Motivation: “Autonomy” May Not Mean What You Think it Means
The tech world, where I spend most of my time, talks a lot about autonomy and autonomous teams. The Agile Manifesto recognized that motivated individuals with access to the resources they need get things done. Daniel Pink’s analysis of motivation in Drive captured public attention. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose became buzzwords.1
Organizations built people programs and leadership training around them. These ideas became part of the fabric of modern habits of organizational behaviour.
But the money poured into this way of thinking hasn’t revolutionized employee motivation the way it was expected to.
It has, however, increased the volume and frequency with which employees are willing to talk about the negative impact work culture has on their mental health.
This is a good step forward. The pain caused by the old ways of thinking about employee relations has been surfaced. Employees have realized they have choices and are walking away or demanding more money. Employers are realizing that finding more effective ways to increase employee motivation would be much cheaper than paying the salaries people demand when they are only motivated by money.
But the hard to implement nuances in Drive have too often been ignored AND the research has moved on. It’s time to deepen our understanding and evolve our practices in response.
To begin with: vocabulary.
Definition of autonomy
1: the quality or state of being self-governing
2: self-directing freedom and especially moral independence2
3: a self-governing state
Colloquially, I hear the principle of “autonomy” captured with phrases like “master of our own destiny” or “we decide what to work on.” Neither of these are realistic or practical maxims in a corporate setting. When a team uses those phrases to talk about autonomy, they are doing the organizational equivalent of a toddler shouting “you’re not the boss of me,” or “when I grow up, I’ll never….”
The reality is that individuals, teams, organizations, and even countries are interdependent. Toddlers and teenagers fight against this reality and test the limits, but eventually, they learn that freedom from interdependence is a myth.
Teams are interdependent with customers, other teams, and funding.
Freedom is a Myth if You Look From the Outside
Pink’s version of autonomy was something different, something more like what Martin Seligman3 calls “agency” and human resource departments call engagement.
Engagement is a felt sense and not an observed behaviour. The studies that show that employee engagement increase all sorts of good organizational outcomes measure engagement qualitatively and subjectively. This subjectivity makes all the difference.
Structures and Leadrrs Can Impede a Sense of Agency But They Cannot Create it
It is easy to shut down an employee’s sense of agency: tell them what to do and how to do it. You don’t even have to be explicit. Imply there is a right way to do things and they will find a way to do what is implied.
If you have ever watched a movie and seen an actor say one thing and been able to tell that they mean another, you have read the subtext. The subtext is conveyed through non-verbal communication or behaviour. People are great at reading other people’s subtext, even when the person speaking is lying to themselves and thinks they are telling the truth.
Most people come into their first job already having been trained to do both what they have been told and what they have deduced is expected that hasn’t been stated. Parents frequently give kids the impression that their love and care are conditioned on the kid behaving as desired. Teachers are more explicit: do the work I assign the way I want it done if you want a good grade, and you need good grades for a good future.4
Kids are great at figuring out which stated demands are negotiable or ignorable and which implicit expectations are not. Adults are better, though they tend to err on the side of following all implied and explicit instructions when their livelihoods are on the line.
A Sense of Agency is Claimed by an Individual
In order to have a sense of agency, people who were not treated as full agents as young children have to unlearn the obedience and compliance they were taught.
The easiest way to do this is working with a professional coach.5 Coaches certified by the International Coach Federation are trained to avoid acting as mentors or teachers. They refuse to tell people what to do while walking clients through a process of self-inquiry that results in the client deciding for themselves what to do. The process of working with a qualified coach is training in claiming agency.
Part of what makes coaching effective is a rigorous focus on what the client can do in whatever circumstances the client finds themselves in. It is the choice to do what is possible and in their control and accept what others do, even when undesirable, that results in the client getting a sense of agency.
The client stops reacting to the world from a sense that the world is forcing them to do things and starts choosing what action to take given what is happening around them.
Teams Can Claim Agency at Any Time
Teams can claim agency the same way individuals can.
In a team that has claimed agency, you will hear conversations like this.
A: “We have been asked to have these three deliverables ready in three days. This first one is in bad shape and they other two could use some work. There’s a holiday tomorrow and we had talked about being better about not working on holidays. It doesn’t look like we have time to take the holiday and get all three done. What are we going to do?”
B: “I booked things with my family for tomorrow after our last conversation about avoiding burnout and I’m not prepared to give that up, but I can stay late tonight.”
C: “I think the third one is good enough for now. It’s not customer-ready, but since it’s being prepped for an internal review on Monday, we’re going to get another look at it before it goes out.”
D: “How about we call that last one good enough for now, A and I stay late tonight to give the second one another couple of hours, and then we all drop everything else for the two days after the holiday to get a minimum solution for the one that’s in bad shape.”
B: “That works for me.”
C: “What about finding out whether the next team is ready to build on what we do before we deliver a minimum solution? If they aren’t ready, maybe we can get another couple of days to get them something better.”
D: “I like that even better.”
A: “Same.”
B: “Me, too.”
A: “Okay. I can reach out to the next team in a few minutes and I’ll let you all know what I find out. Either way, we have a plan.”
Notice that the key question was “what are we going to do?” instead of “how are we going to do it all?” The team looked at the circumstances, including external expectations, and made their choice about what to do.
If this team was consistently asked to do too much or got treated badly for taking this level of initiative, they would learn to comply or the team members would start looking for other jobs. Most likely, in that situation, the leaders they report to would see more of the behaviour they desired and then be surprised by a wave of resignations.
Autonomy isn’t About Independence; It’s About Permission to Use One’s Creativity and Knowledge
When people and teams are treated as means to an end, they lose their motivation to work with others.
When their felt sense of agency is respected and encouraged, motivation has room to grow.6
Daniel Pink, Drive, Riverhead Hardcover, 2009.
I’m not going discuss “moral independence” in this article, but it is very important. Moral independence is why clarity of personal values is more important for employee engagement than clarity about company values (see Barry Posner and James M. Kouzes, The Truth About Leadership: The No-fads, Heart-of-the-Matter Facts You Need to Know, John Wiley & Sons, 2010). A lack of moral independence is also a major cause of burnout. See https://www.fastcompany.com/90712671/feeling-distressed-at-work-it-might-be-more-than-burnout
Martin Seligman identified a felt sense of agency as one of five factors necessary for humans to thrive, see Martin Seligman, Flourish, Atria Books, 2012.
For alternative approaches to parenting and teaching, see Linda Dobson, What the Rest of Us Can Learn from Homeschooling, Three Rivers Press, 2003 and Kate Arms, L.I.F.T.: A Coach Approach to Parenting, Signal Fire Press, 2018.
If you haven’t worked with a coach before, I suggest booking a session with an ICF-certified or EMCC-certified coach. Many coaches offer a taste of coaching as part of negotiating a coaching contract. It’s impossible to understand the power of coaching without experiencing it. You can book a sample session with me at: https://katearms.as.me/PSatS.
As Pink points out in Drive, transitioning to collaborating with people without relying on extrinsic motivation isn’t always as easy as it sounds. And it can be hard for some people to see teams as having motivation. If you have difficulty, a systems-orientated coach can help. I would be happy to talk to you more about how. You can book time with me at: https://katearms.as.me/PSatS.