Motivation is Designed to Encourage or Give Someone an Incentive to Continue to Do Something
Client motivation is a hugely integral part of coaching – when it's lacking, even the most thoughtfully designed programs can have a hard time driving change or growth.
In this article, we'll explain what motivational incentives are in therapy or coaching, and show you how to use them to build engagement in those you coach.
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What Are Motivational Incentives?
Motivation is what drives people to perform, grow, and achieve their goals in therapy, coaching, or organizational settings.
It plays a key role in determining a range of factors, including but not limited to:
- The amount of effort a client invests in their development
- How long they stick with a program or treatment
- The likelihood that they will persevere in the face of obstacles, and
- How actively (or proactively) involved they will be in planning, decision-making, and implementation of therapy or a coaching program.
The idea that human behavior can be motivated with reinforcements, or motivational incentives, is the premise behind the Incentive Theory of Motivation.[1]
How Does It Work?
Incentive Theory argues that we are driven to engage in behavior that leads to specific rewards and similarly disinclined to act in ways that lead to negative outcomes.
A few examples might be:
- Working overtime to pay for a holiday
- Earning a promotion for a pay rise, or
- Buying a new car to improve your social status.
It is often contrasted to intrinsic motivational theories, which explain human behavior in terms of internal drivers (e.g. achievement, growth, and passion).
6 Real-Life Examples of Incentives
Therapists, coaches, and important others in a client's life can provide strong incentives through positive influence, support, and knowledge of what a client finds desirable.
While motivational incentives are external rewards by definition, they aren't always tangible or monetary. Therapists, coaches, and important others in a client's life can provide strong incentives through positive influence, support, and knowledge of what a client finds desirable.
Some real-life examples of motivational incentives include:
- Flexible working hours for an employee,
- Praise or acknowledgment for significant accomplishments in therapy,
- Additional training or development opportunities for students or staff,
- Public recognition for key achievements at work,
- Interesting, novel, or engaging tasks such as therapy games (experiential rewards), and in many potential settings,
- Involvement or autonomy in decision-making.
Motivating Clients, Students & Employees
Not all incentives are created equal, and a few things determine how effective they are at raising engagement levels in a development context.
First, Incentive Theory can also be used to account for individual differences in behavior.
In order to effectively shape or drive an individual's behavior, coaches and professionals need to use incentives that a client considers desirable.
Working overtime to pay for a holiday abroad is a great example of this – the possibility of an overseas trip might be a strong motivational incentive for an avid traveler, but not for someone with a fear of planes. Similarly, a sociable student might be driven to attend extra group classes while an introverted pupil might not.
For this reason, coaches who want to integrate incentives into a program need to determine the most effective motivational incentives for a particular client, employee, or student by developing a strong working relationship.
To put it plainly, coaching others effectively with incentives requires knowledge of an individual's unique preferences, interests, and goals.
Second, incentives can vary in their potential to motivate. The more important a particular reward is to a client, student, or employee, the more likely it is that they will be motivated to behave in ways that lead them toward it.
Praising students is another classic example; it may successfully encourage a student to perform well on a (mandatory) test, but not a valuable enough driver for them to attend extra classes.
To put it plainly, coaching others effectively with incentives requires knowledge of an individual's unique preferences, interests, and goals.
This is one of the reasons a personalized approach to therapy, coaching, or motivational training programs can be far more successful at triggering behavior change and sustaining positive habits than a generic program or course.
7+ Ideas For Coaches and Therapists
Personally relevant incentives can easily be used as part of ongoing therapeutic treatments or coaching programs in a number of ways.
The following practitioner skills include a few clear examples of how counselors and coaches frequently incentivize positive actions and behaviors:
- Providing timely, constructive, and specific feedback at regular intervals
- Recognizing significant therapeutic or developmental milestones that have already been achieved
- Co-planning 'celebrations for the little wins'
- Tracking a client's progress to bolster motivation with strategic incentives
- Creating a customized program with opportunities for challenging, interesting activities
- Relating a client's efforts to their positive therapy or coaching outcomes, and even
- Inviting clients to share what motivational incentives they consider desirable with a Pre-Coaching Questionnaire.
Self-Motivation Strategies
Providing the right incentives is a brilliant way to build and maintain client motivation throughout a course, treatment, or program, but what about when you're not around?
As a helping professional, equipping others with the skills they need to self-motivate is one of the most sustainable ways to help others for the long term.
Consider how you might help your clients develop their own incentivizing capabilities with psychoeducational interventions, tools, or lessons, so that they can apply them in the real world to sustain their positive progress.
Motivating Clients with Quenza: A Guide
Quenza's tools have been specially designed to help coaches and therapists design activities and programs with engagement in mind.
You design interventions, coaching activities, or exercises so they are uniquely personalized to your client:
By uploading videos, multimedia, and other fun elements to activities in your Activity Builder, you can even create games and exercises to use as experiential rewards.
You can keep track of progress, live, to identify when a motivational incentive might be helpful:
With Quenza Chat, you can offer personal, private feedback in real-time to reinforce progress with praise, feedback, or acknowledgment:
Using Quenza's Pathways Tool, shown below, you can even build motivational incentives into your programs or packages by inserting them as key steps within your pathways.
Why not schedule a one-to-one call to recognize your client's achievements at a significant milestone in their course, therapy, or training program?
7 Motivational Tools Included In Quenza
There are countless ways to motivate your clients, students, or teammates using Quenza, from the way you design activities to the little chats you have along the way.
Here are some of the professional tools that you'll find to help you:
- Quenza's Activity Builder: Here, you can design your own coaching, therapy, or training content and resources from scratch using drag and drop tools
- Your Pathway Tool: For putting your content together into blended learning, coaching, or psychology solutions
- The Expansion Library: A rich database of customizable exercises, worksheets, lessons, meditations, and other resources for use in coaching or therapy
- Quenza Chat: In-app, live instant messaging that's perfect for private, secure conversations with individual clients, groups, or teams
- A free Client App: Making it easy for your clients to access all of your solutions from any connected device, and where you can also prompt your clients with notifications or reminders
- Quenza's Community: Where you can get help or share ideas, tools, and experiences with your peers, and
- Client Profiles: Private overviews of each clients' chat logs with you, activities, results, notes, and updates.
Whether you're planning an educational online course, an employee training program, or a professional mental health treatment, Quenza can help you design motivational incentives into your solution from the very start.
Final Thoughts
A truly personalized program of development is the key to using motivational incentives effectively.
If your client isn't getting the results they're looking for despite your well-designed solutions, consider what makes them tick. Chances are, you'll be much better able to help them grow.
We hope you enjoyed this article. To turn your new insights into results, check out our $1, 30-day Quenza trial today.
Quenza will help you share seamless, engaging coaching solutions easily, and will give you everything you need to maximize your clients' positive growth and coaching gains.
References
- ^ Killeen, P. R. (1981). Incentive theory. In Nebraska symposium on motivation. University of Nebraska Press.
Source: https://quenza.com/blog/motivational-incentives/
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