Why Pride Matters More Than Money

The Power of the World's Greatest Motivational Force

Jon Katzenbach writes about how pride can motivate employees to achieve higher performance and how instilling pride can be achieved.

Every great company is distinguished by the special attitude and commitment of its employees. Most companies strive for employee commitment through compensation and financial incentives tied to performance goals. Monetary rewards have motivational power, but few companies understand how limiting they are in building the broad-based emotional commitment that drives peak performance.

Pride is more powerful than money. Employee pride – the admiration of co-workers as well as family and friends, the spirit of teams in pursuit of a dream, and the high that comes from having done a job well – is the powerful motivational force that compels individuals and companies to excel.

Management can instill this kind of pride, which can be used to drive organizations to higher performance. In Why Pride Matters More Than Money (Crown Business, 2003), Jon Katzenbach provides ideas, examples, and practical approaches for how it can be done. For companies that excel at instilling institution-building pride in their employees, the critical element is the "pride-builder" near the front line rather than the leaders at the top. Front line pride-builders have developed the unique capability to integrate multiple sources of pride for their people in ways that counter-balance self-serving pride. While pride-builders can be found in almost any company, only a few have developed that capability broadly.