Chapter 1: Communicate Successfully to Motivate Effectively

From the Book: The Refractive Thinker®: Vol. VIII: Effective Business Practices for Motivation and Communication

Summary

An examination of prevailing thought in the literature about the connection between communication and motivation posed a daunting prospect as these authors set out to uncover some common elements shared by communication and motivation as separate constructs. An initial hypothesis that successful communication was a necessary ingredient to motivate effectively in a business setting became a common theme, and drove the basis of the study. The aim of this chapter was to provide the reader with substantial information about communication and motivation whereby he or she could establish relationships between these constructs and among other constructs, based on findings. The authors took a pragmatic approach to the curious topic and remained intellectually open to any findings as a set intellectual philosophy was absent.

This literature review provided many opportunities to interpret and interconnect because of the predominant mention of certain other constructs: communicate successfully; motivate effectively; emotional intelligence as a factor; gender differences in communication; the brain is wired differently in males and females; and engaged employees are high performers. There were other worthy ideas, concepts and theories for consideration found in the literature that could easily be linked to communication and motivation. The significant and obvious relationships that continued to surface were: how we communicate, how we motivate, and what the business implications are as a result of these applied behaviors. We offer a shared-variance model, which captures the common elements of employee engagement and performance—the results of the applied behaviors by gender through communication and motivation.