Daniel Pink's Autonomy Mastery And Executive Summary

Appling Daniel Pink’s Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

Most leaders believed that employees in their organization disliked work and would avoid it if they could. Daniel McGregor in his 1960 groundbreaking book The Human Side of Enterprise argued that “Those running companies were operating from a faulty assumption about human behavior” (Pink, 2009, p. 74). Managers believe employees must be coerced, controlled, directed, and threaten with punishment to acquire them to put forth an effort to achieve set objectives. McGregor’s X-Y theory suggest that there are two ways to manage people.

• Theory X

Managers tend to motivate people by threatening them. Foster creativity and innovation by micromanaging them. Inspire people by enforcing conformity.

• Theory Y

Managers allow people to grow and develop.

Although this may be true, Daniel Pink in his book Drive lists three elements of motivation, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Gunther states, “Management isn’t about walking around and seeing if people are in their office” (Gunther as cited by Pink, 2009, p. 84). It occurs by creating conditions for people to accomplish their best work. Of the three, autonomy is listed as the utmost important. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan define autonomy as a human concept where people seek and improve lives. By the same token, Pink stated how autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude” (Pink, 2009, p. 88).

Autonomy

Pink states, “Autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude” (p. 88). Allowing employees to have a degree of freedom and discretion can lead to greater job satisfaction. Pink (2009) states “Motivation 2.0 goal was to seek compliance, Motivation 3.0 seeks engagement and only engagement can produce mastery”. Whereas autonomy is the greatest importance, mastery is equally important.