This is Part 4 of a multi-article series on emotional intelligence in engineering. Part 1 is here: Engineering is More than IQ.
As a child, when you took apart your parent’s VCR (or DVD player or maybe iPod) to see how it worked, you didn’t need a paycheck. You didn’t need someone urging you to do it. You didn’t even need permission. And if you were me, you certainly didn’t get permission.
You were motivated by the project – to learn, to explore. Your internal voice and drive were the only things you needed to get you started on this quest. The internal satisfaction you took from the pure enjoyment of the project kept you humming along for hours.
Of course, you may have had a lot of external motivation to quickly put it back together before your parents got home.
Later in life, motivation can feel different. Maybe we’re driven by money or recognition. Don’t get me wrong, I like those, too. But for an engineer to be at their best, they need intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic Motivation
I like this definition of intrinsic motivation. It comes from the textbook Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior by Dennis Coon and John Mitterer.
“Intrinsic motivation occurs when we act without any obvious external rewards. We simply enjoy an activity or see it as an opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize our potentials.”
“… an opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize our potentials” sums up my feelings on engineering. I’m constantly tinkering with something: smart home systems, Arduino projects, etc.
The opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize is why I got into engineering. And why I was grounded for two weeks when I couldn’t get the VCR back together.
Along with that opportunity, intrinsic motivation also leads to a couple of really important aspects for engineers.
Flow
Whether you call it
The depth of engineering projects often call for flow which allow long hours of concentration and effort. If you’re not motivated by your work, and specifically intrinsically motivated, getting into flow is difficult if not impossible.
“Flow happens when a person’s skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges,” writes Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
The benefits of flow are improved performance, increased skill development, and personal satisfaction. But flow isn’t easy. We must be motivated to achieve this. We must work to achieve this.
“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them,” Csíkszentmihályi writes. “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.”
Peak Experiences
One step past flow, we find the concept of peak experiences. According to Abraham Maslow, these are an integral component of achieving self-actualization, the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
In 2001, psychologist Gayle Privette followed up Maslow’s work with research on peak experiences. According to her, peak experiences include three components:
- Significance – They lead to increased understanding and personal awareness.
- Fulfillment – They are intrinsically rewarding which generates positive emotions.
- Spirituality – People experiencing them feel at one with the project (or the world) and often lose track of time. Aka, flow.
Looking back at the engineering projects I loved, all of them came with those three elements.
How to Improve Your Motivation
In and of themselves, engineering projects include all of the necessary ingredients to build intrinsic motivation which will then deliver flow and peak performance. I think that’s why we all got into this. We were moved to create solutions for problems because of the internal satisfaction we earned from the work.
But sometimes we lose that motivation and have to work at rebuilding it. A former boss of mine named Charlie once told me that to lead people, you have to either love them or love something about them. The same applies here. To find your intrinsic motivation for engineering work, you have to either love the work or love something about the work
- Think about why you do what you do – Sometimes we forget why we got into our field of engineering. Sometimes the daily grind pulls us in so far that we forget to take joy in engineering the way we did when we first started our careers. I love listening to new hires talk about some project they’ve been working on. Sometimes I get lost in managerial duties and don’t actually do the work I used to love, so for me what I love about the work is facilitating that work for others
. - Find something good in your work – If you don’t have something you love in your work today, find a way to add something you love. Or, at least, something you like. Maybe you’ll grow to love it
. - Be optimistic – Squelch the negativity in your mind. If you’re telling yourself, “I am never going to get anywhere” or “This doesn’t matter,” stop it. Tell yourself that you are getting somewhere and then you’ll find the way to get there. Tell yourself that the work does matter and then find out why it matters. Hold those ideas in your head. Optimism breeds motivation.
Final Takeaway
Emotionally intelligent engineers are motivated intrinsically. What’s more, they motivate others. Their enthusiasm is infectious. You can help your team by staying motivated and enthusiastic because the only thing more infectious than enthusiasm is a lack of it
Beyond emotional intelligence, happy engineers – happy people – are motivated. Happiness and motivation feed each other. Like the chicken and the egg, it’s hard to tell which starts the cycle … so work on both.
As for me, I’ve been up writing since
Author: Tracy Thomason
Agile project manager by day, craft beer drinker by night, and avid reader anytime I can get 5 minutes alone with my Kindle.
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Featured photo by Steve Jurvetson CC 2.0
Maslow’s
Omelet photo by Tracy