Third Shelf

Motivating and managing people is a tricky business. How then do we manage stress and keep people motivated?

Theory X and Theory Y

Donald McGregor identified two attitudes known as Theory X and Theory Y. In short, Theory X is someone that has an innate dislike of work and tends to avoid responsibility. They need coercion, direction and control. Theory Y, on the other hand, is someone that experience work as natural as rest or play and their commitment is typically in relation to the rewards associated with their achievements.

Each theory has a corresponding managerial approach. Theory X managers are autocratic and demand total control, managing through fear and punishment. Theory Y managers set the goal and let the person or team get on with it.  With that being said, McGregor found that staff behaviour and motivation is influenced by expectations set by the manager, i.e., if the manager assumes that you are going to produce work of excellence, you are likely to try and meet it.

Models of motivation

Taylorist model

Frederick Taylor believed that people are only motivated by money. This is not always the case, even in situations where the output can be directly related to reward. Output is often constrained through norms accepted by a work group. It’s typically unspoken rules which determine the quantity of output to produce. In a software development environment it is difficult to determine and quantify the amount of work completed by an individual – it’s a team effort. Setting an excessive financial reward between employees must be considered very carefully as it can break down morale and productivity. Bonuses are usually awarded at the end of project as a work-around to this problem.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Motivation is a little more complicated than Frederick Taylor puts forward. Maslow suggests that as one motivator is satisfied, another will emerge. If you are broke, money is a fairly good motivator. When the financial need is satisfied, a higher level need will emerge. The needs hierarchy starts from the basic need of food, shelter and personal safety, to the highest level which is the feeling of fulfilling your potential or self-actualization. At different stages of life people are motivated by different things. For example, an older employee consider the quality of the job more important than a younger employee.  The younger employee considers a raise in pay more important than quality of job.

Herzberg’s two factor theory

Herzberg found that there are two factors in a job that will affect your satisfaction. The first is hygiene or maintenance factors. If working conditions are not right, it will definitely affect your level of satisfaction with the job. The other is motivators. These are typically a sense of achievement, or that the job is worthwhile.

Expectancy theory of motivation

Victor Vroom created the expectancy theory, which identifies three influences on motivation. They are expectancy, which is the belief that the harder you work the higher your performance will be; instrumentality, which is the belief that better performance will be rewarded, and finally the perceived value of that reward. If all three motivating factors are high, then motivation will be high. A zero score for any one of the three can remove motivation.

Oldham-Hackman job characteristic model

According the Oldham-Hackman model, there are five factors that influence job satisfaction. The first is the number of skills that can be exercised while doing the job; second is task identity, which refers to the degree to which your work identifies you as the author  and lastly, the degree of influence that your work has on other people i.e., the significance of your task. These three factors determines how meaningful your job is to you.  The other factors include the amount of say in the way you do your job and the feedback you receive about the work you’ve done.

There are a few simple things one can do to improve motivation, viz.,

• Set specific goals;
• Feedback on work completed;
• Tailoring tasks;
• Increase the task scope;
• Increase responsibility.

Stress

With deadlines, objectives and obstacles, life is pretty stressful as a programmer. On the other hand, some pressure is good as boredom is soul-destroying. That being said, too much pressure affects not only work quality but health too. Some major factors that cause stress is not knowing what is expected from you and what you’re responsible for. Also, being torn between responsibilities such as attending an important meeting or looking after a sick child. Research shows that productivity and quality  suffers when more than 40-hours per week is exceeded. One of the axioms of extreme programming is to work no more than 40-hours per week. In a US study it was shown that people under 45 years of age who work more than 48-hours per week had double the risk of death from coronary heart disease.

To prevent overtime, project managers can be more realistic about the effort and time needed to complete a task or project. Exercising good planning and control will help to reduce unexpected obstacles. Some managers use bullying tactics and claim to be successful at pushing projects through. They typically need to create crisis to be able to justify such tactics. On the other hand, you find professional project managers that use rational, orderly and careful methods to deliver successful projects.

References

1. Hughes, B. & Cotterell, M. 2009. Software Project Management, 5e. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education.