We've seen that there are different types of motivation identified within the SDT taxonomy have different impacts on people's quality of performance and their wellness. The more externally regulated you are or interjected you are, the more control as your motivation, and thus the worse your well being and the worse your performance. On the other hand, the more you're on the autonomous end of the internalization continuum when you're identified are integrated in your motivation, then, of course, good things result from that. So, the question really becomes how can we facilitate greater internalization and integration of extrinsic motivation? To understand that we go back to the broad strokes of our basic SDT theory, which is we argue that when there are supports for autonomy, competence and relatedness in the environment, people are more likely to internalize the motivation for behaviors that are transmitted there in. So, what comprises this facilitating environment specifically? Well, let me go into detail on each of those major needs supportive elements. I want to begin with autonomy support, because we think this is perhaps the most important element in facilitating integrative processes. Autonomy support really begins with an understanding of the person that you're trying to motivate or trying to get to internalize a value or a new way of being. When we are trying to motivate somebody else, we start by trying to understand their perspective or take what we considered the internal frame of reference. We want to know what that motivation looks like to them, what are the challenges and obstacles that they face. When we take the motivate ease internal frame of reference, we're much more likely to be able to understand the obstacles and the barriers to acting as they see it, and then be able to be helpful with them. So, we always begin an emphatic stance when we're trying to motivate someone else. In addition to taking the internal frame of reference, a good motivator encourages self-initiation and input, and why is that? Because when people can make inputs or take initiation with respect to their own activities, they feel more ownership of them, and that ownership, of course, translates into greater internalization. In addition, when you're trying to help somebody acquire a new behavior, you want to give them as many meaningful choices as possible, both in how to go about the task that they have to do, or the strategies that they adopt. People would like to do things in their own way, again, creating a greater sense of ownership and engagement in any kind of task. When people have to do things a certain way or when they have to engage in a certain standard or meet a certain behavior, that it's good to have a rationale for why that's the case. It's very hard for anybody to autonomous, they engage in something unless they, themselves have a good reason for doing it. So, providing a rationale is one way that you can help people anchor themselves more autonomously in a task. Finally, supporting autonomy means always avoiding the use of controlling language like: have to, should, must, which has people feeling pressured and control from the outside, and instead providing a language, which involves as much choice and as much ownership on their part as possible. Also, not using rewards in a controlling way, as another issue in supporting autonomy, becomes really important. Because so often, we try and use rewards to motivate something, and they backfire in terms of creating that sense of ownership and internalization. Now, beyond autonomy support, internalization also require support for competence, because we don't really ever internalize something and make it our own, unless it's something we feel effective at doing. So, if we want to help people internalize something, we want to design environments in which they can master those tests that they would need to do. This means designing the learning experiences around anything to be internalized in a way that mastery is the dominant experience. So, when we think about optimal challenges and its relationship to competence, what we mean by an optimal challenge, is a challenge which almost all the time, you can succeed it. So, whether we're in a school environment or a workplace, or doing chores around the house, when we're trying to internalize and learn a new behavior, we want to learn that in a scaffolded way that allows us to keep improving but feel success all along the way. When motivators give us feedback, we want that information, that we want that feedback to be informational rather than controlling, rather than feeling like it's something that's critical and humiliating when you make a mistake, instead people are greeting you with concern, care, and feedback that helps you be efficacious in your subsequent attempts. Furthermore, competence is really supported by praise, and we've indicated in a few times at positive feedback really helps people stay motivated, but the positive feedback has to be for the things that have been their own initiative, rather than things that have simply been what we've demanded of them. Praise should focus on effort and specific accomplishments, not on comparison with others for it to have its most positive effects on motivation and internalization. Finally, internalization as we've said, really requires support for relatedness, because we're likely to most internalize the values and the principles and the standards of people to whom we would like to be connected. When we're trying to help people internalize, then we want to convey respect for them as individuals, so that they can feel valued insignificant and activities. Again, when they face challenges in internalizing or in engaging in a new behavior that we're carrying as they engage in those struggles, we create an atmosphere of warmth and inclusion. In fact, when we look at internalized motivation in settings like workplaces or classrooms, and we find that it's most strongly predicted by a single item in some of our measures, and that item is the following which is, "My teacher likes me," or "My manager likes me." Notice, this is not, "I like my manager," or "I like my teacher," it's, "My teacher likes me." People tend to be a lot more motivated when they feel like the motivator is someone who cares for them. We often say this is the cheapest motivational intervention in the world, because all it takes sometimes is just a smile, and our appreciation of the presence of the person that you're trying to motivate that will lead them to care more about the setting, and be more likely to want to internalize what's going on there in. So, these are the facilitating conditions: Autonomy Support, Competence Support, and Relatedness Support, that catalyzed the intrinsic and integrative tendencies that are already there within each of us. These are conditions support intrinsic motivation, but in particular, they also enhance internalization and integration. These conditions are pretty similar across various aspects of development, whether we're talking about parenting styles, teachers or coaches or managers, these three essential supports will enhance internalization in those settings, even though there are different details on how that will go about. So, we have seen that internalization has a lot of benefits for people and for their performance, and we also see now that there are specific processes through which that internalization can be enhanced, and these were the focus of many of our interventions within self-determination theory.
