Episode Details

Your "meaning network" of neurons includes the subjects (like math wizzes) and relationships (like friendships) that are important to you. In this episode, Andrew and David talk about helping folks find the "why?" that intrinsically motivates them to do something.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is tapping into meaning to release intrinsic motivation. David, take it away.

0:00:28.7 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew, and good to be back.

0:00:32.3 AS: Good to see you.

0:00:34.1 DL: So we have been on this journey of five elements of intrinsic motivation and these are the ones that, through my research at least, are the most important elements if you want to see intrinsic motivation emerge. Why are we doing that? Because Dr. Deming was the one that really made it clear that you have to have intrinsic motivation and stop extrinsically motivating people. So that's why we're concentrating on, what are these elements? So the first element was the element of control or autonomy in a situation. The second element was cooperation and we talked about the support network that's necessary and the previous podcast was all about the challenge and today we're talking about the meaning. How did... That meaning is the fifth element to tap into. So in every human brain there is a preponderance of cells in your meaning network. Some of it is... Some of it you're born with, some of it you acquire through life, but it's what... It's the cells that are activated when you get a sense of meaning about, why are we doing something or why are we here, what's happening?

0:02:04.0 DL: And the more we can tap into that network with people and tap into their meaning network, we start to see more intrinsic motivation emerge and therefore more joy in learning and work emerge and therefore a higher level of workmanship that often comes out of that same thing.

0:02:23.3 AS: And when you say meaning network, sometimes when I think of network, I think of a network of people, but you're talking about a neurological network.

0:02:30.5 DL: Yeah, we're talking about the actual neurons in your brain that form the network of meaning behind your life. It's... Sometimes we're just born with a preponderance of cells in certain areas, like I have five children and one of them was just born with the gift of mathematics and that's just the way it was. And another one was just born with his gift of music and another one... On and on. And those are just there at birth. And I don't think we had anything to do with it until we started to uncover that, oh, wow, this meaning... This has a lot of meaning for this individual. In other ways, you can also acquire a meaning network over time. That's for myself and probably for you too, Andrew, that the meaning in network now includes Deming, and the work of Deming, but that had to become an acquired kind of thing. So when people go through that process of learning about it, sometimes they say, my brain hurts because you are readjusting the actual neurons and the network of neurons in your brain that taught you to think about something.

0:03:50.9 DL: So if you had a network of neurons for management and maybe even went to college like I did or university, got a master's degree in management, et cetera, it taught you to think in a certain way. And Deming's work actually, sometimes trashes all of that or sometimes just causes you to have to think in a whole different way. And so then you have to start to readjust your meaning network. So it's been a lifelong interest for me to figure out, well, how do we get more of that to happen? So probably the very