What is my purpose? Why do I put on an uniform everyday? Is for the love of the country or love of the Airman, is it make it till retirement or is it something else? What motivates me to continue to do this work? Achieving satisfaction and therefore achieving high states of motivation has been a difficult process for me. I have gone through cycles in my career where my motivation has been high and others when I did not understand why I was there. I understand that I am not alone in this struggle. Government workers tend to have different motives from the private sector (Taylor & Westover, 2011). I think that this is especially true in the "white collar" portions of the military. My job for example is to control the space domain that is bounded by physics and will never result in a tangible experience. I work in the Air Force Space Command side of the military, my job is to apply space superiority yet I will never go to space and only by rarity have actually see a satellite. Achieving job satisfaction can often be difficult Locke (1976), defined job satisfaction, as "a pleasurable emotional state, resulting from the appraisal of one's own job or experience", or as Spector (1997) writes, how we feel about our job and its aspects. Throughout my military career I have waxed and waned with the tidal waters of motivation while serving in the Air Force. So I am inevitably left with the question, why do I put my uniform on everyday? I am in the Air Force because I want to be not because I have to be. Taking this advice, I am choosing freely to serve. I am not serving because of draft or because of family motivation, but because I want to.
I believe that in my current position, as a squadron superintendent, my motivates have two primary sources retirement and my personnel. I do the things that I do for those two reasons. It is no surprise to my friends and family that I am tired, my mind is deteriorating as I have been diagnosed with a variety of mental health issues and I need to retire. I have two more years left until I can retire and I am exhausted. However my dedication to the my personnel continues to be my reason. In one day, I feel responsible to everyone from senior squadron leadership to the lowest ranks and try to motivate them to continue. I am impressed by their ability to solve puzzles, to discover new horizons and view the world differently as I did in their shoes. Take for example the candle problem described by Dan Pink (2009). I ran this same experiment without a consultation prize or any award fee, at a working lunch this week. In every case, the problem was solved within minutes, not because they wanted a prize but because they wanted to solve the problem. This is my motivation, this is my legacy as I descend out of the military. To be fair to the social experiment, during my tenure over the past few months, I have challenged attitudes and motivation for my folks, I have spent a great deal amount of time working on their reasons "why are you here." This question was easy for some but others felt lost in the answer without knowing their purpose. The reality is that those folks had poor motivation and poor productivity. Challenging those folks, the 9-to-5 crowd, those folks lost what it means to put on the uniform. This satisfaction getting folks to find their purpose to serve and that is why I have surfed the tidal waters of the last 17 years.
References
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Locke, E. (1976) ‘The Nature and Causes of Job Satisfaction’ in M. Dunnette (ed.) Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, IL: Rand McNally
- Spector, P. E. (1997). Job satisfaction: Application, assessment, cause, and consequences. Thousand Oaks, Calif;London;: SAGE.
- Taylor, J., & Westover, J. H. (2011). Job satisfaction in the public service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations. Public Management Review, 13(5), 731-751. doi:10.1080/14719037.2010.532959
TED (2009). The Puzzle of Motivation: Dan Pink. Retrieved from YouTube
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