some ways when the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive bad things happen. Bad things ethically sometimes but also bad things just like, not good stuff: like crappy products like lame services, like uninspiring places to work.

That when the profit motive is paramount or when it becomes completely unhitched from the purpose motive people don't do great things. More and more organizations are realizing this and sort of disturbing the categories between what's profit and what's purpose. And I think that actually heralds something interesting. And I think that the companies, organizations that are flourishing whether they're profit, for-profit or somewhere in-between are animated by this purpose.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Here's the founder of Skype. He says our goal is to be disruptive but in the cause of making the world a better place. Pretty good purpose. Here's Steve Jobs. "I want to put a Ding in the universe." All right? That's the kind of thing that might get you up in the morning, racing to go to work. So I think that we are purpose maximizers, not only profit-maximizers. I think that the science shows that we care about mastery very, very deeply. And the science shows that we want to be self-directed.

And I think that the big take-away here is that if we start treating people like people and not assuming that they're simply horses you know, slower, smaller, better-smelling horses if we get past this kind of ideology of "carrots and sticks" and look at the science I think we can actually build organizations and work lives that make us better off but I also think they have the promise to make our world just a little bit better.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: If you belong to an English Practice Group or if you are a teacher, we recommend you discuss the following questions as a group.

1. What motivates you at work?
2. How important are autonomy, mastery and purpose in your industry?
3. How important are they in your specific job?

ROLE PLAYING: If you belong to an English Practice Group or if you are a teacher, we recommend you role-play the following questions as a group.

Part A. Discuss in groups what would be a really good "autonomy" activity for special areas of  your company and prepare to share it with the other groups?

Part B. Prepare in groups strategies for taking more advantage of mastery among staff members (as defined by Dan Pink), but in benefit of your company.

Part C. What is the purpose of your industry? What is the purpose of your department? Discuss in groups the following question: How beneficial to the company is it to establish a stronger relationship between the two? Present results.

Final Tip: watch the VIDEO one last time after the lesson and discussion and you will subconsciously incorporate a lot of the language you worked on.

That's the Real World! 

The Chemistry of Language

By Paul Ponce, PLS teacher

What if there was a bond between language and chemistry?

In my years as an English language trainer and content creator, I’ve often had to answer the question, “Why doesn’t my English sound like yours?” It’s a difficult one to answer as there may be different reasons. But generally speaking, learners feel frustrated when they realize that to say something, a native speaker will often use different words than they do. Same idea. Same language. Different Coding.

Welcome to the Gap, a language coding gap or difference in the choice of words which is perceived by both the speaker of English as a second language as well as the native English speaker. But is the gap really a problem? Well, that just really depends on what a learner wants out of his or her English. If the grammar is correct, then it’s a question of how learners wish to use the language, how much they mind the gap. Or perhaps how deep it is.

The interesting thing about this is that many learners who perceive the gap mistakenly believe their problem is that they don't know enough vocabulary words. “If I knew more words, I could speak more like a native”, they say. And they believe the solution is to learn tons of vocabulary. Some even get obsessed in how many words they use. And the market responds with products reminiscent of weight loss infomercials.

The truth? Memorizing lots of words may be useful for a test, a television game show or to impress people who are not really your friends, but it has little practicality in real life. What really matters is the language you use spontaneously when you write or speak - in other words, when you code language to say whatever it is you want to say. "Fine. But is there a way to acquire vocabulary so that you use it spontaneously?", some might ask. Sure there is. People who get a lot of meaningful input (reading, research, media) about the same subject, generally learn the vocabulary of that subject. If not, ask your friend who loves crime stories in English what the difference between alibi and clue is. They'll know. But knowing vocabulary alone does not narrow the gap. Sorry.

Deep into the Gap

To figure out how we can bridge the gap between the way native speakers say something and the way non-native speakers do it, we need to understand where the gap comes from. First though, keep in mind there is also a gap among native speakers, as there is one among non-native speakers. But generally speaking, the gap between the way native and non-native English speakers code language boils down to how the language is acquired.

A native speaker of any language (including English) learns to speak naturally as an infant by being exposed to endless hours of input from his or her closest beings. In this context, the brain (yes, the brain) recognizes patterns in language and begins the process of decoding what they mean in relation to real and basic life situations. Food, play, potty, the 5 senses, discipline or sleep. In this process of decoding, the brain begins its life-long habit of acquiring meaning through chunks or groups of words. The best part: all happens before they ever set foot in school. That's the place where the process of natural acquisition is by and large not strongly encouraged. (Chomsky, Krashen)

From Pink Floyd - The Wall

So then, what does the language acquisition process look like for a non-native speaker of a language he or she wants to learn? It usually happens in a context of formal education. So it is anything but natural. In the traditional model, foreign language is taught through grammar, vocabulary and listening comprehension. Examples are usually out of context, as is reading and writing. Speaking tends to be limited. Those who still manage to acquire the language often feel that any inadequacy is the result of poor grammar and insufficient vocabulary. While those who - despite all the obstacles - manage to become proficient English users, still feel the the gap when speaking to native English speakers.




Here is the logic. When native speakers of any language construct a message, they don’t do it word for word. They think in terms of chunks of language. Remember, that's how they learned it. These chunks or groups of words commonly used together for a similar purpose are what we call collocations. Language is full of collocations or ways in which language can be chunked together. Here are six main types.

• adjective + noun: tough life, strong accent
• noun + noun:glass of water, bar of soap
• verb + noun: do my taxes, make a call
• adverb + adjective: highly productive, deeply concerned
• verb + prepositional phrase (phrasal verb): make up your mind, look for the answer
• verb + adverb: spoke quietly, waited patiently

Collocations or chunks are a lot like chemical compounds. Yes, they are made of separate proportions of basic elements, but they exist as a whole.

Think about water, also known by its chemical shorthand, H2O.  As a chemical compound, a single water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds.

But imagine going up to the bar and saying to the guy there, "Hi, I'd like a glass of oxygen and hydrogen, please."  Technically, it would be correct, but it would sound pretty strange. There is a gap between the conventional way to say it and an alternate way which may be right in its own way, but is not easily recognized. Language is above all communication. So recognition is vital.

A real life example with a fin

Since I introduced the example of water, it brings to mind a conversation I recently had with a student. We were speaking about the ocean and sharks. Seeing as I am from Florida, he figured I might know about them. So he asked me, “How many people are hurt by sharks in one year in Florida?” Naturally, like you reading this, I understood him and answered the question, but took notes for the feedback later. His grammar and vocabulary were correct. But was there a gap in the way he phrased the question?


When I provided him with feedback, I modeled an alternate version of his question more likely used by a native speaker: “How many shark attacks are there in Florida every year?” I offered alternate versions of other parts of his part in our talk. Finally, we looked at the breakdown of the chunks (or collocations) for each model version I provided:

• How many >> correct
• Shark attacks >> just like snake attack, dog attack and cat attack, the most commonly-used collocation when referring to animals attacking people or other animals
• are there >> plural of is there: commonly used to ask about existence of things, a very underused collocation by non-native speakers
• every year >> alternate way of saying “in one year” (also correct)
• in Florida >> correct

Breaking Gap

So then, what is a good way to narrow the gap and sound more like a native speaker? Here is a road map.

• Find meaningful content (reading, listening, viewing) - something you really like
• Divide into short segments (a chapter, 5 minutes, a scene)
• Text: if it's audio or video, get a copy of the dialogue or transcript (easy to find that on the internet these days)
• Repeat input many times: If it's a segment of a book read it many times. If it's audio or video, listen to or view repeatedly.
• Extract chunks or collocations that you find interesting from the input and enter them into a notebook, file or wherever you want to keep it.
• Forget writing the meaning, instead, write a few sentences using that collocation.
• Read, listen to or view again.
• Review your list
• If possible, use with someone in English

Good luck!

ENGLISH & MUSIC: Smuggler's Blues

By Paul Ponce, PLS Teacher

As someone who grew up in the streets of Miami in the 1980s, the drug wars were not just something in the headlines. Sometimes, it was your next door neighbor who was "in the business". But the 80s, which were the golden age of MTV were also a thriving moment for the art of music videos, many of which played out like little 5 minute movies.

One which fit that description is the single "Smuggler's Blues" by recently departed American singer-songwriter Glenn Frey, who was a founding member of the super-group Eagles. "Smuggler's Blues" tells us the story of one of these Miami "business men" and why the "lure of easy money had a very strong appeal". In fact, the success of this song and video even inspired an episode of Miami Vice, where Frey guest starred as a drug pilot.

Such songs and videos are of course a great opportunity to learn lots of English idioms in context through a story. For that, you can watch the video, then check out the lyrics and the language of smugglers below.

Enjoy the ride!


Glenn Frey - Smuggler`s Blues Video (1985) from MTVClassic1 on Vimeo.

LYRICS: "Smuggler's Blues" by Glenn Frey

There's trouble on the street tonight, I can feel it in my bones
I had a premonition that he should not go alone
I knew the gun was loaded, but I didn't think he'd kill
Everything exploded, and the blood began to spill
So baby, here's your ticket, and the suitcase in your hand
Here's a little money, now do it just the way we planned
You be cool for twenty hours, and I'll pay you twenty grand
I'm sorry it went down like this, but someone had to lose
It's the nature of the business, it's the smuggler's blues
Smuggler's blues

The sailors and the pilots, the soldiers and the law
The payoffs and the ripoffs and the things nobody saw
Don't matter if it's heroin, cocaine or hash,
You've got to carry weapons 'cause you always carry cash
There's lots of shady characters and lots of dirty deals
Every name's an alias in case somebody squeals
It's the lure of easy money, it's got a very strong appeal
Perhaps you'd understand it better standing in my shoes
It's the ultimate enticement, it's the smuggler's blues
Smuggler's blues

You see it in the headlines, you hear it every day
They say they're gonna stop it, but it doesn't go away
They move it through Miami and sell it in L.A.
They hide it up in Telluride, I mean it's here to stay
It's propping up the governments in Columbia and Peru
You ask any D.E.A. man, he'll say there's nothing we can do
From the office of the president right down to me and you
Me and you
It's a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse
It's the politics of contraband, it's the smugglers' blues
Smuggler's blues


LANGUAGE OF SMUGGLERS

• Premonition: a strong feeling that something is about to happen
• the gun was loaded: the gun had bullets in it
• be cool: stay calm
• twenty grand: 20, 000 dollars
• went down (go down): when something happens
• payoff: a payment to a government official to allow something illegal to happen
• ripoff: a fraud or swindle, especially something that is grossly overpriced.
• shady character: a person who is doing something illegal and moves in the underworld of the law
• dirty deal: an illegal business transaction
• alias: a false or assumed identity
• squeal: inform on someone to the police or a person in authority
• the lure of easy money: the temptation of easy money
• strong appeal: something that is hard to resist
• standing in my shoes: to be in my place
• ultimate enticement: a very powerful way to attract or to tempt someone
• propping up: giving support to something, especially a country or organization, so that it can continue to exist in a difficult situation
• losing proposition: a proposal or initiative that is likely to fail