Potential answer 1: You are not aware of the evidence

A funny thing happened on the way to understanding human motivation. Psychologists decided to study animals. For example, you can watch Harvard psychology professor B. F. Skinner on YouTube showing how he “motivates” a conditioned pigeon to do a 360-degree turn by rewarding its behavior with pellets. It is fascinating to watch—he rewards the bird for doing what he wants it to do, and he can get it to do almost anything. Behaviorists reasoned that this method could motivate people in the workplace the same way: reward people for doing what you want them to do, and you can get them to do almost anything. And guess what? It worked—or seemed to. My colleagues and I call it the Pecking Pigeon Paradigm.

Using metaphorical pellets as incentives to “motivate” employees to do tasks they don't necessarily want to do has become common practice. A massive industry has evolved providing complex schemes to motivate workers with compensation systems, rewards, contests, tokens, badges, prizes, and formal recognition programs. Pellets and more pellets.

Current data clearly demonstrate the futility of the Pecking Pigeon Paradigm. In thousands of experiments worldwide, the results are the same: even though people will take the money or rewards you offer, the only correlation between those incentives and performance is a negative one. In other words, external rewards produce a disturbing undermining effect on the energy, vitality, and sense of positive well-being people need to achieve goals, attain excellence, and sustain effort.

Traditional forms of motivation may appear to work in some types of jobs or industries. For example, if you promise people more pellets, they may produce more on the assembly line in the short term. However, it is unwise to confuse productivity with thriving and flourishing. Without thriving and flourishing, short-term gains tend to turn into long-term opportunity losses. The Pecking Pigeon Paradigm never worked the way we thought it would—no matter the type of job or industry. The simple fact is, people are not pigeons.

While this book provides relevant research to help you appreciate the compelling evidence showing how outdated modes of motivating people do not work, its focus is on helping you develop the leadership skills to take advantage of it.