What Is the Connection Between Motivation and Job Performance?

Achievement motivation theory was proposed by David McClelland, a professor at Harvard University, in a series of articles in the 1950s through a study of human needs and motivation. McClelland summarizes the high-level needs of people as the need for achievement, power, and affinity. He made in-depth research on these three needs, especially the achievement needs.

McClelland's theory of achievement motivation

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Achievement motivation theory

David C. McClelland (Harvard University Professor David C. McClelland 1917.05.20-1998.03.27) is an authoritative psychologist of contemporary research motivation. He has been studying people's needs and motivations since the 1940s and 1950s, and has proposed the famous "

McClelland puts forward many human needs. He believes that individuals have three important motivations or needs in the work situation:

1. Need for achievement: Need for success and hope for the best.

2. Need for power: the need to influence or control others without being controlled by others.

3. Affinity needs: the need to build friendly and intimate relationships.

McClelland believes that people with a strong need for achievement are eager to make things more perfect, improve work efficiency, and achieve greater success. What they are pursuing is to overcome difficulties, solve problems, and work hard in the process of winning success. Fun, as well as personal sense of achievement after success, do not value the material rewards that success brings. Individual achievement needs are related to the degree of development of the economy, culture, society and government in which they are located; social climate also restricts people's achievement needs. McClelland found that the characteristics of those who need high achievement are: they want timely and clear feedback on job performance to know if they have made progress; they like to set moderately challenging goals, and they don't like to be successful with luck, Do not like to accept tasks that are particularly easy or difficult for them. High achievement need

McClelland uses the subject unity test to measure individual motivation. He modified the subject's overall perception test to increase its degree of objectification and make it suitable for group testing. For example, using a projector to give a group

McClelland's

Based on a lot of research, McClelland made a very convincing inference about the relationship between achievement needs and job performance. First of all, those who need high achievement like to be able to take responsibility independently and obtain

Application of Achievement Motivation Theory in Higher Vocational Education

In June 1999, the "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Deepening Education Reform and Comprehensively Promoting Quality Education" states: "Higher vocational education is an important part of higher education. We must vigorously develop higher vocational education and cultivate a large number of people who have the necessary theoretical knowledge and Strong practical ability, production, construction, management, service frontline and urgently needed specialized talents in rural areas. "In the long-term teaching practice, we have found that since the vocational school students have been undergraduate in their peers since childhood Coupled with social evaluation system and many other reasons, the achievement motivation level of higher vocational students is generally low. Therefore, training current vocational students into people with high-level achievement motivation is vital to the social and economic development of our country, especially to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation in the 21st century.

McClelland's Excellent Goals of Achievement Motivation Theory

Everyone generally agrees that the higher the goal a person pursues, the faster his talent develops. The goals here are consistent with what we call motivation to achieve. If students can determine a higher starting point suitable for their own situation in the early stage of achievement motivation, they will often provide a good foundation for their future development. When a student is young, such excellent goals are mostly determined by parents or teachers.

For example, a student said: "I want to go to Peking University, Tsinghua University!" "I want to be a doctor!" Such goals have a direct relationship with the high standards raised by parents and teachers from an early age. Therefore, on the one hand, teachers should work hard to guide students to develop a sense of pursuit of success, which will have a positive effect on their future growth and development. On the other hand, students' achievement motivation should be consistent with their actual ability and level. This is mainly because if the standard of achievement motivation is too high and exceeds the ability and level of students, they may lose their confidence in pursuing success due to frustration, or have a mentality of escaping failure. For higher vocational students, there are more frustrations and failures since childhood than those with excellent learning, and the goals set for them are too high. He may think that he cannot reach them without hard work. Therefore, how to help higher vocational students to establish self-confidence and establish excellent goals suitable for themselves is very important. In determining excellent goals for students, a gradual process is needed. The first goal cannot be set too high. Once the students reach the goal, they will often have self-confidence in pursuit of success. Then, the teacher will gradually improve the goal, give full play to the motivational role of the goal, and gradually lead the students to excellence.

For example, for a freshman culinary student, if they are presented with a high goal of being a big chef, this goal may be a "excellent" goal for them, because this goal is for students to come To say it is too far away and too high to climb. Therefore, it has little effect on the development of students' achievement motivation.

A more reasonable approach is that teachers can determine many small goals for students under this big goal, and decompose them into goals that can be achieved in the near future, so that students can reach the end step by step through their continuous efforts. In short, teachers should fully consider the actual ability and level of each student when determining the excellent goals of the students.

McClelland's Achievement Motivation Theory Independent Training

Independent training and achievement training are two indispensable ways to cultivate students' motivation for achievement. The purpose of independent training is to cultivate students 'ability to handle things themselves, while the purpose of achievement training is mainly to cultivate students' ability to do things skillfully. These two kinds of abilities must be emphasized in higher vocational colleges when training skilled talents. Higher vocational education emphasizes that students' theoretical knowledge is "sufficient", but there are high requirements for their skills training, and students must have a certain amount of training time each semester. According to McClelland's theory of achievement motivation, in the process of applying theory to solve practical problems during training, teachers' independent training and achievement training for students will play an important role in promoting the development of their future achievement levels. In general, higher vocational colleges should start training students in this area in the first semester.

There are many methods for independent training, for example, encouraging students to do experiments independently, writing training reports by themselves, and handling relationships with classmates by themselves. In the process of education, the student can do what he can do as much as possible, instead of the traditional "teaching" of the teacher's notes and student records, so as to truly take the students as the main body and strive to cultivate their independence. For example, students who study tour guides must be able to take groups to travel independently; students who study cooking must independently select materials, process and cook nutritious, delicious and delicious meals; students who study mechanics and electricity, if there is a problem with the motor, Must be able to quickly and accurately find the cause and repair.

McClelland's theory of achievement motivation encourages sex education

McClelland, when comparing the difference between high achievement motivation and low achievement motivation students, found that the level of achievement motivation of students is closely related to teachers' evaluation of their learning behaviors and learning results. Generally speaking, if teachers give high evaluation to students' learning behaviors and learning results, or praise and affirmation to students often, then these students tend to have higher levels of achievement motivation. This is mainly because the teacher's encouraging evaluation can promote students' self-confidence in learning and have the belief that "I am born to be useful", thus exerting the developmental and stimulating functions of evaluation and promoting the development of students. Since the teacher's encouraging evaluation of students helps to improve the level of students 'motivation for achievement, this requires us to give students more praise and encouragement in higher vocational education, and cultivate students' continuous pursuit, pioneering self-confidence, and open their success. first step.

McClelland's Achievement Motivation Transformation

The extrinsic achievement motivation is a motivation for others to push students to succeed. For example, students study hard in order to meet the requirements of parents and teachers or to be praised by others. This kind of external achievement motivation is more passive, and students often need to be constantly promoted by external forces in the learning process. Once the external driving force no longer exists, the students may suspend certain behaviors.

Intrinsic achievement motivation is a motivation for students to consciously pursue success. Students with this motivation can often establish a goal for themselves and motivate themselves to continuously strive to reach the goal. In this process, students do not need the supervision and encouragement of others, and can consistently achieve their goals through their own efforts. This intrinsic achievement motivation has stability and persistence, especially strong self-discipline and self-motivation. For example, one of the main characteristics of many outstanding students is that they can learn voluntarily and consciously, rather than being forced to learn and rush to learn. The consciousness of this learning is mainly from the intrinsic motivation for achievement.