Owners, brokers, and managers of real estate companies could do well to look at the book, Drive, by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Books, 242 pp.). It is a book that anyone could find interesting. Drive is about motivation, a topic that has long been an object of both interest and puzzlement to brokers and managers: their questions ranging from "Why do my agents need to be motivated?" (Isn't compensation enough?) to "How do I motivate my agents?"

Pink tells us that most of what we know about work-place motivation is outmoded or wrong. "Our current business operating system -- which is built around carrot-and-stick motivators – doesn't work and often does harm. We need an upgrade." "Alas, business hasn't caught up with this new understanding. If we want to strengthen our companies, elevate our lives, and improve the world, we need to close the gap between what science knows and what business does."

It is not that human nature has changed; rather, it is that, in many respects, the nature of work has changed. The kind of work where carrot-and-stick motivation is appropriate – work that is routine and repetitive, that can be reduced to following a straightforward set of rules – is an ever-diminishing part of our economy. Most of it has either been automated or outsourced.

So, what does this have to do with selling real estate? No one ever thought that it was routine, repetitive, rule-following work. That's just the point. Because the real estate business is the kind of work that calls for creativity and adaptability, that requires novel problem-solving and (often) out-of-the-box thinking, it is just the type of work that is not susceptible to motivation techniques suited to work that is routine and predictable.

Yet it is motivation 2.0 – Pink's term for the "traditional" kind of motivation – that we are most likely to turn to when we hope to spur our agents on to new heights, more sales, and greater income for us all. We (unilaterally) set goals; we offer incentives; we create contests. But, Pink would argue, these sorts of strategies, for this sort of work, is likely to be ineffective and, in some instances, can even be counterproductive.

So, what might be done that would be better? To understand this, we need to understand "the third drive." "…in the middle of the twentieth century, a few scientists began discovering that humans also have a third drive – what some call 'intrinsic motivation'. For several decades, behavioral scientists have been figuring out the dynamics and explaining the power of our third drive."

There are three elements to intrinsic motivation.

1. The desire to be autonomous, self-directed. People want autonomy over "task (what they do), time (when they do it), team (who they do it with), and technique (how they do it).

2. People want to achieve mastery over activity with which they are engaged.

3. People want to be engaged in an activity that has purpose.

The real estate workplace already has a leg up on other business environments in its ability to nourish intrinsic motivation, Motivation 3.0, because – at least insofar as it employs an independent contractor model – autonomy is already an integral feature of its operation. There is no need to create a results-oriented work environment; it is already there.

Still, there is a lesson to be learned: the more a company seeks to create a non-autonomous environment (e.g. by requiring various kinds of behaviors, by setting (management's) goals for agents) the more it will interfere with the optimal self-motivation of its agents. Brokers have certain legal supervisory duties, to be sure. But, on the whole, most companies would do well to follow the maxim of 3M's president and chairman (in the 1930s and 40s), William McKnight: "Hire good people, and leave them alone."

In subsequent columns we will discuss the roles that Mastery and Purpose play in the employment of Motivation 3.0, self-motivation.

Published: December 28, 2010

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Bob Hunt is a former director of the National Association of Realtors and is author of the recently published book, "Real Estate the Ethical Way." A graduate of Princeton with a master's degree from UCLA in philosophy, Hunt has served as a U.S. Marine, Realtor association president in South Orange County, and director of the California Association of Realtors, and is an award-winning Realtor. Contact Bob at .