Motivation

Motivating employees

            Is it possible for a manager to motivate an employee?   I would say yes, even if an employee does not like his or her job they can be motivated by the use of incentives, or by using intrinsic and extrinsic motivation concepts.

Incentive is the external stimulus that prompts goal-directed behavior. For the question above a manager can offer financial incentives to help stimulate the motivation for employees to want to get the job done or even give the employee a goal that stimulates motivation for the employee to perform his or hers job.

Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation provided by an activity, this can be done for a variety of jobs.   One of the intrinsic motivational factor deals with the enjoyment one gets from the activity itself, and generally speaking there are plenty of people that enjoy their jobs and would be and could be motivated by a manager that understands the intrinsic side of motivation.
Extrinsic motivation refers to motivation that derives from the consequences of an activity. With extrinsic motivation it is probably used for motivation more than others, there are plenty of people who do their job with extrinsic motivation than any other motivational factors. The extrinsic factor can be used by a manager for motivation simply because everyone needs a job if they like it or not and with extrinsic one will do their work or may be putting their job on the line for not doing it.
With these concepts laid out I do believe it is more than possible for a manager to motivate an employee. For starters a manger needs to understand intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and then know how to apply to the job for motivating the employees. These basic concepts of motivation can be used in all parts of life