Extrinsic incentives are usually the go-to options for most organizations when it comes to motivating their employees. But although this can work in some contexts, research shows that relying on extrinsic motivation alone does more harm than good.

Managing different generations can seem like a challenge. But each generation doesn’t require wildly different management styles to stay motivated and do their best. Here’s why.

Are men and women motivated by different things? Using global data from tens of thousands of Attuned Intrinsic Motivation Assessments we compare the motivational needs of each in the workplace.

Managers who are motivated by Altruism and/or Innovation are more likely to create psychologically safe teams. Here’s why.

What the motivational profiles of 13,000+ people reveal about the needs and values of four generations.

Attuned Writer Fellowship winner Tania Rabesandratana reflects on a unique year spent exploring, researching, and writing about intrinsic motivation.

Jennifer Petriglieri, author and an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD business school, discusses some of the key questions that dual-career couples need to address if they want to create the conditions for lasting relationships in which intrinsic motivational needs are met on both sides.

As the Attuned Writer Fellowship 2021/22 comes to a close, Founder and CEO of Attuned Casey Wahl shares his favorite articles by the winner, Tania Rabesandratana, including some personal reflections on their impact.

Daniel Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author, and Tania Rabesandratana, Science Journalist & Attuned Writer Fellow 2021, discuss Daniel’s latest book, ‘The Power of Regret’', and the importance of using intrinsic motivation and regret as a guide towards a better life.

In this Q&A, we share insights from Ayelet Fishbach, professor of behavioural science and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and her book “Get It Done. Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.”

Ruth Gotian, author of The Success Factor, talks about her book and how intrinsic motivation, perseverance, strong foundations and continuous informal learning are key habits of successful people.

Are you 100% yourself at work? Most people, whether they know it or not, have a work persona, but maintaining this can become a burden over time. How can we free ourselves from the need to have a work persona in the first place?

Hastened by the pandemic, the lines between family life and work life have become increasingly blurred, with new flexible working styles bringing the two worlds together like never before. But, with the right approach and firmer boundaries, could this actually be a good thing? In short: is it time for family to come to work?

There are a number of reasons why your Intrinsic Motivator Report may not immediately resonate as an accurate picture of your underlying values. Here are a few factors to consider.

Flow describes the moments in life when a person is wholly engaged by a particular activity. Creating flow in workplace settings is particularly challenging, but there are a number of things that organizations can do to help cultivate it.

The world is constantly changing, and people change with it. Our early research suggests that people’s Intrinsic Motivator Profiles change over time in response to significant changes in both their work and their personal lives. As such, we’ve decided to introduce a new feature that reflects this: the Motivation Assessment Retake.

We’ve all heard the trope that the key to being a great leader is ‘Hiring good people and getting out of their way.’ But hiring and motivating aren’t that simple. And neither is ‘getting out of the way’. So if you really want to build a highly motivated team and keep them performing at the top level, then there’s one thing you simply can’t afford to ignore.

There is no organization in which everyone has the same top Motivators. It is therefore crucial for leaders to understand the key areas that are important to the majority of the team, so that they can recognize and overcome their own blindspots.

In the second featured post from the winner of The Attuned Writer Fellowship 2021, Tania Rabesandratana explores the question of why we persist at hobbies and activities that we know we’ll never excel at, why the concept of the growth mindset is flawed, and why there is joy to be found in mediocrity.

Motivating people is difficult enough at the best of times, but if your plan of action relies on fallacies or misconceptions, it’s nigh on impossible. Here, we debunk five of the most common myths around motivation at work and show you what you can do to really motivate your employees.

Following the launch of the inaugural Attuned Writer Fellowship earlier this year, we’re thrilled to bring you the first post from our winner, Tania Rabesandratana. If you like what you read, make sure you sign up for ‘Why Would Anyone’ on Substack!

The results are in! Three months after launching the inaugural Attuned Writer Fellowship, and after a judging process that was by turns fascinating, surprising, and genuinely inspiring, we have a winner: Tania Rabesandratana.

Being motivated by Progress means to be driven by a continual quest for self-improvement, whether that means honing existing abilities and working out how to be more efficient and effective, or learning and developing new skills. Here are 4 ways a high need for Progress can manifest and 4 things to be mindful about.

Relationship-building is an area in which many companies could improve, particularly as we enter an era in which hybrid working will increasingly become the norm. Here are 4 ideas to help motivate those in your team who value Social Relationships.

To get the best out of those with high Security needs, it’s important to prioritize clarity and structure in your communication and planning. This includes providing clear instructions and lines of reporting, easy-to-track KPIs, and a predictable schedule.

Attuned exists because people are different, and a cookie-cutter approach to management generally leads to a less than optimum work experience. But while the idea that people are different is central to our platform, we never fully appreciated quite how different they could be—until now.

When it comes to recruitment and the world of work, people have a knack for misunderstanding each other, having misplaced expectations, and ultimately making bad decisions. Often, the root cause of these problems is a lack of rational thinking—which is why Rationality should be a fundamental element of every company culture.

People with a high Altruism score can bring a real X-factor to team dynamics, and one that can help companies foster an atmosphere of psychological safety. This in turn helps managers build teams composed of complementary individuals, and not just uniform ‘robots’. But what does it mean to be motivated by Altruism, and how can managers nurture this attribute within their team?

Authenticity—staying true to one’s values, and not misrepresenting yourself in your words or your actions—is an important concept for both individuals and companies as a whole. But can too much authenticity be a bad thing? And what are the keys to being an authentic leader?

Innovation is defined as the practical implementation of novel and useful ideas, and it can be expressed in many different ways. But what does it mean to be motivated by Innovation? How does this motivator manifest itself in daily decision-making? And how do you work together effectively with people who aren’t motivated by Innovation?

A new academic report by Dr. Alicia von Schenk, a mathematician and researcher on the economics of artificial intelligence, offers fresh insights into how using Attuned to understand employees’ Intrinsic Motivations leads to higher engagement and happier work environments.

A desire to stay in control at all times is not uncommon among managers, but failing to provide enough freedom to employees with a high need for Autonomy can have a negative effect on their engagement and productivity. By combining Attuned’s motivational insights with effective management techniques, however, you can learn to let go without losing control.

The Attuned Writer Fellowship, the first program of its kind on digital newsletter-publishing platform Substack, will give one talented writer US$50,000 to launch and run a newsletter dedicated to exploring Intrinsic Motivation. Apply before July 31st, 2021!

Feedback is vital to our progress. It motivates people to work harder and provides a different perspective. So why can it sometimes be so hard to accept? The answer is that receiving—and giving—feedback are skills that require practice to perfect. Here are some simple steps to improve your ability to give and receive feedback more effectively.

The past year has taught us what psychologists have known for decades: that people are governed by individual differences and competing needs, with personal preferences determining the individual value hierarchies that drive our choices. But what happens when your own system of needs, values, and preferences contrasts starkly with that of someone you love?

Being motivated by Status conjures up images of power dressing, corner offices and C-suites, but the reality can be quite different. As well as outward indications of a person’s stature within their company and society as a whole, Status is also about taking pride in the work you do and the things you have achieved.

On first glance, Financial Needs may seem to be an extrinsically motivated value, but dig a little deeper and its characteristics as an Intrinsic Motivator become clear. From working with financial indicators, calculations, and planning, to the satisfaction that comes from helping a company generate more revenue, Financial Needs is about much more than the number in your bank account.

What does it mean to be intrinsically motivated by competition? Competition is not just about winning or losing, it also includes setting personal challenges and measuring your achievements against your own expectations, not that of others. In order to become a better manager you have to understand what competition means to you and your team members.

Every coaching partnership begins with self-knowledge and the assessment tool you choose will influence further discussions. Attuned will help you take the conversation to a deeper level with its focus on intrinsic motivation. Here are 22 powerful questions to discuss Attuned results.

Asking some additional questions will help you to challenge your assumptions about the motivation of your colleagues. If we want to do better for women at work, we need to remain open and curious. And when we ask better questions—and listen to the answers—we empower ourselves to act more equitably.

Managing people with different values can be a real challenge. How do you go about trying to understand them? What’s the best way to find common ground between your different perspectives? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a map to guide you through these conversations? There is: Attuned’s Interpersonal Motivator Gap display.

Both company driven events like a promotion and major external events like a global pandemic can affect changes in employees’ intrinsic motivation. These are very hard to notice, but may lead to active disengagement. Are you in a position to handle the consequences?

Are you overloaded with tips on how to motivate employees? Do one thing consistently over time to keep your company motivated! Focus on individual needs and ensure those are taken care of. For emergencies, get big data and software to help you.

“How to Be a Good Manager?” is an elusive question to answer. Here are the top 10 behaviors managers should practice to be a Good Manager. It’s a sophisticated guide. Management is Art. From tips such as “Understand the Individual” to “Fast Feedback Loops,” hard won knowledge is shared to make you a better manager.

Meaningful work is not only important for the employee’s well-being but also has significant economic impacts on organizations. To create a meaningful work environment, companies have to understand their employees’ intrinsic motivations and tailor a personalized management approach.

COVID-19 is pushing companies to make furloughs, layoffs and pay cuts. I wondered how people with different intrinsic motivational profiles would reduce costs to help the company survive the uncertainties of COVID-19. Here are 10 professionals and their answers to above question.

We all know that intrinsically motivated employees are happy employees. But a lot of managers are still struggling to really motivate their team members. That’s why we came up with 5 actions you can take right now to increase your employees intrinsic motivation.

I was privileged to join From Day One’s panel on “How Employees Can Embrace the Meaning in Their Work”. The discussion was at the forefront of the ongoing conversation about meaningful work and employee engagement. Here are some of the highlights.

We analyzed motivational profiles of thousands of Attuned survey respondents to find out what really motivates people at work. Did you know that over 40% of employees don’t care about social relationships at work? Check out our infographic to learn more about workplace motivation.

We analyzed a meta-study about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation covering over 40 years of research. Here are our main findings and, more importantly, how you can apply them in your business. Leave those extrinsic incentives for tree-planting.

How Covid-19 will change our working environments is still up in the air. But here at Attuned we are starting to see some real changes in people’s motivation data from pre-Covid to these with-Covid times. Here is the data.

Original research is important to us here at Attuned and that’s why we have been working with a team of researchers at Goethe University. We want to start sharing some of the initial findings from this collaboration.

Remote work challenges aside, there was a bigger challenge which would shortly hit the morale of nearly every team: the challenge of learning how to work from home and maintain a productivity level similar to that of the office. So how do you increase productivity and boost your morale when working from home?

We are going to break down the concept of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. We want every manager to understand the difference between the two and to know when each is most useful. This will make work a more meaningful part of life.

We started using our Attuned Motivator icons on Slack. Everyone displays their Top Motivator as an icon in the status field and now we never forget what motivates someone. Contact us to get the icons!

Here is some internal data about our biggest challenges regarding remote work and some of the measures to tackle them. How are we managing to keep everyone’s motivation high in these difficult times?

Some Book Recommendations by Attuned CEO Casey. With commutes down to mere seconds, and only capable of watching so much Netfiix, it is the perfect time to hold a physical book. These are some of the books I’ve been reading, and I’ve curated it down to the most compelling. You won’t be disappointed.

We’d like to offer the use of Attuned for free to those in universities or high schools and are facing very anxious times given the health and economic backdrop, as well as those career counselors and advisors that help them.

I wish I could say that there's an easy answer or one magical trick, but how you manage your time is the result of hundreds of choices and habits throughout the day. Feeling more in control of your time will mean changing your patterns and establishing new routines.

We wanted to understand the impact of culture on the motivational values of Japanese vs. "Western" employees. So, we compared 3,000 respondents.

Attuned brings intrinsic motivation-fueled insights to enterprise as talent market continues to contract

What unexpected answers regarding Japanese values did he get from Attuned's data? Also, how can teams and organizations leverage Attuned to improve management?

Attuned is updating the norm for its algorithms. This will help to further improve the accuracy of the motivational profiles and engagement levels.

Attuned met James Alexander, head coach of the US National Kudo Team, to talk about motivation and team management.

I spent 2880 hours leading 1-on-1's, a lot of that time was wasted. Only after finding out their intrinsic motivators, I could adjust to their needs.

The View from Both Ends of the Engagement Spectrum: Attuned at HCI Employee Engagement Conference.