It slowly dawned upon me the other day that as a "music professional," while my primary function was to play notes accurately, the real job of the music professional is to manage and even manipulate emotions of large numbers of people. And I think I can say with some confidence that I studied with the masters. Anyway the real point here is the eternal managerial question of, what is it that motivates people?
I was giving a talk the other day about my new book "Principles of Applied Stupidity," and as I was talking about grades in school I made this mental leap…
One of the things I have learned as a performer is that the primary need of your average human being is to belong. It is a major motivator. And as I was speaking to this group about grades in school, (and it’s interesting to note that your age level is a grade, and your A-F rating is also a grade), it occurred to me that the motivational theory of giving people grades on their tests and papers is that the higher of a grade you get, the more you "belong." That is to say, the higher the grade, the higher status / reward you have within the group. While this certainly works with a fair number of students, it occurred to me that there is an unintended perverse sense of "belonging" and social reward for the group of kids that DON'T excel, that ALWAYS get C’s and D’s.
If this is the case, and I think it is, you have a very interesting motivational conflict: if a kid’s sense of belonging and identity is based on being similar to the other students who always get C’s and D’s, there is a shadow motivation to NOT excel.
So anyway, if you are a known to be C student in a given class of kids, if you suddenly start getting A’s, hmmmmmm . . . will this be rewarded or punished on the purely peer group social level? Will it make your fellow students happy to be shoved down a notch? I doubt it. Will the old C student pals you are leaving behind be happy to see you move up as they stay where they are? I doubt that too. (Note, I could write extensively about this topic as it is illustrated in the pecking orders of orchestra string sections, and how anomalies in the pecking order negatively affect the performance of the entire team. If you're looking to hire guest speakers for your management trainees, this would make a great topic.)
There is a presumption in this universal system, and in almost every other system that is based upon it by default, that everyone wants to belong to the academic upper crust. But for some people, there is a tremendous motivation to NOT excel, as that may demonstrate to one’s C-student compatriots that one is NOT conforming to the standards of that group. (I was very much surprised to discover that your average orchestra string player does not want to be first chair. They are thrilled to just be part of the group. To them, being made first chair was a form of stress punishment, and for most of them, promises of being moved to first chair for better playing did nothing in terms of motivation.)
The whole process of learning and growing and changing is very much of an emotional one. And in seeking the emotional basis for motivation to grow, change, and even excel, one must also be mindful of the emotional motivations to stay right where you are.
All too often we assume that motivating people is a simple matter . . . but it isn't. And it is learning this complicated subject, not just the ability to honk out a couple of quarter notes on tenor saxophone, that should be one of the main purposes of arts education.
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Okay, just a little bit of news , the Bremerton (WA) Symphony is doing my "Phantom of the Orchestra" October 26th believe . . . and again in February.
You can see a picture of a performance of this piece when it was done in Poland posted on Jason Heath's wonderful double bass blog
http://www.insidethearts.com/artsaddict/?p=111
©2008 Justin Locke
