Ch.

4 Summary – Motivation – Ryan Collins

This chapter on motivation was extremely content rich with valuable information for me to better help and

prepare for success those I lead. To truly maximize this information the best I can, I will in time reread and write a

longer report with applications and plans to best implement the knowledge covered, as I suspect I will with many

chapters in this text. But for now, here is my one-page abbreviated version.

This chapter covers many different views and theories but one idea that seems to be agreed upon through

most is that in each person there is a balance of where their motivation comes from between traits each internally

possess and the situation or environment, they’re in. I believe these combined into the interactional view on a

slightly changing continuum over time give us the best insight into where their individual motivation and actions

come from. These can change slightly over time relating to our situation similarly to personality last chapter and our

role-related behavior, but I believe are anchored for the most part to our psychological core and intrinsic beliefs and

thoughts. I believe some people can change who they are and how they act completely if they undergo a

lifechanging event, either a single event of a traumatic/extreme nature or that of a period of reform such as going to

college and having an outstanding and noncompromising leader or joining the military. It is my goal to be one of

these shaping leaders by loving our kids and also being firm, fair, and noncompromising.

Attribution Theory is useful and individualistic as each person will tell themselves a unique story of why or

why not they were successful. Asking questions to probe here can show a great deal into the mindset, motivation,

goals and beliefs of an individual. This is followed closely by Achievement Goal Theory and one’s interpretation of

what it takes to be successful. As a team and on the individual level we must define what it means to be successful

so we all as leaders and players or students are working in the same direction and are unified in that pursuit. Perhaps

the most critical content of this entire chapter was then the comparison of Task Orientation and Ego Orientation.

One of my greatest philosophies as a leader is simply “We must improve and just get better. Be better today than we

were yesterday, if we do that each day, eventually we’ll be great and achieve our desired results.” This feeds

directly into task orientation and pursuit of the process, not result or winning. As recently as yesterday I had

extensive discussion with youth coaching colleagues about how parents wanted their 13 y/o child to not compete in

an event they would take 2nd place in and not win in and couldn’t see how this mindset is detrimental to the long-

term development of the child and how they’re taking from the child an opportunity to learn, grow, and figure out

how to overcome some adversity in a controlled environment. During a past discussion with a prominent high
Ch.4 Summary – Motivation – Ryan Collins

school athletic director his greatest concern for students is they don’t understand how to overcome adversity. The

solution to this is defining early and often what we describe success as. As a leader I will put our kids into positions

to be successful, which I have just given you some insight into how I define that. Our text goes into great detail

about the issues with ego orientation and how our culture and generation as a larger group emphasizes that too. The

most ironic part of this comparison is that to achieve measured success, the task centered approach will turn out

better results and the ego orientation will be detrimental to “winning” games or races despite in parents or athletes

minds prioritizing this very thing.