FORZA VITALE! Interview With Daniel Pink About Motivation

FORZA VITALE!
March 19, 2010

OMA Visits With Daniel Pink
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Written by Joy Nauman and David Cannon

Daniel Pink visited Portland January 17 while on his book tour for his newly released Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. We scheduled an interview with him before his talk at Powell's and found him eager to relate his findings to the ways in which Montessori works with children. Obviously fascinated with learning "what makes people tick," Pink asked as many questions of us as we did of him.

Pink delivered the opening address at AMI's 2008 Refresher Course in Atlanta after publishing the book, A Whole New Mind. While researching his thesis for A Whole New Mind, Pink discovered that Montessori pedagogy is particularly well suited for the needs of children. His thesis that the world today needs people who think in fundamentally different ways led him to discover that Montessori was particularly well suited to the learning needs of the present and future world.

Drive is Pink's take on what has been discovered in recent decades about motivation. Pink has concluded that what most effectively fosters enduring motivation is that which leads an individual to feel any of these three things: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Pink cites a variety of studies that lead to this conclusion, and describes several successful business corporations using innovative managerial methods that are consistent with this enlightened theory of motivation. Pink contrasts the results of a traditional reward and punishment approach to motivation, which he calls Motivation 2.0, to those achieved by a style that promotes autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which he labels Motivation 3.0.

"Rewards and punishments do work well in a narrow band of circumstances," Pink acknowledged, "but even then they produce a cascade of collateral damages. Many experiments have shown, for example, that the use of rewards tends to extinguish the desired behaviors, especially those that are creative or complex."

Pink is not arguing that "carrots and sticks" should be abandoned altogether. He makes a point, for example, that financial compensation necessarily plays a role in workplace motivation. It's simply been given too much emphasis in relation to other factors necessary to bring out the best in people.

Drive focuses largely on adults and the world of work, although it does include a chapter on education. Pink was more than happy to talk with us about children and the educational system, which, he believes, continues to rely largely on assumptions about motivation that have been shown to be false and fail to prepare young people for the kinds of lives and careers that will serve them and society well. In his chapter on education, Pink describes several educational systems that support these ideas on motivation, including a paragraph on Montessori education.

"The vast majority of Montessorians know exactly what I'm talking about in this book. You practice what I call 'big-picture' learning. You understand that children, like adults, are engaged in their most meaningful learning when they achieve what has been called 'flow.' This is not only a deeply satisfying state of mind, but it is powerfully motivating of future efforts." Pink noted that what Montessori education offers children is the chance to work and learn in a manner that often produces this state of mind because Montessori classrooms focus on the individual's sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Daniel Pink told us he hopes his new book will be a useful tool for Montessorians and others who are working to bring understanding about this fundamental and important issue of motivation.