Want to REALLY motivate and reward your audiences?

When I first started organising events (breakfast sessions, training sessions, conferences etc.), I would stress over what prizes I can offer to entice my audience to complete the surveys I put out. No matter what I would try (and dang it…they were great prizes!!) after polling the same demographic before the event, I could never shift my participation rate beyond 20%.

Fast forward a few years later, I am running Play2Lead, a gamified mobile learning and engagement platform, and I notice that this is still the norm?—?most event organisers and trainers struggle with coming up with a meaningful prize (we currently do not offer prizes). Sometimes it’s because they left the thinking/planning too late. Sometimes it’s because they think they don’t have budget. Sometimes the prizes they do get are lame sponsor prizes, or crappy swag that really aren’t going to be terribly motivating to their target audience.

What I don’t understand is why is the paradigm stuck such that a prize has to be a monetary prize or that would extrinsically motivate someone to participate.

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein.

I recently read “The Levity Effect” by Adrian Gostick?—?about why (and how) it pays to have workplaces be more fun. So for those of you organising your next workhop or conference, consider making your session more interactive, and reward your participants with a “prize(s)” like the winner gets to:

1. Lead the team in a dance or Synchronized Swivel Chair Dancing
2. Lunch or golf with your General Manager, CEO or keyote speaker

3. “Cause I’m Happy” or a song of your choice

4. Tell your worst joke

5. Imitate your CEO or Manager

6. Overact one of your corporate values

7. Propose (fake) marriage to someone in the room

As someone who used to have a big fat corporate budget, I was (and still am) very disciplined in my marketing budget, and so the consideration of bringing in an expensive keynote speaker often came with me having lengthy discussions with the agent on how we can maximise the ROI on the spend. This often included private sessions with our top clients and our employees.

If you’re really keen to explore intrinsic v extrinsic motivation, I strongly recommend Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis Framework, specifically:

1. Epic Meaning & Calling?—?help your audience connect to a bigger why that matters to them. Whether it is boring safety compliance training (WHY: to keep you, your colleagues safe, which impacts their families), or customer service training (WHY: say if you sell insurance, remind your call centre agents that the insurance they sell actually make a difference to the claimants and provide peace of mind to the policy holder. I certainly was grateful to my insurance broker when I got really sick a few years ago.)
2. Development & Accomplishment?—?help your audience track their personal progress, and brag about it. Whether it is points, badges, leaderboards, certificates?—?celebrate it.
3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback?—?challenge your teams to come up with what they think might be really fun and/or really crazy team activity, or individual activity as a reward. You might want to set a budget and let their creative juices flow. Get them to take turns being on a FUN committee, or better yet, to get on the FUN committee that coordinates the rewards and activities, you must first get a specific points/levels if you have a gamified learning/engagement platform.

No matter what you do, when you are trying to influence a behaviour (at work and at home), make sure you take the time to put yourself in the shoes of the person you are trying to influence, and ask yourself “What’s in it for me”? If your answer is a “nothing”, then don’t waste your time to simply tick the box to do the same old same old, challenge yourself to find your “hook” for your target audience!