Post 3- Daniel Pink and Motivational School Leadership Part 1: What does NOT work? Carrots and sticks

This blog has turned into a book! Check out Excellence: Every Classroom, Every Lesson, Every Day. The book is a story of a based-on-a-true-story administrator using leadership books to deal with issues at her school and develop her leadership style in her journey from novice to transformational. 
https://www.amazon.com/Excellence-Every-Classroom-Lesson-Day/dp/1475855478/

The next two posts will be about techniques that Daniel Pink points out in "Drive" that do NOT work to motivate teachers (or anyone else for that matter).  Then after that will be the three techniques that DO work. Finally, I'll write about one big factor that I think Daniel Pink missed completely in his book.

First, you may want to brush up or refresh yourself on Daniel Pink's philosophy on motivation by watching his 2009 TED speech here, http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html. 

Pink points out that early motivation research focused on only our biological needs of hunger, thirst, belonging, etc.  After that came the punishment and reward philosophy of motivation or "external motivation."  For a long time, this was the one weapon in the arsenal of leaders despite the sneaky suspicion that it wasn't working and never really did.

Pink explains that external motivation, carrots and sticks, only works for routine tasks requiring little thought and/or creativity.  Although they might work to encourage teachers to submit their attendance on time, it is not effective for things like creating powerful lessons plans, collaboratively creating performance tasks with colleagues, or brainstorming solutions to deep school issues.

And I know what you're thinking . . . but when money is the reward, that must work, right?  Wrong.  As long as the person is receiving a salary that is fair, then money is not a motivator.  And for the most part, administrators have no control over a teacher's salary anyhow.  Most teachers are part of a lock-step salary schedule.

We need to find a better way to motivate the faculty and in the next post, I'll  discuss Pink's idea that in the rare occasion that rewards do work as a motivational tool, some forms of reward are more effective than others.

Where have you found rewards and punishments to be effective motivational tools in your school?  Where have you found them not to be effective?  Please leave a comment with your ideas.

Read Part 2 of this blog here
Read Part 3 of this blog here
Read Part 4 of this blog here
Read Part 5 of this blog here
Read Part 6 of this blog here