80 Leading with NLP
that no one wants. A reward is what you want, not necessarily
what you get. Money is one type of reward, but not the only
one, and it tends to be overused.^3 Everyone deserves a fair
financial reward and good salaries should be paid, but pay-
ing money to try to get people to work faster or smarter does
not usually work well.
What is the right reward? It depends on who is being
rewarded. It may be money – the all-purpose reward, value-
less in itself, but capable of being converted into most things
that people value. Some things, however, it will not buy –
respect, reputation and a fun atmosphere, to name three. If
you have to try and buy these, it shows you don’t have them.
Money is not just a reward in an organization – it goes to
maintain the system and to encourage work that the organi-
zation values. Show me where the money flows and I will show
you what an organization really values, regardless of what it
says it values. Money is a means of control as well as a means
of reward. It has strange and often contradictor y effects on
people. For example, those people who demand money
because they feel hard done by or have not had a salary rise
for some time will often leave the organization even (or
especially) if the rise is given. Why? I guess it wasn’t really
money they wanted. They wanted something else, perhaps
challenge, more recognition, a better environment. They
didn’t get it, they got money, and nothing else changed.
Many surveys have shown people rank money as the third
or fourth value in their working life. Yet the same surveys
show that when asked what they thought was the most
important motivation for others, people gave money as the
first choice. Strange that we think others should want what
we do not want.
To assume that people will work for money is to assume
that they are completely rational, everything else is equal
and they are out to get the most money they can. Many
people work far harder than they need to earn their money,
because they enjoy what they do. They choose a poorly
paid profession but they are happy in it, or they choose an
employer who pays lower wages because they like the people,