Navigating Your Career with Self-Determination Theory

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Our world is a world of motivation and lack thereof. Everything we do or don’t do is precipitated by motivation or lack thereof. Everything we interact with is the effect of someone’s motivation or lack thereof. Motivation is ubiquitous. Hence — in this world of motivation — knowing what science has to say about it will give you some insights about almost everything.

The leading theory in human motivation is Self-Determination Theory (SDT). It’s based on motivational psychology from experts around the world. It’s developed by Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci. Some researches about human behaviour are based on SDT, including: passion, self-esteem, and person-environment fit.

This piece will cover the essence of SDT and it’s application in navigating career. Career is an integral part of most people’s lives in modern world and I think SDT has some useful insights about it.

Self-Determination Theory

Before SDT came along, motivation was considered unidimensional. Someone could only be seen as highly or lowly motivated. Because of that, our knowledge about how to motivate someone was mostly limited to carrot and stick and appealing to some interests. SDT then came along and posits that motivation is not unidimensional, there are different types of motivation, and each type affects human’s growth and behaviour differently.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation can be defined as doing something because it’s inherently interesting, satisfying, or enjoyable. When you’re intrinsically motivated, the motivation is inside you ready to come out and move you into action. Intrinsic motivation often manifests as exploration and play. Any other sources of motivation that don’t qualify as intrinsic motivation such as reward or punishment are considered as extrinsic motivation.

3 Basic Psychological Needs

In the past 50 years SDT researchers from around the world observed what factors in the environment affect intrinsic motivation. They found unequivocally that:

1. Reward and punishment undermine intrinsic motivation; and
2. Negative feedback undermines intrinsic motivation whereas positive feedback enhances intrinsic motivation.

That is because all people have basic psychological needs of autonomy and competence. We all need to feel volitional, self-determined, and feel like we endorse our behaviour. We also need to feel capable, affective, and masterful in what we’re doing.

SDT researchers also found that extrinsic motivation can be internalized such that we can do an extrinsically motivated behaviour with a sense of volition. They found that people tend to internalize extrinsically motivated behaviour if the result of such behaviour is valued by themselves AND their important others. That is because other than autonomy and competence, all people have a basic psychological need of relatedness. We all need to feel cared for by others. To feel concerned for and with others.

Internalization of Extrinsic Motivation

SDT models different types of internalization. Each type differs in what regulates the internalization or lack thereof. Each regulator differs in how strong it can internalize or how strong it can make extrinsically motivated behaviour feel volitional. The model hence posits that motivation can be thought of as a continuum from non-self-determined to self-determined.

With external regulation we behave to get reward or to avoid punishment.

With introjected regulation we behave to satisfy a personal standard. Even though it’s personal, the standard can be obtained from external factor like wanting to be equal or better in something than someone else. This regulation is a double-edged sword. When we live up to the standard we feel great but when we don’t we feel guilty and ashamed.

With identified regulation we behave because we value the consequence. As mentioned in the previous section this valuing tends to come from being related to others. It’s likely that we internalize our parents, friends, lovers value to the extent that we feel close to them.

With integrated regulation we behave because we value the consequence — meaning that the behaviour has been identified — AND that the identification has become congruent with other identifications, needs, and experiences. Some people call this internalization “a synthesist with the self”.

Here are some examples of the continuum. Each example goes from external to integrated regulation. Note that “<” means “feels less volitional than”.

1. Going to the gym to avoid getting fat-shamed < because all your friends are buff < because you wanna be stronger < because you have someone to protect.
2. Coding because you need the money < to be the best competitive programmer < because you wanna be smarter < to make the world a better place for people you care about.
3. Making music to sell album < to be John Mayer < to express yourself < to resonate with others.

External and introjected regulations are grouped as controlled motivation. It’s called controlled because with these regulations we feel like we control ourselves. Identified, introjected, and intrinsic regulations are grouped as autonomous motivation. It’s called autonomous because with these regulations we feel volitional or self-determined.

Navigating Your Career with Self-Determination Theory

Autonomous and controlled motivation affect us differently. Researchers have found unequivocally that autonomous motivation:

1. Enhances creativity;
2. Enhances problem solving ability;
3. Boosts performance;
4. Creates positive emotions; and
5. Results in psychological and physical health

whereas controlled motivation:

1. Increases the likelihood to cheat;
2. Increases the likelihood of anxiety;
3. Decreases performance; and
4. Results in psychological and physical ill-being.

So the moral of the research is that we should aim to fulfill our basic psychological needs and that we should aim to be autonomously motivated — or in other words, to have self-determination.

Here are some ways to achieve the above goals in the context of career.

Understand Yourself

With SDT lense this means understanding what you’re interested in, what you value, what you’re good at, and which basic psychological needs you have or have not fulfilled.

One way to understand them accurately is by taking psychometric tests. With The Big 5 Personality Traits test, you can see what you’ll likely to be interested in and good at. With Aspirations Index you can see your aspirations and whether or not it’s instrinsic or extrinsic. With Needs Satisfaction Scale you can see which basic psychological needs you have or have not fulfilled. There are other tests you can take to understand other aspects of yourself.

Another way is by evaluating your motivation. Try placing all the activities you’ve been doing into the self-determination continuum. This will help you understand why some things are harder to do than others.

Follow Your Interests

If you’re lucky to have a fulltime job you’re interested in then I’m happy for you. That means you’re likely to be instrinsically motivated in doing your job.

Having a job we’re not interested in is one of the most common topics encountered by practicing psychologists. What do they suggest? Try to do what you’re interested in part-time. Start small. It will keep you motivated and in the long run it might turn into something that you can do full-time. In most cases psychologists would suggest NOT to leave it behind.

Make Meaningful Connections

Having good friends, a loving family, or a matching significant other will fulfill your psychological need relatedness and can greatly help in internalizing extrinsically motivated behaviour. That’s why it’s advisable to maintain good relationships with them.

Connecting with people with the same interest, value, attitude, or demographic also fulfills need relatedness. That’s why choosing a job where you’re connected with people with that criteria is advisable. In industrial and organizational psychology, this is called “person-group fit”. Alternatively, joining or giving back to a community are also some good ways to connect with people like yourself.

Choose or Establish Autonomy Supportive Culture

Here are the characteristics of an autonomy supportive culture:

1. It values your perspective;
2. It allows you to make your own choices;
3. It encourages you to explore;
4. It encourages you to take initiatives; and
5. It gives you a rationale for every decision.

Ask yourself if your work culture is autonomy supportive. Which characteristic is missing and if there’s anything you can do about it. A good start for a change might be in choosing your leader. It’s advisable to choose a leader who is autonomy supportive and if possible encourage them to be if they’re not.

Always Try to Be Better at What You do

This will fulfill need competence. That’s why you should choose a work environment that can constantly give you appropriate challenges. You can do it by assessing the leader, the state of the company, the product the company is building, and the teammates you’ll be working with.

You should also setup some metrics to measure your ability. Once you know what the metrics are measure regularly and make sure that you’re getting better day by day.

Sources and Further Readings

Most of the SDT research materials are compiled from The Oxford Handbook of Work Engagement, Motivation, and Self-Determination Theory (Oxford Library of Psychology) and The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation (Oxford Library of Psychology). I would recommend the former if you want to dive deeper into SDT and the latter if you want to learn other theories on human motivation. Both of the developers of SDT Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci are involved in the making of these books.

Thanks for reading, I would end this piece with a quote from one of the developers of SDT:

Don’t ask how you can motivate other people. Instead, ask how can you create the conditions within which people will motivate themselves.

— Edward L. Deci

— Tino Sambora