In a modern business mileau where managers do not hesitate to tell their staff lies to boost morale (see Goleman, 1997; Winstanley and Woodall, 2000), Christie’s level of interpersonal competence enabled him to fulfil both his need for self-actualisation and demonstrate a greater cross-gender understanding, caring and concern for trainees and peers alike. In his text, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century (1999), Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner concluded that inter-personal competence is one of seven different kinds of minds or multiple intelligences.
An adaptation of these seven intelligences is as follows:
1. Linguistic Intelligence – the ability to think in words and to use language to express and appreciate complex meanings. Linguistic intelligence allows us to understand the order and meaning of words, and to apply metalinguistic skills to reflect on our use of language.
2. Musical Intelligence – the capacity to discern pitch, rhythm, timbre, and tone. This intelligence enables one to recognise, create, reproduce, and reflect on music, as demonstrated by composers, conductors, musicians, vocalists, and sensitive listen-ers. Interestingly, there is often an affective connection between music, and the emotions, and mathematical and musical intelligences may share common thinking processes.
3. Bodily-kinesthetic Intelligence – the capacity to manipulate objects and use a var-iety of physical skills. This intelligence also involves a sense of timing, and the per-fection of skills through mind–body union.
4. Logical-mathematical Intelligence – the ability to calculate, quantify, consider propositions and hypotheses, and carry out complex mathematical operations. It enables us to perceive relationships and connections, to use abstract, symbolic thought, sequential reasoning skills, and inductive and deductive thinking pro-cesses.
5. Spatial Intelligence – the ability to think in three dimensions. Core capacities of this intelligence include mental imagery, spatial reasoning, image manipulation, graphic and artistic skills, and an active imagination.
Multiple intelligence and motivation in HRM 103
6. Interpersonal Intelligence – the ability to understand and interact effectively with others. It involves effective verbal and non-verbal communication, the ability to note distinctions among others, a sensitivity to the moods and temperaments of others, and the ability to entertain multiple perspectives.
7. Intrapersonal Intelligence – the capacity to understand oneself – one’s intelligence and feelings – and to use such knowledge in planning and directing one’s life, and the human condition in general.
Like Goleman’s ‘emotional intelligence’ construct, Gardner’s theory has been applauded as a meaningful way to account for the knowledge that we are culturally different and do not all have the same psychological conditioning. It infers that man-aging human capital will be more effective if human cultural differences are taken seriously, and people can learn to bolster their ‘weaknesses’ through their strengths and share their expertise. This way, they can be appreciated for the gifts they possess and can in turn appreciate others for their gifts they bring to share. Such an assertion not only gives further credence to Maslow’s initial model of human needs, but also suggests that as humans we were not born with these hierarchical needs. Instead they are acquired through our cultural experiences or interrelationship with out external environment. For example, we can see both Maslow’s and Gardner’s theories at their strongest in the following case study where an attempt is being made to account for why individuals perform optimally at some Changing Management of Volunteer Sports Systems times and below par at other times. Here, we note that a more radical and fundamental AML approach to managing human capital needs to be considered, so that particularly within the business of sports, neither players nor employees would continue to remain under-valued, under-trained and under-utilised.
British psychologists have concluded that psychological superiority alone could account for why the Australian rugby league team has won every World Cup since 1975, and why northern hemispheric teams are lagging so far behind. This is asserted in view of the fact that previous research has found no real difference in physical or tactical preparation between players from either the northern and southern hemisphere. Thus Michael Sheard at Teeside University in the United Kingdom suspects that psychological differences could be solely responsible for the success of the Australians. Using questionnaires Sheard and his colleagues system-atically studied seventy players from the English, Welsh, French and Irish teams, and although the Australian and New Zealand teams refused to take part, he reasoned that Australian nationals with Welsh ancestry do play for Wales and therefore it was a legitimate approach to include them.
Sheard realised that those players who had learned to play rugby league in Australia, and currently compete mostly in Australia, retained the highest levels of self-confidence. However, when nationality alone was acknowledged, the Welsh emerged as leading in ‘mental toughness’ – a measure of motivation. They also achieved the highest score for ‘hardiness’, which was a measure of the ability to view
CASE 5.3 Interplaying anthropomaximology with people strategy
The results of the research highlighted in the case study confirm that to be successful in any business venture, whether in the northern or southern hemisphere, we must understand how the brain works and how to apply it in our working life. The gist of the study is that our effort to satisfy needs will depend on our belief that we can expect such efforts to be followed by a certain result which will bring required rewards.
Furthermore, the study suggests that the more appealing an employee considers a par-ticular incentive and the higher the likelihood that the physical and mental exertion of effort will lead to that incentive, then the more positive will be the mental feedback loop and resultant physical energy the individual will put into his or her work.
Therefore we can acknowledge that within the AML process, an employer or employee’s behaviour and psychological superiority is influenced by:
■ what she or he wants to take place;
■ his or her educated guess of the likelihood of the thing occurring;
■ how strongly she or he believes that the experience will satisfy a higher need.
For the purpose of this chapter, we can also postulate that, based on the behavioural approach of the sports employer or employee during this AML process, the following implications should be considered:
■ The HR manager should be unambiguous with employees when explaining what exactly is expected from modern working practices.
■ Employees should be able to see a direct link between their labour output and the rewards such hard work generates.
■ Rewards (psychological and fiscal) should fulfil workers’ needs for security; esteem;
independence and personal self-development.
■ Complex reward or bonus systems are unlikely to increase the effort of workers because employees cannot relate harder work to higher wages.
Such implications forge the relationship between effort, satisfying reward and per-formance (see Porter and Lawler, in Graham and Bennett, 1995: 17) in a world where research has shown that the aspirations and values of management tiers are varying Multiple intelligence and motivation in HRM 105 a potentially tense situation as challenging. The results of the experiment further showed that Wales was the only team that ever led against Australia in the 2000 tournament, and this to Sheard was quite an interesting development.
As such, Sheard extrapolates that self-confidence alone could explain Australia’s continuing domination of the sport. He argues that the Australian team ventures on to the field physically powerful and firm in the belief that they’re going to win the game. He also acknowledges that there is a positive feedback loop at work, with winning leading to soaring confidence and leading back to more victories. However, the positive news for the northern hemispheric teams is that their self-confidence can be boosted. According to Sheard, mental processes can be transformed, and one can build self-confidence through activities such as role-playing situations, where players are encouraged to visualise certain situations which eventually influence the outcome of their game.
Source: Based on The New Scientist, 29 March 2001
(Cashmore, 2002). Emerging from the twentieth century is a new breed of sports man-ager who seek a career that mirrors his or her own personal/emotional values and frames of mental faculties (human multiple intelligences) rather than those of the sports organisation. Thus while managers in general are admitting serious dissatisfac-tion with existing organisadissatisfac-tional life and the pressures being exerted on them to do
‘more with less’, the motivational force driving enlightened HR leaders is the oppor-tunity to seek greater self-determination and sovereignty in a corporate milieu where stress costs the sporting and other industries over £370 million a year (ILAM Leisure News, 2002: 1). Such open-minded HR managers clearly understand the magnitude of an employee’s reserve biopsychological potential (intelligence) to sort out infor-mation which can be stimulated in a cultural locale, to resolve a crisis or generate products that are of value within that particular culture (Gardner, 1999). Moreover, it is argued that within the sporting business, the liberal HR managers who, in adopt-ing the AML approach, offer more comprehensive occupational health-support serv-ices which address these reserve biopsychological potentials (multiple intelligences) and socio-physical needs of their employees can better boost worker performance and cut health-care risks and costs (Attridge, 1999).