Week 14: Motivating Across Cultures

This week we talked about motivation, as we had already approached what successful teams act like, we had to go to the source of all mankind success, which is indeed motivation.

Motivation is what encourages someone to fulfill some goal or task, that I already knew, but I also found out about some curious stuff, like motivations changes according to the type of culture someone belongs to, so for example if you are in an individualistic culture you will often find that one person will attribute the achievements to themselves, while in collective cultures people recognize the achievement as product of a group effort and attribute the team’s failures to themselves, also, in individualistic cultures people work harder when they have to do a job by themselves so the recognition is for them, but when they work in teams they work less harder since they would have to share recognition with all his teammates. On the contrary, collective cultures work harder when they’re in teams and actually like to share achievements. What was most impressive, was the fact that not only because you’re part of an individualistic culture means your pattern behaviors are individualistic, many times you can develop collective skills, and that is a prove of how diverse human beings are.

The second thing I learned is that just like taste of music, sources of motivation change according to the culture, so in many countries money is the main motivator, I bet that’s the case of Colombia, many times you find people bored in a working position because of their salaries, while in other countries, like Japan, harmony is the main motivator, as Japan is a country where conditions and environments are more important than anything else, and finally you find countries like Germany, where what matters is how interesting the job is, doesn’t matter that much the money or your teammates, but how much you can get out of your job and how challenging it is.

Reserach Question: What are the best companies to work in the world?

It’s been a while since companies like Google are at the top of the list of the best companies to work at, looking deeper inside into those companies I found out they have some common characteristics like they all encourage people to study and get into social work, also it gives employees the opportunity to create their own schedule and decide where they work, likewise they have quite horizontal teams, meaning everyone has a defined role  and have autonomy to do it and lastly they work in spaces specially build to offer diverse environments where employees can go to do their job or have a break.

References

Great Place to Work. (2014). 2014 FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work for. Retrieved from: http://www.greatplacetowork.com/best-companies/100-best-companies-to-work-for

Tkaczyk, C. (2014). 10 Great Workplaces for Millennials. Retrieved from: http://fortune.com/2014/05/15/10-great-workplaces-for-millennials/