Monday, October 13, 2003

Don’t let me talk past 11:15, ok?

So was that video worth your time and energy?

{Yeah…}

Just so you know, that’s sort of a sampling of what you get if you took a video course, where it’s a hurried-up class, and you don’t meet every week for 18 weeks, you only meet a certain number of nights, and then watch the videos at home on your own. That’s pretty similar…there’d be one video for pretty much each chapter of the book. So I call it teacher in a box. I don’t think it’s as good as what I do in the classroom, but I think it certainly is valuable. And, really, those video classes are designed primarily for our working adult population, people who pretty much already know a lot about business, they just really haven’t taken the course, and so they need to know some of the terms and how it all plays together.

The marketing videos that I have…those are actually pretty good. The intro class, I’ve never taught as a video class before, but… I don’t know if Dan has done that or not…

I did get the attendance sheet for last Wednesday, so if you were here that day, you got credit, and if you weren’t well…it’s not the end of the world. What’s important is to be here for the test, isn’t it. So that will be our attendance sheet for today, the test. So I won’t be passing around an attendance sheet.

Motivation Theory, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Alright, we’re going to take a little bit about motivation theory and a little bit about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Herzberg and his Hygiene Theory is mentioned in your book, and we won’t really talk about that today, but…there’s a whole body of knowledge that works around motivation. And, clearly, to be a good leader and to be a good manager, you need to be a good motivator, right? So on our qualities of a leader, typically, being a good motivator is one of the things we get.

So my question to you this morning is can I motivate you? Ok, I hear a yes…does anybody disagree? No one? Doesn’t anyone want to play the devil’s advocate and challenge me?

{Sure fine…}

Sure fine! He says, “You can’t motivate me,” as he sits back there looking like, “…teach me something Jerk!” Teachers talk about that all the time…it’s like what are those people in the back row thinking? Actually, you did pretty good on that marketing test, so I know you thinking. That’s what I like to see.

The theory kind of goes this way: no, I cannot motivate you; only you can motivate yourself. So what I can do is provide an atmosphere in which you are, hopefully, going to make some choices. So, hopefully you will make some good choices. So when you look at the syllabus, have I laid this out to motivate you guys to come to class, and to be here, and to work hard, and to take the test, and not give up? Yeah, you can do extra credit; you can drop a test; you’re going to turn in a project; and you’re going to do an oral report, and all of those things will raise your average, hopefully. Even if you’re not a good test-taker…by the end of this series of tests, we want you to be able to figure out how to do these tests, and that’s important. But I have set up this class in a way, based on what I was taught in teacher training, about motivating students. But you have to do the work, don’t you. I can’t do it for you. You have to do it.

Are there already people who have dropped this class? Yeah! Is the parking lot a lot less full than it was before…didn’t I promise you that would happen? Yeah! Those are people who looked at this and went, “Oh, this is just too much work…” or “this is too hard…” or “I don’t like this.” Or, there might have been a personal thing that came up or there might have been a number of things that could have happened in their lives. But they just decided they weren’t going to stick with it.

As an employee, you’re working in an environment where if you have a boss that doesn’t understand motivational theory, it’s not a very good work environment, is it. If you have a boss that understands motivational theory, it’s a better work environment. So you need to do that; you need to understand that. You need to understand what are the triggers that motivate behaviors, and what are the triggers that motivate people’s behavior.

Now, we could use ether a positive force in the environment or a negative force. Give me an example.

[Autocratic]

Ok, autocratic… If I say, “If you miss one class—if you miss one of my classes for any reason,” and does this sound familiar? “…any reason, you will fail this class!” Well, wow! That’s a heavy penalty, isn’t it. That’s probably not even fair, because there are things that happen in life, right? It’s like, hey, stuff happens. But I’m using fear as a motivator. Yeah, if I say that you miss work…you don’t call in to miss work, or I’m firing you, I’m using fear as a motivator, aren’t I. You’ll lose your job if you don’t do such and such. And that’s a very powerful thing, it works pretty good in some situations. But you have to be very careful, though, in not using it too much, because you can really turn people off, you can squish them, you can put them down…

Some of you might know people whose parents used a lot of negative motivational strategies, and it usually backfires. What do the psychologists tell us? Positive motivation works better, right. Yeah, the kid might need a “time-out” and there has to be consequences for behaviors, but, basically, if they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, they get positive rewards. Well, you know, if you do this, this, and this, and if you get these grades, or if this happens at school, and if you do this, here’s your reward, here’s your treat.

Well, in the business world, we do that by giving bonuses, right? And your salary is just your basic need that everyone needs to survive. But we can have some additional recognition that we give, awards, certificates, that kind of thing. So we set-up an environment for positive motivation.

I successfully raised two wonderful children. Well, I’m really glad that I went to Mankato State where I studied psychology, I learned motivation theory, I’m really glad that I took some of those teacher training classes. And I think that between my wife and I that we did a pretty good job.

In the workplace you use similar kinds of concepts and similar kinds of theories. And It’s important to know and understand that.

Maslow’s Hierarch of Needs

Many of the things that we look at in the workplace relate around Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. And, basically, what Maslow was saying is that we all have needs; we have some basic needs, and once those needs are met, we can move on to some higher levels of needs. And once those higher needs are met, we can move on to higher levels of needs, yet.

And so your job as a manager is to figure out where your employees are, and what’s important to them.

The Dean of Instruction, here, at the college gives me a whole lot of freedom and a whole lot of latitude. They don’t check on me, they’re on in here observing my classes. As a matter of fact, I taught here for seven years—seven years—before anyone ever came in and observed my classroom. I actually thought that was bad and wrong, because I want critique, I want to get better; I want to know what I’m doing right, and if there is something that I’m doing wrong, because that would help.

But our dean, at the time, said, “You know more about teaching than I do. Who am I? I’m just an administrator…I don’t know. If students complain, then I go to the classroom to see if there’s a problem. And if there’s a problem, then we deal with it. But if students don’t complain, then you must be doing something right in the classroom.”

Well, they are giving me a lot of rope, aren’t they. And, actually, with some employees, if you give them a lot of rope, they’ll do what?

{hang themselves}

They’ll hang themselves, exactly! So with some employees, you have to keep a short leash on them, don’t you. It’s just like the tiger. That poor guy should have had a short leash on that tiger. But that tiger didn’t have any leash, ok? Poor Roy…he actually was thinking that this tiger was properly trained…it was a new tiger in the act, and he hadn’t really had quite enough experience, and the tiger became confused. When Roy slipped and fell, the tiger actually went to help him, but actually really hurt him. If that tiger had been on a leash, and under the control of a leash… I train Golden Retrievers, and we could have had a different set of results, right?

But you have to look at the maturity of your audience and where they’re at. Well, when we look at maturity we see that some people that are very mature are having a higher level of needs met. So you have to think about that.

Now, the guy who ran our maintenance department, and the guy who runs it now is one of my former students, and he’s not as tough as the guy that was first here, Mel. But one of the reasons why we have a beautiful campus is because Mel was a tyrant; he was a dictatorial, and you didn’t mess around on his watch.

And something that reminded me of my high school gym class, was when I had seen Mel grab a student who had kicked a door in frustration, because of something that had happened in the classroom. It could have been a bad test score, or what not. But Mel took that student and literally grabbed him by the neck and said, “We need to talk son.” Well, that student, unfortunately, made the wrong choice at the wrong time and didn’t realize who he was dealing with or who was standing right there at the time. But did that student go to the dean’s office? Yeah. What Mel did was he dragged that student right up to the Dean of Students’ office and did that student get expelled? Was that student asked to leave the college for bad behavior? He broke a door; he kicked the door and broke the glass.

{Oh, sure behavior like that is clearly outlined in the students’ manual…}

Oh, yeah—oh, yeah!

Now, did the head of maintenance maybe go a little too far in physically manhandling that student? Yeah, and that’s a problem…I might be a little worried about that; I might be a little concerned. If it were me, I would have said that I think he may have over reacted in that situation. But he certainly got that young man’s attention, didn’t he. And that’s how it was dealt with. Well, in talking to Mel in his earlier years about how he ran his maintenance crew, does he have a different way of operating than the Dean of Instruction? Yeah, and he kept a pretty tight rein on what’s going on. And Pat has a little bit more team orientation and a little bit more of you take responsibility, and he’s broken it down into different management segments. And those little groups take care of themselves, which is really a nice way of doing it, isn’t it. But he, overall, is responsible for setting the tone, and so he’s got a little less rope on that leash than what we do with our faculty.

If you look at how we manage the… It’s the vice president who is responsible for all the rest of the staff. How do we manage the secretaries and the people in the book office, and the registrar’s office, and financial aid? It’s a little different yet isn’t it. So there’s three really distinct tiers of management style that are happening here. And each one is being done actually quite successfully over a period of time.

So you have to look and assess who your people are, and what they are all about, and then come up with a way. And you might not manage each group the same way. You might manage it differently.

Well that’s based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you want an employee to stick around, you need to understand why they are there. So if you manage a McDonald’s and you ask people to come to work on a Friday evening and it’s during prom…if those kids are there for social reasons, and if you’re not understanding their needs, you’re going to have a problem. So you’re probably going to get the seniors to work that night. So you need to understand that. And you might have another guy who is a gear-head. And that gear-head is there to raise money for his car. And so the day that the races are going, well, that’s when they want to be at the races. Other employees might be there for social reasons. And they want to be able to have a nice break room, and listen to music… So you have to understand what it is.

When I first came to Inver Hills, my boss truly understood this and gave me a fair amount of flexibility. I did not have any 8 o’clock classes. My first class started at 10. Well, why was that? Well, I had a daughter who was dyslectic who needed to be looked-out after and so I couldn’t just let her go to school on her own. My wife was working full-time at the time, and there was no one home. So I asked can you give me some flexibility in my schedule. And, well, yeah…we’ll give you a class that starts at 10 o’clock, and then you can have some afternoon and some evening classes. So I was there in morning for her and then I was there in the afternoon when she came home. Was that important to me? Was that an employer meeting my needs, understanding, and being flexible with my needs? Yeah. Some businesses have flex-scheduling, where their employees come in at 6 in the morning, or 4 in the morning. If you’re an international business you need to have people all the time, right? Because business all around the world goes on all the time, right? So some employees might want to come early in the morning while others might want to come in later.

By the way, if you have staggered shifts like that, does that mean there’s less of a traffic problem at your place of work, if you have a lot of employees? Instead of them all coming at 8 o’clock and leaving at 4 o’clock, this might ease up on the congestion. So there’s a number of benefits in being flexible, and working with people, and figuring out what their needs are.

The bottom line is that you have to listen to your employees, you have to talk to your employees, you have to dig, you have to understand what they are all about and figure out what drives their behaviors.

What would have happened, by the way, if the dean had denied my request to go to Florida to be with my mom? Well, what would have been the result of that? She could have said, “Hey, I have the power; I can deny this…”

{You would have been unhappy and stayed, or you would have left…}

I would have been unhappy, and bitched, and stayed, and pissed and moaned, and probably would have created a lot of poison within my little area, right? Or, I could very easily have said, “Hey, I don’t need this anymore, I’m quitting.” And so you get a fare amount of that. So you need to set up a work environments that are flexible and work for people.

Alright, what’s the first one on the list here of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Physiological needs. The need for food, rest, and muscular activity. If those needs are met, then we can move on to safety needs. And you can’t study if you’re afraid that something is going to happen to you in this room. You can’t move on to social or esteem or self-actualization if you’re not feeling safe. So if you think the guy behind you is going to put a rope around your neck and strangle you and take your books and your wallet, you can’t be focusing and you can’t be moving forward. In a work environment, let me give you an example at Honeywell in the old days when they were located in the building which is now a Target or Dayton’s processing center… But it’s a bad neighborhood, right off of 35W, ok? They had some female employees who were raped. Actually, one was raped then murdered. What happens to the productivity of all their employees if they fear for their safety in that environment? Well, it goes down. So they had to hire guards and install cameras. And when people started to feel more comfortable about the location, then productivity went back up again.

So safety is something that employees do worry about. Do you need to have a safe work environment? Do you need machines that are safe? Not only do you have to meet the OSHA rules and regulations, to their safety standards, but employees have to feel that you really care about their safety, and that you’re really looking out after their best interests. So that’ important. By the way, Honeywell eventually sold that property, and moved on.

The next level is social. And college students are very interested in social, but then lots of people are interested in social needs. And that means that you want to fit in, you want to be accepted by your peers, you want to be accepted by other groups. And in a work environment, we see a fair amount of things that pertain to that. Do companies have teams? Sure, you’re hearing an ad right now for the Flint Hills Foot Team, the racing team, right? It’s not an auto racing team, it’s a foot racing team. And they talk about how they feel and how they interact at work, and what people think about them. They want to feel a part of that group. I dated a gal for awhile who was a member of the national car team, and that’s when first got into long-distance running. Then I blew-out my knee and I can’t do that anymore.

But it was interesting for me to see how important that was for those employees to have that. So do companies that are big enough need to be able to have a social environment where… Yeah, you have some parties, and some get-togethers. You don’t want to have the drunken Christmas party, that’s probably not a productive thing. But you do want to have some picnics and some get-togethers. And oftentimes, you’ll want to change the motivational environment, so you’ll bring in a speaker, or you’ll have a workshop, or a seminar, and try to change the environment. My wife has been to many of those at both Ramsey Hospital and at Gillette Children’s Hospital.

Then we have self-esteem needs. The esteem needs are about feeling good about yourself. It’s probably why you are here at school; it’s why a lot of companies have tuition reimbursement programs, so that there employees can feel better about themselves. And then the last one is self-actualization needs. And self-actualization is about becoming a complete person. So, in higher education for 19, 20, and 21 year olds, we promote and show pictures of organizations, and clubs, and activities, and couples smoothing on the campus and all of that. You can see in our marketing pieces, because we use this in the world of marketing, don’t we. Yeah, it’s part of the social thing.

And then, feeling good about yourself, and feeling accomplished, and then feeling as accomplished as you can be to the point of self-actualization.

So the number 1 selling books sold in America today are self-help books. What that tells you is that many of the people in this land of ours are working at… All of these lower needs are pretty much met. And they are working on these higher level needs.

Not today, but on another day we’ll cover a little bit more about this.

But, actually, self-actualization should really look like this, a volcano. Because you never really achieve it. You’re always striving to improve, right? And we sell a certain amount of products that relate to this. And in the real world of business, that’s what promotions are all about.

Alright, so that’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There are some questions in the test that will look at that, and we’ve at least, now, covered it.

And so I’ll give you the test, here.

{How many points is this one worth?}

They are all 50 points.

Now, you can write on the test. As a matter of fact, I want you to take the test home with you.