Motivation at work and coaching. Perfomance in business companies and in sport-teams.

 7
I will add my personal experience in the position of coach of a women volley team that 
plays in the regional championship. 
How is it possible to motivate your athletes without paying them? 
How can they improve their skills? 
How can they achieve the best performance? 
The thesis contains some interviews to famous coaches in the world of football, volley 
and basketball. 
I am convinced that every person needs some goals and some motives to improve their 
quality of life. 
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Chapter 1   
Motivation 
 
1.1 A classification of motivations 
 
Motivation is the term generally used to describe the interrelation between needs and 
the behaviours directed to face and satisfy them. This is a dynamic process that, in its 
simplest manifestation, may be divided into three different phases. In the first phase we 
find the conditions causing behaviour, such as being thirsty or being cold. These are 
generally classified as motives, pulsions or needs. In the second phase, we find the 
behaviour caused by these needs or impulses, which is often called instrumental 
behaviour because it is usually instrumental to the reaching of the third phase, which is 
the achievement of an object or of a goal. 
In its simplest form the motivation process may be illustrated by fig. 1.1. 
 
 
 
 
Motive 
Pulsion 
Need 
(Hunger) 
 
  
Instrumental 
Behaviour 
 
(Visit to the 
Supermarket) 
  
Goal 
 
 
(Food) 
 
 
Fig. 1.1. A simple model of the motivational process. 
Source: Keith C.Williams, Behavioural Aspects of Marketing, London, Heinemann, 1986. 
 9
 
A person, who cannot get food all day, will experience hunger. The hunger need will 
cause a behaviour directed to obtain food. As he is hungry, the person will satisfy his 
food need when he will achieve his goal. 
While food may be classified as a thing corresponding to the biological pulsion of a 
hungry man or woman, in the complex modern societies the eating/drinking process has 
got a much more complex social meaning. The kind of food that a person eats, the place 
where he eats and people he eats with, all these factors will depend on a complex 
interrelation of economical and social pulsions. 
In Great Britain a person who usually has lunch in a pub may be moved by a human 
contact need, while another person may desire to conform to the rules of a particular 
group in order to be, for example, “one of them”. Another person behaves in this way 
because he can find useful professional contacts and increase his career prospects. 
Motivations may be originated by “learnt motives” and “non-learnt motives”
1
. The 
non-learnt ones include the physiological pulsions and the primary pulsions, which 
don’t seem to be based on obvious psychological bases. The learnt or secondary 
motives occur where, through the learning process, a previously neutral stimulus causes 
motivational states. The most important learnt motives are those that give rise to social 
motivations. 
We can also make a distinction between “positive” and “negative” motives. The positive 
motives are those that a person finds hard to reach, for example the membership to an 
exclusive club. The negative goals are that a person tries to avoid, such as difficult and 
unpleasant situations. 
As a consequence, it is possible to make a general classification and divide motives in 
four main categories, as it is shown in the matrix of Fig. 1.2. 
                                                 
1
 Keith C.Williams, Psicologia per il marketing, il Mulino, Bologna, 1988, pp.91-94. 
 10
 
                                                          Learnt                 Non-learnt 
 
                             Positive 
 
 
                                  Negative  
 
 
 
Fig. 1.2. A general classification of the motives’ types 
Source: Keith C.Williams, Behavioural Aspects of Marketing, London, Heinemann, 1986. 
 
 
 
1.1.1 Physiological pulsions 
 
In this kind of pulsions we may include hunger, thirst, temperature regulation and sleep. 
It is basic for the body survival to keep well balanced the internal physiological 
conditions. The general term for this notion is homeostasis. A lack of balance in one of 
these physiological conditions causes automatic physiological reactions in order to 
reduce the gap and these reactions may often be a stimulus versus further reactions of 
personal behaviour. 
For example, if body temperature increases, the person will begin to transpire. As a 
consequence, he may try to get a better temperature: he may take his coat off or open a 
window. 
Some examples of non-learnt physiological motivations are sexual and motherly 
instincts, which are very powerful motivations forces, but unique as biological 
motivations, in the sense that individual survival doesn’t depend on them in any case. 
They are nevertheless essential for species survival. 
To get married To eat 
To go to the 
Dentist 
Birth pains 
 11
 
1.1.2 Primary pulsions 
 
An exam of the daily behaviour of animals, children and adults shows that there are 
many pulsions, called primary pulsions, which seem to be non-learnt even if they aren’t 
related to any physiological stimulus. Anyway they are essential for an effective 
interaction with the external environment. 
Such primary pulsions include the need of moving, perceiving and exploring the 
environment, of handling things and getting in contact with other people and objects. 
For example, before learning to speak, children actively explore their environment. 
They are interested in noises and in strange forms and they like handling objects they 
don’t know. 
Primary pulsions, like other motivations, may be satisfied, but the interest in new 
objects and situations decreases little by little. In fact children may play with a new toy 
for hours and afterwards they may not consider it any more. 
 
 
 
1.1.3 Learnt motives 
 
Socialization, subject we are going to deal with in next chapter, has got much influence 
on the expression ways of physiological and primary pulsions. Religious rules, for 
example, modify the expression of the hunger pulsion: Catholic people still today 
should avoid eating meat on Friday, while pork meat is forbidden for Jews and 
Moslems. 
The physical activity need is socially accepted when it is expressed in team sports such 
as volleyball or football, but it isn’t socially acceptable if it is expressed by a brawl at a 
street corner. 
Learning plays an important part in motivation process creating secondary pulsions and 
goals. 
 12
Secondary pulsions are often due to the classical conditioning. A person who works 
many hours a day only to get food, clothes and a house for his family may realize, for 
example, that working hard gives him human contacts and improves his social position. 
Soon the person can get secondary goals by human contacts and social position and he 
will go on working hard even if he has no more the urgent need to offer his family a 
minimal survival level. 
Instrumental learning is also an important factor in the creation of secondary goals. If a 
person is continuously pushed toward determined actions, these actions and ideas will 
become dominant. For example, if a child is regularly rewarded with praise by his 
parents every time he expressed his success desire by saying, “I want to be a doctor”, he 
will feel supported and soon he will learn a secondary goal. 
Many of the secondary goals reached by an instrumental learning involve other persons. 
Such goals include social values as kindness, respect for superiors, honesty, respect of 
laws. These social values rule relations among persons and determine the material and 
the social objects that people try to achieve and preserve. 
Human behaviour is characterized by complex goals such as the need of authority, 
power, success and social approval. Many of these complex goals are secondary goals 
and they are reached while learning the way of achieving primary goals. For example, 
the multimillionaire wanting power may have realized when he was young that the 
material rewards due to satisfy his basic physiological pulsions depended on his ability 
to influence others’ opinions. 
Human needs and goals are differently related one to the others and each person 
associates them in his particular way. Several secondary goals may be related to unique 
primary pulsions and, on the other hand, reaching a unique goal may satisfy several 
needs. 
Two persons with the same goal may satisfy very deferent needs, while people with the 
same pulsion may, for example, satisfy it by achieving different goals. 
The need success for a person may mean success in his job, for another person it may 
mean to reach an important role in a local association. 
Learnt goals need a periodical support for surviving. 
 13
Nevertheless, often it happens that a motivated behaviour lasts much time also after 
achieving the primary or secondary goal and this happens when a further secondary goal 
has taken its place. For example, in the case of our multi-millionaire, the satisfaction of 
physiological needs is no more a primary goal and it has been replaced by the secondary 
goal of power. 
Motivations are often classified as conscious or unconscious. But, while physiological 
pulsions are often consciously recognized, it’s very difficult to classify as conscious or 
unconscious the primary and secondary goals. 
A person may be unconscious of what really pushes him, even if he is sure to know it 
and this happens because several pulsions and motivations have an intricate relation. In 
other cases, a person may try to hide some of his motivations and repress them, maybe 
because they are related to unpleasant conditions or because they fight with other 
personal or social values that are deep-rooted in the person. 
 
 
 
1.2 Theories about motivation 
 
Research about motivation has been mainly directed to the exploration of particular 
reactions to common motivational states. The obtained results are useful above all for 
illustrating the complexity of the motivation process and the inter-relations between 
motives and goals. 
Many theories about motivation have been proposed, but lot of these theories study 
particular motivation states in a specific context, or they are parts of more general 
theories. For example, theories proposed by Hertzberg or Vroom were developed 
starting from research on working situation. 
In this chapter I will examine two general theories about motivation. The first is 
Maslow’s theory considering both learnt and non-learnt motives and it is important 
because it offers an explanation about the achievement of certain goals instead of others. 
 14
McClelland’s theory, on the contrary, is interested in complex motivations and it is 
important because it validly contributes to the explanation of human behaviour in 
advanced societies. 
 
 
 
1.2.1 Maslow’s theory about self-realization 
 
Maslow (1982)
2
 classified human needs in five groups according to a hierarchy of 
importance. 
Hereinafter we present five need groups, from the lowest level to the highest one: 
 
• Physiological needs: hunger, thirst, sex, activity; 
• Safety needs: safety, order and stability; 
• Membership needs: love, affection, membership and identification; 
• Esteem needs: prestige, success and self-respect; 
• Self-realization. 
 
The way of ordering these needs is significant. First of all because this is the order in 
which needs tend to develop and, in the second place, this is the order in which they 
must be satisfied. As soon as the lowest needs of the hierarchy have been satisfied, the 
ones placed in the following level will arise and demand to be satisfied. For this reason 
people belonging to poor societies mainly tend to satisfy physiological and safety needs 
and they do not have a particular interest in the highest needs. 
In rich societies, on the contrary, primary needs are easily satisfied and, as a 
consequence, esteem needs and self-realization become more important. 
                                                 
2
 Andrea Rugiadini, Organizzazione d’Impresa, Giuffrè Editore, Milano, 1979, pp.138-142. 
P. Hersey and K.H.Blanchard, Management of Organizational Behavior, Prentice Hall, Fresno, 
California, 1996, pp.46-55, 80. 
A.H. Maslow, Motivazione e personalità, Armando, Milano, 1982.