Assignment # 2 Motivating Your

Audience

Subject: Organizational Communication Name: Muhammad Hashim Memon Registration # 15523-15011 Program: EMBA Specialization: Project Management

Motivating Your Audience

Theorists believe that there are following five techniques for motivating audience:

1. Punish or reward them 2. Appeal to their growth needs 3. Use people’s need for balance 4. Perform a cost benefit analysis 5. Be sensitive to character traits

1. Punish or reward them

Researcher Walter R. Nord has found six reasons why threats may not work. Imagine one of your employees spends too much time talking on the phone to friends during the work day. So you write him a memo or call him in for an interview and say: “If you don’t stop talking on the phone to friends, I’ll fire you” then:

• Your threat may work only when you are actually watching over your employee’s actions.

• Threats may get rid of one response, but not produce the desired response.

• Threats may stop the inappropriate action even when it is appropriate.

• Threats produce tension, making the work place less pleasant and productive in general.

• Threats tend to make people dislike you.

• Threats provoke counter aggression.

Sometimes they are clearly necessary, use threat and punishment with caution. Consider using rewards as a way to change behavior

• Many psychologists would argue that rewards are the most effective way to shape behavior.

• Rewarding certain behaviors is an extremely powerful way to get the response you want

• You are likely to be successful if your rewards include the following four characteristics.

a) They must be important to the person who is being rewarded. Some people might react to group acceptance, some to money and others to recognition of the achievements.

b) Reward must be appropriate & sincere.

c) Effective rewards must be immediate.

d) Rewards don’t have to be elegant.

• One effective reward technique consists of breaking down large projects or

tasks into smaller components, & rewarding the participants at each step.

• Most business communicators could be more successful if they used punishment less and reward more often.

2. Appeal to their growth needs

In most situations you simply won’t be able reward your audience with tangible prizes e.g., offer your customers free products, offer your boss money for accepting your proposal. Theories for effective rewards are Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy & Herzberg Research

Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Herzberg’s Research

Personal Growth Growth Needs Work itself (achievement)

Self-esteem Advancement (recognition)

Group affiliation Working relationships

Safety Deficiency Needs

Working conditions

Survival Safety

• Deficiency or Survival Needs are needs without which we cannot survive such as food, water, sleep, shelter

• Growth Needs are needs that enhance our lives.

• Herzberg’s business research shows that deficiency needs seldom motivate people. Security, physical needs & even working conditions might be perfect, but this won’t motivate people. They need things like good relationships & recognition.

• Herzberg’s research shows that the growth needs are the positive

motivators.

• A research team from Columbia recently found that salary and other status

symbols were not rewarding to computer professionals.

• If you want to motivate someone with rewards, consider the extraordinary persuasive power of the growth needs e.g., trying to get people to work together to devise a new plan.

3. Use people’s need for balance According to this theory:

• People prefer a state of psychological balance (called consistency or free from anxiety).

• When they hear ideas conflicting with what they already believe, people lose that state of balance & feel anxiety.

• When they feel anxiety, people attempt to restore their sense of balance.

• According to third step it is restoring equilibrium. You should be aware that your audience may do so in any one of three ways.

I. They may resist or deny the new information. In cases where the new information conflicts with people’s important & well-established beliefs, they are likely to resist your attempts at persuasion

• “As people move through life they build up a wardrobe of ideas and points of view”

II. A second possible audience reaction is to devalue the information, thinking something along these lines: “He has no right to give me advice”

• If you have been successful, your audience will neither resist nor devalue the new idea; instead they will accept it & establish a new equilibrium.

• How can you use people’s need for balance to get them to accept your

idea?

• To emphasize an anxiety or a problem they have that is causing them

“imbalance,” then offer a solution that will make them feel balanced.

III. A third application of balance theory involves encouraging active

participation.

4. Perform a cost/benefit analysis

A strong benefit will motivate your audience, & a high cost may have an opposite effect e.g., you have a great plan for a new advertising brochure. Using this approach, the following three tactics to increase the persuasiveness:

I. Analyze both the costs and the benefits of the idea itself. II. Analyze both the cost and benefits for audience.

III. Specify the benefits your audience will gain.

5. Be sensitive to character traits

Different people are convinced by different things. Just as engineers use electrical theory to predict how machines work, communicators must use psychological theory to predict how people work. Effective communicators analyze what will motivate the people with whom they are communicating. Four C’s Model is one way to analyze the character traits of the people. Four C’s Model: Business personality traits Four different cases illustrating how you might report exactly the same information to each of four bosses

Tends to work with group

Changes Status Quo Maintains Status Quo

Tends to work alone

Comptroller

Commander

Collaborator Crusader

Through Affiliation

Through procedures

To Accomplish

dream

To Accomplish

results

Audience 1

• Your boss is “bureaucratic”.

• Preferring to work alone & carefully.

• Very consistent.

• Likes facts & statistics.

• Slow to decide & doesn’t seem to like change. The Comptroller

• To motivate this boss, write in a matter-of-fact tone.

• Incorporate a good deal of information, including method & data.

• Instead of just stating one conclusion, offer various responses & your conclusion from among them.

• Emphasize tradition, process, and system.

• “That’s not the way we do things here”. Audience 2

• Your boss is enthusiastic & idealistic.

• Creative & is eager to change things based on his ideals.

• Because of great enthusiasm, is sometimes prejudiced. The Crusader

• To motivate, adopt an enthusiastic & informative tone.

• Emphasize how your ideas tie to his ideals or dreams.

• Because he is motivated by ideas, you might include many points of view and a lot of information.

Audience 3

• Almost always works as part of a tea.

• Does not like to make decisions to change things.

• Avoid conflict and risk.

The collaborator

• Adopt a trusting & non-threatening tone.

• You might include various options, but since the collaborator is less interested in ideas themselves, you would avoid long, detailed, enthusiastic explanations.

• You might use testimonies from people you know he respects, or back up your argument with statements from the organizational policies & goals you know he agrees with.

• “Well, I can’t really decide until I find out where she stands on that issue” . Audience 4

• Likes action & results.

• Bases decisions for change on results, not ideals.

• Decisive & efficient.

• Dominating. The Commander

• To motivate, adopt an efficient & result oriented tone.

• Prefer a short summary format, stating your own conclusions & recommendations clearly.

• Motivated by results & power, emphasize the outcome for the company as well as “what’s in it for them”.

• “What’s the bottom line on that?”