Is finding your passion overrated?
There will be plenty of boring or unglamorous work to do.
One of the best examples of the power of intrinsic motivation in Daniel H. Pink’s book Drive is Wikipedia. Volunteers have contributed more than 57 million articles to the site, with zero compensation involved. Everyone contributes for free.
The goal of contributing to something greater than oneself seems to be at play.
This kind of intrinsic motivation is powerful, but Pink goes a step further.
Pink argues that extrinsic rewards, like cash bonuses, can damage motivation. “Adding certain kinds of extrinsic rewards on top of inherently interesting tasks,” he explains, “can often dampen motivation and diminish performance.”
He makes a compelling case, and if he’s right, the entire corporate world should rethink how we set goals, measure performance, and compensate people.
Pink writes that, “cash rewards and shiny trophies can provide a delicious jolt of pleasure at first, but the feeling soon dissipates—and to keep it alive, the recipient requires ever larger and more frequent doses.”
It’s like a drug addiction, where an addict is forever in search of a greater and greater hit.
Pink builds on this with one of his most potent arguments against extrinsic rewards. He writes (parentheses are mine):
“By offering a reward, a principal (boss) signals to the agent (employee) that the task is undesirable.”
In other words, this reframes the task itself as something that is no longer meaningful.
But as I explain in The Psychology of Leadership, and as any parent or corporate leader knows, plenty of undesirable (or “unmeaningful”) tasks must be done when the rubber hits the road. For example, I can’t get my son to be intrinsically motivated to do the dishes. And if there is a way, I haven’t found it.
I’ve seen freshly minted MBAs show up at work with lots of intrinsic motivation to run the company. That’s what they’re trained for: to be leaders, decision-makers, and dealmakers. They’re ready to revamp our strategic plans on day one. They start to tell people what to do. Then, they go through a tough period.
They realize their job will also involve execution and lots of unglamorous tasks. Their motivation to apply textbook leadership fresh out of business school takes a further hit when they realize that many companies sometimes value technical domain expertise more than platitudes about strategy.
To be clear, I’m a big proponent of intrinsic motivation and a fan of Dan Pink. But sometimes the path to meaningful work runs through work that isn’t yet exciting, work that is simply part of the job.
And if you know a way to get my son to do the dishes, please let me know.
Sébastien has more than two decades of leadership experience. As an author, he believes breakthroughs often happen when experts venture outside their field. That is why, in "The Psychology of Leadership," he went beyond finance and economics to study research in psychology.
He is currently Head of Global Multi-Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. He oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over $500 billion in assets under management.
Sébastien won research paper awards from The Journal of Portfolio Management in 2003, 2010, 2011, and 2022 and the Financial Analysts Journal in 2010 and 2014. In addition to The Psychology of Leadership, he is the author of Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know About Asset Allocation (McGraw Hill, 2020) and the coauthor of Factor Investing and Asset Allocation (CFA Institute Research Foundation, 2016).
Sébastien is also a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal, and the Board of Directors of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance (Q Group). He regularly appears in the media, including Bloomberg TV and CNBC, and was recently named amongst the 15 Top Voices in Finance by LinkedIn.