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"Motivation is about knowledge, it's about being wise... I don't believe in relying on some inner strength that you might feel you have or not. I believe in learning and being wise and doing the things that keep you motivated." - Dr. Ayelet Fishbach
The WorkWell Podcast™ is back and I am so excited about the inspiring guests we have lined up. Wellbeing at work is the issue of our time. This podcast is your lens into what the experts are seeing, thinking, and doing.
Hi, I am Jen Fisher, host, bestselling author and influential speaker in the corporate wellbeing movement and the first-ever Chief Wellbeing Officer in the professional services industry. On this show, I sit down with inspiring individuals for wide-ranging conversations on all things wellbeing at work. Wellbeing is the future of work. This podcast will help you as an individual, but also support you in being part of the movement for change in your own organizations and communities. Wellbeing can be the outcome of work well designed. And we all have a role to play in this critical transformation!
This podcast provides general information and discussions about health and wellness. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The podcast owner, producer and any sponsors are not liable for any health-related claims or decisions made based on the information presented or discussed.
The WorkWell Podcast™ with guest Dr. Ayelet Fishbach (01/09/2025)
Jen Fisher: [00:00:00] The WorkWell Podcast series is back and I am so excited about the inspiring guests that we have lined up this season. Wellbeing at work is the issue of our time and this podcast is your lens into what the experts are seeing, thinking, and doing.
We all want to achieve our goals, but how often do we find ourselves stuck, procrastinating, or even giving up entirely? What if the very strategies we're using to stay motivated are actually working against us? Today, we're diving deep into the science of motivation with one of the world's leading experts on the subject.
This is The WorkWell Podcast series. Hi, I'm Jen Fisher, and I'm excited to have a special co-host joining me today from our friends at Lyra Health. Keren Wasserman leads organizational development at Lyra Health and holds an MA in social work from the University of Chicago. [00:01:00] Prior to joining Lyra Health, Keren worked at Deloitte as a management consultant, and she's passionate about helping organizations create healthy workplaces by embedding wellbeing strategies into employee’s day-to-day work.
Together, we're thriving. I'm thrilled to be speaking with Dr. Ayelet Fishback, a professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Ayelet's groundbreaking research has transformed our understanding of how people pursue goals and what drives human behavior. She studies social psychology and management. With a particular focus on motivation and decision making her latest book, get it done. Surprising lessons from the science of motivation reveals fascinating insights about why we do or don't do the things that we know we should.
This episode of The WorkWell Podcast is made possible because of our friends at Lyra Health. Lyra Health is a premier global workforce mental [00:02:00] health solution trusted by leading companies like Starbucks, Morgan Stanley, Lululemon, and Zoom. Lyra provides personalized care to over 17 million people with fast access to evidence based providers and tools that deliver proven results including faster recovery and reduced health care costs.
This season, Lyra and The WorkWell Podcast are teaming up to bring you more insights on how to build a thriving work culture for today and the future. We'll be bringing you cutting edge data and research on workplace mental health and wellbeing and we'll have some Lyra experts occasionally join us to share their perspectives on workforce mental health and creating psychologically safe and effective work environments.
Find out more at www.LyraHealth.com/WorkWell. Thank you to Lyra for helping us elevate this season of The WorkWell Podcast.
Ayelet and Keren, welcome to the show. I'm so [00:03:00] grateful both of you could be here today.
Ayelet Fishbach: Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for having me too, Jen.
Jen Fisher: Ayelet, I want to start with you.
You've dedicated your career to Understanding what drives human behavior. So, I'd love to start just by hearing your story. Who are you? And what first sparked this fascination with motivation science?
Ayelet Fishbach: Uh, so I'm Ayelet Fishbeck. I'm a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and I am a motivation scientist, which is an interesting title, uh, giving this did not exist when I started my career.
And so I became a motivation scientist as motivation became a science in the behavioral science. I was just very lucky to, uh, basically ask myself, how do people do this? And, uh, what does it mean to be motivated at the time when a bunch of other people were, [00:04:00] uh, starting to ask this question. You know, I recently saw this cartoon of a butterfly telling a caterpillar that you have to try harder. And I feel that this was the state of motivation science when, when I entered it, that the advice was just, come on, you can do it. Just try harder. And of course, a caterpillar is not going to become a butterfly just by trying harder. And I don't think that this advice is, is or was useful to, to anybody.
And, uh, and I just got curious in, okay, what can we do? How can we change the situation? How can we change the way we think about the situation that in ways that make it more possible, that make it more likely.
Jen Fisher: The thing that I have found most fascinating with your research is just what you said. These common motivation strategies that we [00:05:00] all probably still use today actually backfire on us.
And so, can you share, like, what are these counterintuitive findings that might surprise people in, you know, trying to understand motivation science?
Ayelet Fishbach: Oh, there are many. They can directly backfire. They can also be just not very effective, such as the advice to just try harder. So as some examples for ways that directly backfire, well, you know, putting a number on your goal saying.
This is how much I should be doing, or I should be finishing it in particular date is, is often effective. Uh, but if people don't adjust these numbers or, you know, if we don't have some healthy relationships with these numbers, they can seriously backfire. We can set a goal and then give up. Okay. So we don't do [00:06:00] anything because we realized that there was no way we are going to meet this deadline.
Okay. I'll do this much. We might. We find ourselves pursuing shortcuts at the workplace. We often set goals for ourselves or for our employees, and then find that people found a not so ethical way of getting there. Okay. Maybe, uh, I am going to write a report by a certain date, but it's not going to be a good report.
Uh, we see that people injure themselves when they set the wrong goals. goals. Let's take marathon running when people prioritize meeting a certain target. Okay, let's say finish this marathon under four hours or three and a half hours, and it's not the right number for them. That will lead to injury. To give you another example, incentives.
Incentives are great. We often suggest that people will find the right [00:07:00] incentive. It will make them feel good. It will be immediate. Incentives can backfire and there is a field of behavioral economics that has dozens of examples for how sometimes paying people lead them to either do less or do the wrong thing, um, or, uh, lose the purpose of why.
They are doing what they are doing, and I can give you many examples of that.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, I, well, I know we're going to get into two better ways of doing this, um, but one thing I do want to reflect on is that you brought up this whole notion of goal setting, especially, I think, in the workplace, because what I have found is typically when you set goals for a whole year.
By the time the year ends and you look back on those goals, many of those goals end up not being [00:08:00] relevant anymore. That so much has changed or the direction changed. And we never went back to actually revisit those. So, is there a better way?
Ayelet Fishbach: Yes, you know, we need to be flexible, right? The problem with annual goals often is what we refer to as the middle problem.
Okay, there is a long middle. In the year. And so you find yourself highly motivated at the beginning, but then motivation tend to decline. And for some goals by the end of the year, we don't even remember them. So, it's not just the middle. It's also the end that we lose for other goals. Actually, toward the end, there is an uptick in motivation.
This does not mean the setting goals is not useful, it is, okay. It is where you start, okay, you start by saying this is my destination, this is where I want to go. But, uh, uh, maybe you, uh, didn't quite get it right, [00:09:00] and so it is a constant process of adjustment.
Keren Wasserman: Ayelet, I would love to hear you talk even a little bit more about how to overcome that midpoint slum and what you recommend really to make sure that people feel like they can follow through on their goals.
Ayelet Fishbach: I love the way you refer to this as the midpoint slum. It's not my expression, but I might take it from you. Uh, well, the best solution for this is just to, uh, keep the middle short. Take, uh, um, retirement goals. They are terrible for people because there is a very long middle, which is basically your entire career.
Okay. And so, uh, we break it into maybe an annual retirement. Okay. We know we think about exercising, uh, you want to exercise for the rest of your life, uh, but you [00:10:00] set a weekly goal or maybe a daily goal. And the idea with this weekly goal is that there is the beginning of the week, the end of the week, and not much of a middle.
Uh, we find that the more you have a middle, the more people lose sight of what they're trying to achieve. Do not only they do it less, they also seriously cut corners to give you an example. We actually run a study where people could literally cut corners. That is, we gave them some shapes and. On a piece of paper and a pair of scissors and they had to cut them say so you cut the first shape and then the second shape and then the third and so on.
People literally cut more corners in the middle. That is the first and the last shape were perfect. The middle ones not so much. So, make middle short.
Keren Wasserman: Interesting. And I'm curious [00:11:00] what you think is happening for people emotionally. That they're, they literally start cutting corners. What, what happens when, uh, we have these very, very long-term goals and what's the connection between our emotions and motivation in this way?
Ayelet Fishbach: The connection between emotions and motivation is bigger than the middle problem. So let me answer it in, uh, two, uh, ways. Uh, the reason we don't do much, uh, in the middle, no cut corners is, uh, uh, because we kind of lost sight of the goal. It's not top of mind. It doesn't make us happy or sad. Okay. It's a bit disconnected from where our attention and therefore our emotions are.
When you have a long middle also, whatever you do feels like a [00:12:00] drop in the bucket. Okay. And so, it doesn't really matter. And when it doesn't matter, you're not going to be upset if you didn't do it. You're not going to be too happy if you did do it. And now let's. Go back to emotions. Emotions are really interesting.
There is, um, actually very strong connection between emotions and motivations. One of the, you know, the journals that a lot of the motivation work is, uh, is getting published in is called, uh, motivation and emotion, and for a good reason, uh, emotions are. a feedback system. Okay. And so presumably we all know that when we do something well, we will feel good when we do it.
Don't do it well, we will feel bad. Our emotions tell us how well we do. Our emotions also tell us what is the, the kind of success that we had. Okay. So if it's a more of the self [00:13:00] control kind of success, okay. We were able to do something that requires effort. We will feel proud. Okay. Or we will feel guilty or shameful if we failed on this very high order goal.
If it's more of an immediate thing that we want to do. Okay. We're going on vacation. We are having a nice dinner with the loved ones. Then the emotion is more about fun and happiness. You know, if we had a fight with these people over dinner, then we feel sad and it's, It's a different emotion that tell us that we were either doing well or not on this more immediate goal.
Keren Wasserman: I think about this context of emotions on your work that helps us to understand whether we should focus on how far we've come or how far we still have to go. And how those two perspectives kind of play into [00:14:00] how we feel along the way toward achieving goals.
Ayelet Fishbach: So, we talked about setting a goal. You need to decide on a goal.
You need to know what you are doing and why you're doing it. And now you need to monitor your progress. And there are basically two ways of doing it. You can either look back and say, this is how much I've done, or you can look forward and say, this is what I still need to do. Okay. So, let's take, you know, I got the simplest, uh, mundane goal that people, uh, have, let's say that you are in some loyalty program and you need to make 10 purchases in order to get the free reward.
Okay. We all had that goal at one point. You can look back and say, I already made two purchases, or you can look ahead and say, I. still have eight purchases to go, okay, at work, you can look back and say, I already started the project. I did whatever 40 percent or I still have a 60 percent to go. [00:15:00] And what we find is that first up to the 50 percent point for goals that have clear end state, up to the middle of the It's best to look back at how much you have done and then after the 50 percent it's best to look forward.
Now the way to think about it is in terms of always focus on the small area, okay? So, students will work harder, employees will work harder, consumers will be more loyal to their loyalty program, uh, if they initially look back and then shift to looking forward. Another factor that we studied was Just expertise and commitment and experts look ahead.
Experts say, I still have 20 percent to go. And novices say, I have completed that much. Okay, and so you can kind of ask yourself, [00:16:00] do I feel comfortable here? Am I the expert or am I just starting? And monitor your progress accordingly.
Jen Fisher: You know, this makes me think about when it's not a goal that you set.
When I'm asking my husband to take out the garbage and he's annoyed and frustrated with me. Does the annoyance and frustration, do those emotions motivate him or not motivate him? So, what if it's just things that you have to do as opposed to goals that you want to achieve?
Ayelet Fishbach: Yeah, you just, this is the.
It's so rich. This is the issue with emotions and motivation. It's, uh, and what you're highlighting is, is basically that emotions are not just there as feedback system. Emotions are the, they were developed, I believe, as our sensory system. Now I have a sensory system that tells me whether I feel pain or I feel pleasure, and I have my emotions that [00:17:00] tell me whether I go in the right direction or the wrong direction.
However, emotions are also goals in themselves, okay? So, your spouse would like to feel good, okay? And you would like to make them feel good. And so, when they are annoyed, it's not just some feedback that, uh, something in their relationship here needs to be, uh, fixed, or that, uh, uh, maybe the trash need to be out.
Uh, it also something that tells you, Oh, my goal of having a wonderful evening with this person is, um, is not going well. Okay. I was hoping to feel good and now we are arguing. So, you see that the problem here, the emotions are caused by themselves. Okay. And often when you ask people what they're trying to, to do.
To achieve this, oh, I just want to be happy. Okay. And so, they basically tell you, I want to feel good. [00:18:00] Problem with emotions as goals is that now, if you don't feel good, it's not just feedback on what should you do. It's, um, It's, it's much harder. Okay. It's, it's now you are failing yourself as a, you know, as a person who wanted to feel good.
Okay. What I'm trying to, to say here is that once we define our goal in life to seek pleasure and feel good, any deviation is, is much harder. Okay. Whereas if our goal was different, okay. Maybe to have. a clean house, so a healthy family, uh, then, uh, the negative emotion is, uh, is a signal we can use it. We can be comfortable with it.
There is less of a sense of this, like a very central problem. How [00:19:00] can I feel bad? When my goal was to feel good,
Keren Wasserman: Keren, does that resonate with you? It really does. And, you know, I'm thinking about all of this Ayelet. I just wanted to share with you that after reading your book, I was on a hike with a friend over the summer and The hike was long and hard and you know, you start to experience kind of the feelings of Grind start to shift in and we started talking about okay Should we be thinking about this from the perspective of how much more do we have to go?
You know How much have we done and this friend in particular is a midwife and I had shared your strategies around motivation. Um, and she came back to me afterwards and, and she started telling me that in the middle of labor, she's actually started applying your strategies around thinking about, you know, how much more is there to go.
And she just started to see in the room, how the [00:20:00] emotions of her patients. changed and how they started to feel more optimistic. And so being mindful of this connection between, um, emotions and motivation is, is super powerful.
Ayelet Fishbach: I love that. Thank you. I, I, my daughter, one of my daughters is an OBGYN. I'm going to tell her that.
Keren Wasserman: So, I want to get a little bit practical here and go back to your recipe for sustainable motivation. And we'd love to know what are some of those key ingredients if you were to provide us some. that ideal recipe for goal setting and thinking about motivation?
Ayelet Fishbach: Yes. So, when I look at the field of motivation science and basically what strategies we have discovered, it's very easy to put them into four buckets.
So that recipe has these four buckets of [00:21:00] motivation. You need to have goals. That is, you need to know where. I'm trying to get, uh, you need to be able to sustain your motivation as we go there and we know touch the middle problem in looking back, looking forward. So how, how do I get there? We didn't touch yet.
Managing multiple goals, which is the third backet, you never just want one thing. And so, you know, you're at work and you're thinking about your family and your vacation and your health goals and what's not. Okay. So how do you manage all of this? Uh, and we briefly touched that the support, okay. The social support, you need to be thinking about who is helping you, who is your role model.
How other people fit in pursuing this goal, which is the fourth part of my recipe. Okay. So, setting goals, sustaining motivation, managing multiple goals, make sure [00:22:00] that other people are helping.
Keren Wasserman: I'm coming off of a, uh, a work retreat this past week. We all got together and we were thinking about, you know, some of our goals for the year.
And you're, you're phrasing that, you know, we never just want one thing where there are always so many competing goals and priorities. And it makes me think about how, when it comes to training managers, there is, you know, oftentimes a lot of room for manager education and helping them understand how to.
Set goals and priorities in ways that would be motivating for their team, especially as they juggle so many competing priorities. And so I'm curious to hear more from your perspective, especially as you work in a business school, you know what the science tells us about essential skills that new leaders should be focusing on first in the context of [00:23:00] management.
Ayelet Fishbach: Well, as a leader, your call is to, to motivate people, right? To, uh, help them set goals, to help them, uh, get things done. In my management class, the way I started last is by telling my MBA students, you know, I have to. To a certain point in your career, if something had to be done, you just did it. Uh, now you are managers and you only have two hands and one head, and there is no way you can get things done just with this case.
So, you have to manage other people, which means that you need to motivate other people. You are their leader and hence the person that is going to help them stay motivated. To start with, you need to, uh, listen and collect information and, uh, basically run some diagnosis. Uh, I actually, in my, in my classes, I refer to, uh, some lesson [00:24:00] from Toyota going all the way back to the eighties when management declared that if you don't see a problem, that's a problem.
Uh, if you've not discovered what needs to be fixed, then that you are. just fooling yourself. We can always improve. We can always do better. And so this is where I would start a listen around the diagnosis. Keep in mind that it is better to change people's situations, change how you define their goals. You know, we talked about maybe focus on what has been completed.
Some other times focus on what needs to be done. It's changing the situation, changing the framing of the situation. It's less about changing the people in the room. I mean, we, we do change the people in the room, right? We hire new talent, but this is expensive. The [00:25:00] easy things, the immediate things are to see what's the problem and changing the way we do and think about issues at work to increase motivation.
Keren Wasserman: Oh, okay. Such gold that I want to recap what you just shared, the essential skills. And you know, I'm going to be thinking about this as part of my role is to focus on designing training as one, teaching new managers how to look for the problem, how to diagnose what's happening so that they have a clear sense of what they're looking to improve upon, how they can support their team.
And the second piece around having the opportunity to once you know what the problem is, be strategic with how you're defining, uh, the solution for it and achieving the solution through your research on motivation.
Jen Fisher: Yeah. I mean, two areas that I, that I really want to talk about that I feel like are misconceptions or [00:26:00] narratives that we have in our head around motivation.
The first is. Willpower and I yell at you touched on this a little bit, but I want to dig deeper Around this idea of you know, if I just push through with sheer determination in particular because I am a person that has experienced a very significant episode with burnout that came about by Just pushing through with that sheer determination And obviously it didn't get me anywhere but burnt out And then I think the second part Which we can we can tackle in a minute is talking more about failure Because I think that in the workplace the fear of failure holds us So much, but your research actually shows that failure is where we learn the most.
And so how can we change the dynamic or our beliefs around failure? So, I know that was a lot. [00:27:00]
Ayelet Fishbach: Yeah, that was two questions, right? Two for the price of one. So, you know, it. Willpower is, is great. Like, I don't say that there are no individual differences in, in willpower. It's just that there is not much that we can do about it.
Okay. Uh, you know, some people, uh, have talent for math and so they will learn it more quickly than those who don't have talent. Uh, some people have greater willpower and so it will be easier for them than those You know, if you have less willpower, there is really not much to do about it. We used to think that, uh, motivation is like a muscle, you can practice it and strengthen it.
The evidence is very weak for, for this. It seems much more effective to learn too. [00:28:00] Strategies, okay, to learn tricks. It seemed that some people are smarter, okay, are more knowledgeable about how to motivate themselves and others. And these variations matter. These are the people that actually do better.
And so I don't oppose willpower. If you have it great. Uh, if you don't feel that you have it, or it's not strong at the moment, you know what? I never relied on it in the first place. So, it really doesn't matter. What matters is, is knowledge.
Jen Fisher: I see it as you having a lot of willpower or strong willpower, but what it, what I'm really seeing is maybe it's just somebody that figured out how to self-motivate and uses the strategies that you have discovered works, um, to motivate themselves.
Ayelet Fishbach: Exactly. Right. So, they're going to take the example of working with others. We, we are humans. Okay. We are social animals. We need to see people we need to [00:29:00] work with. Are there are people, okay. And so if you put me in the room, uh, which actually is now like something that many people have, right. Because they walk from home by themselves.
Okay. I sitting there in the room for many hours a day and basically lose their motivation. Well, anybody will lose their motivation. If you just sit by yourself and not interacting with other people. And so, this has to change. And if you are wise about it, if you know that you need to. Be working with other people, then, uh, all of a sudden you will see that you have more motivation.
But you also, do you want me to talk about failure?
Jen Fisher: I would love for you to tell me why, because I have a fear. Fear of failure. So, tell me why failure is good, please. .
Ayelet Fishbach: Yeah. So now, um, I, I did a lot of my research on. And, uh, It's [00:30:00] not that people learn more from failure, it's that failure has better information, often.
I like that. And so, it's actually hard to learn from failure when we, you know, try something and it didn't work as we expected. Our intuition is to either ignore it, okay, just forget it happened. What we say, brush it off, okay, don't tell your manager. Or, uh, another intuition is just to make this into a big, uh, personal thing where I, I guess this is not for me.
Okay. I guess I cannot do it. So, either like ignoring it or, uh, uh, making that, uh, the one wrong conclusions for me, where is. Failure or let's call it more generally unexpected results often have really good information. I just met with one of my graduate students this week who told me that we got some results that are [00:31:00] really interesting.
Think about what does it mean that the results are really interesting? Well, it's not what they look like. We expect it. If it's exactly what we expected, then we were successful. And the results are not interesting because this is what I knew I'm going to get. It's interesting and new. And there is something to learn here because I didn't expect this because it's different.
Whatever we were looking for is not on the right side. Maybe we should explore the left side. Okay. Uh, this, uh, strategy does not work. We should try. Another one. We did not know this in advance. And so, this is new to us, but we need to have very good relationships with failures so we can learn. And of course, you know, some failures are just not very wise.
And so, we just say, oh yeah, that was a mistake. So we, [00:32:00] I'm not referring to the, this kind of like small mistakes where we kick ourselves. So how, how could I forgot this again? Okay. Or something like this. I'm talking about more of failures where there was a good reason to expect that something will be successful.
I know I analyze the situation. I decided to go with this strategy. My team was behind me. And it didn't work out. There's something to learn. This is an interesting failure.
Keren Wasserman: Yes. So Ayelet, I, uh, the epiphany that you're helping me have right now is that if you look at failure as novelty, as something unexpected, that can be a very helpful lens of viewing it and actually deriving a lot of insights from it.
And so, I'm, I'm gonna, you know, kind of be repeating to myself, like failure, failure is novelty. Like what's novel here? What's, what's new to uncover? And, you know, since that sort of [00:33:00] unlocked this for me, I'm curious if you have any other thoughts on it. How do you help people shift from feeling avoidant about failure to actually being a little bit more open to exploring failure in order to uncover novelty?
Ayelet Fishbach: I would love to a few things that you can do. Okay. Uh, one strategy that we, uh, studied now in many, many, many groups is inviting people who were struggling to give advice. Okay. So basically we look at, uh, unemployed people and asking them, for advice on how to get a job, or we are looking at people that are struggling with health issues, okay, and how can you become healthier, or students that are struggling, asking them how to better study.
And then we compare how motivated they feel by the advice that they have given [00:34:00] compared to advice that they receive. Okay, so we can also give them advice. Turn out that many strugglers Feel more motivated by the advice that they generate for themselves than by the advice that they are given, because when I ask you to give advice, I force you to learn.
I ask you why? Did you fail? Okay. Like what have you learned? What advice can you give me based on this? And it's a very cheap and easy strategy to move people to the mindset of, okay, what, what was surprising here? What should I have done differently?
Keren Wasserman: You know, so often in the workplace, managers maybe are sometimes required.
Sometimes they want to do postmortems with their team and you can enter a conversation about a, you know, postmortem or after-action review. And there's a lot [00:35:00] of tension in the room and your insight about asking people for advice, like opening the conversation with how would you have done this differently feels like a really human and approachable way to look back on what maybe didn't work. Exactly.
Ayelet Fishbach: Like, what have you learned? Because you have learned something, right? Then let me mention just one more strategy that we studied many times, which is to get people to understand that. Initially, you are going to fail and you are going to feel uncomfortable.
For many things, there is no way to start feeling good about them before you tried a few ways that don't work. Uh, before you were, you were struggling a bit. Okay, and so obviously no one is going to pursue a job where and let me take it back. Many people do, [00:36:00] but hopefully not. Many people have the plan of pursuing a job that they don't do well and don't enjoy doing.
Okay. So, we want to be successful. And, and we study failure because we want to understand success. Let's not fool ourselves, but initially on our first day doing something, we are going to feel lost and we are going to try a few ways that don't work. And this is a sign that, um, that this is working.
Jen Fisher: Yeah.
And I think one thing that the two of you are talking about that I'm picking up on is. In most of our lives, you know, we spend so much time working, um, and so it has a huge impact on our motivation.
Ayelet Fishbach: Uh, yeah, we, we are social animals, I mentioned it, okay? We are, by our evolution, work with other people. If you think about the [00:37:00] way we work, up until maybe, 100 years ago, when the invention of the offices with separate cubicles, work was something that we did with other people.
And so, we Connect to other people and we are inspired by other people. People go to work because they want to connect to others to be part of a social group. And then they look at others and others are in my head, even when they are not quite there in the room to influence my motivation. As a manager, you need to be aware of this.
Okay. You need to be aware that people want to be working in. Small groups, okay, they want to form communities also. We mentioned how you monitor progress, okay? If someone is less committed to the group, then you want to tell them that everybody else is already doing some, if someone is already [00:38:00] super committed to, to the work or to the group, then, uh, you can highlight what is missing.
So again, you can monitor progress depending on how people feel about their, their team. Then as a manager, you are a role model. One tip there is that often what we care for in role models is what they want for us more than what they themselves do. Okay. So, to, to get your intuition here, uh, where a gym teacher or coach motivates us because they want us to exercise.
When you watch some amazing athletes on TV, that doesn't quiet. Get you, uh, into your gym shoes and, uh, out running because you don't get the sense that they care about what you do.
Jen Fisher: They don't. Or that you could never do what they're doing.
Ayelet Fishbach: It's like, yeah, I know. I used to [00:39:00] like look at Michael Phelps swim and say, oh, that's amazing.
I would never get in the pool.
Uh, yes. So, you want to be the role model that is, uh, that people perceive as inspiring them as wanting them to be successful. We are very tuned to what others want us to do more than just, uh, you know, admiring them.
Jen Fisher: That's such a powerful insight to keep in mind. Um, because I do think when we talk about role modeling.
behaviors in the workplace. It's focused on, you know, what do I do and how should I behave so that others can feel permission to do the same? Um, and perhaps there's a component of that that is important and real and authentic, but also making sure that that goes further too. Show genuine care and [00:40:00] support for what other people want and need and how you can help them reach that potential or that goal for themselves.
Ayelet Fishbach: Yes, absolutely
Jen Fisher: So, the second part of the question, um, which I think feeds very beautifully into this unfortunately or fortunately, but you know Companies seem to be in this cycle right now where there's a lot of transformation and transitions happening and unfortunately this includes more and more layoffs.
What insights can we gain from your research to help leaders maintain team trust and motivation when Many of them are seeing their friends being let go and, and laid off. Um, what can leaders do to, to kind of help bring back that trust and motivation?
Ayelet Fishbach: Uh, well, so yes, uh, [00:41:00] I, this, uh, is a difficult period for many, uh, organizations.
We want to keep in mind that, uh, this is, uh, when managers matter, okay, if everything is good in the economy is booming and my organization is doing very well, leadership is much less critical. I would start by changing the mindset of, oh, no, how can I manage a team when things are going bad into, okay, well, this is, Your test.
Okay. This is when you matter. If everything goes well, you can relax. When things don't go well, you need to collect data and listen and think about. What you are doing, people need to feel that they are supported, that you, uh, [00:42:00] care about them. You mentioned layoffs. There is, uh, uh, no easy way of doing this, right?
But our intuition is, uh, to minimize contact case. So, they, let's. Try to minimize the conversation with the people that we laid off and with the people that stayed because it's unpleasant. That's not a good intuition, right? The people that stayed need you there. Okay. And need to know. What's the plan and what is the uncertainty and need to know that that you care, okay, that you will try your best to, uh, to keep them, uh, the people that you laid off, okay, that these are often people that you will Tried hard and things did not work out.
And, uh, and departing with, uh, the mutual understanding that, uh, that we did [00:43:00] our best and that it doesn't work out. Engaging in this difficult conversation is just going to make the person that you manage feel better, and also you will feel better about doing your job as. a manager of a team. I love that.
And it goes back into like failures, okay. And down times and difficult times. This is when you learn, this is when it matters.
Jen Fisher: Leadership's not in the easy times. Leadership's in the hard times.
Ayelet Fishbach: Exactly. You know, the conductor of an orchestra, their job is not once we already have the performance and everything goes right.
At that point, they are there for the creation almost. Okay. For sure.
Keren Wasserman: So Ayelet, I know we're coming down to the end of our conversation, and I'd love to know, and I think our listeners would love to know, um, what made you decide to write a book on [00:44:00] motivation and, um, What is the main message you hope readers take away?
Ayelet Fishbach: Well, if I could, uh, summarize it in one sentence, it would be that motivation is, uh, is about knowledge, is about being wise. I use, uh, uh, is the reason I wrote the book, because I, uh, no, I don't believe in relying on some inner strength that you might feel you have or not. I believe in learning and being wise and doing the things that Keep you motivated in a way we already understood this many years ago for other areas of our life.
We know that, uh, no, to do our job, we need to learn how to do the job. We cannot just want to, to know it. We actually need to put the work. Okay. We need to. Uh, for, uh, motivation, [00:45:00] there is still out there, this naive belief that you will just try hard. Well, no, you will read the literature or you will listen to your podcast.
Uh, you, uh, uh, we learn how to do it.
Jen Fisher: I love that. And, and, and one final note, I want to know what's your top motivation strategy. What do you use day to day to stay motivated?
Ayelet Fishbach: Oh, gosh, I think I'm flexible nowadays. If I have to choose one, I would say that I always work with other people. I cannot be, uh, A day by myself.
All my research is with colleagues and co-authors and so um, I love that.
Jen Fisher: Keren, Ayelet, thank you so much for this conversation. So much learning, so much wisdom. I know that people are going to take a lot away from this. So, I [00:46:00] appreciate your time and your knowledge sharing with us today.
Thank you.
Ayelet Fishbach: Thank you. That was a fun conversation and great questions.
Jen Fisher: I'm so grateful Ayelet and Keren could be with us today to talk about the science of motivation. Thank you to our producer and our listeners. You can find The WorkWell Podcast by visiting various podcatchers using the keyword Work Well, all one word, to hear more. And if you like the show, don't forget to subscribe so you get all of our future episodes.
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