The motivation to learn is the final and most important condition supporting a learning culture. Motivation is the stimulation that moves a person to work toward a desired goal.

Motivation is important because organizational learning depends to a large extent on learners taking responsibility for their own learning and growth. If your organization is a place where people are motivated and encouraged to think in new ways, they’ll be likely to learn and grow.

There’s a feedback loop between learning and motivation. Motivation enhances learning – motivated people want to learn and improve. In turn, learning enhances motivation to learn – people who learn want to learn more.

There are three common motivators in the workplace.

Competence – People who are motivated by competence need to feel effective in dealing with their environment. They want to feel good at handling problems and issues in the workplace. They see themselves as learners who can change their skills, understanding, and behaviors.

Relatedness – Relatedness is the sense of belonging to a group and taking pleasure in social interaction with others. People who are motivated by relatedness work best in an environment that fosters collaborative learning. They like to work with and learn from others. Trust and mutual respect also help to set the stage for learning.

Autonomy – Autonomy is the sense of overseeing your own actions and decisions. It relates to the need for people to chart their own learning path. When people have autonomy to decide for themselves how and when they learn, they typically get better results.

Motivation: recognition and teamwork

As a leader, you can use four strategies to enhance the motivation to learn in your organization: provide recognition of learning and improvement; make people feel like part of a team ; focus on the uniqueness of individuals, and provide autonomy and participation. 

The first strategy to enhance motivation for learning is to provide recognition of employees’ learning abilities, efforts, and successes. Praising your employees for their learning efforts helps to deepen their appetite for learning because they know their learning is valued.

Recognition could take the form of acknowledging that someone’s initiative to learn more about cloud computing has made him the departmental expert. Another example would be letting someone know how her persistence in figuring out how to solve a customer problem has benefited the whole team.

The second strategy to enhance motivation for learning is to fulfill the relatedness motivator by making people feel like they’re part of a team. You can do this by providing opportunities for people to collaborate as they contribute to common goals.

For people to feel they belong, they must feel that their contributions are valued by the team. You can promote this feeling by making each person on a team responsible for different activities, and by ensuring that everyone’s ideas are heard and considered by the team.

Motivation: uniqueness and autonomy

The third strategy to enhance motivation is to focus on the uniqueness of individuals. Your people are individuals who want to learn in their own way. So you’ll need to understand people’s learning preferences – their preferred learning style and learning delivery mode.

It’s important you tap into individuals’ style and delivery preferences and demonstrate that their personal fulfillment in learning is important to you and the organization.

Providing autonomy and participation is the fourth strategy to enhance motivation. When people can decide how and when they learn, they’re more motivated to learn. Most people value, and are motivated by, the freedom to pursue their own learning ideas.

Encourage people to participate in determining learning strategies and tactics. Again, people are more driven to learn when they have input into learning decisions.

Motivation is important because organizational learning relies on individuals taking responsibility for their own development.

Four key strategies enhance people’s motivation to learn and grow. You can provide recognition of learning, make people feel part of a team, focus on the uniqueness of individuals, and provide autonomy and participation.