As a teenager in Israel, Dan Ariely suffered life-threatening burns over 70% of his body when a magnesium flare, used to illuminate battlefields, exploded. While he was overcoming his injuries during an extremely long and painful recovery process, he began to ask questions – of himself as well as human behavior in general.

“I was taken out of the standard life,” he says on his blog. “I started looking at everything as strange. Why do we hold glasses this way? Why do we give people compliments?…I felt as if I was a little alien coming and looking at things in a new perspective, and not understanding.”

The result?  A series of books AND a movie, Dishonesty, that take his research into why humans behave so irrationally and attempts to describe his findings in non-academic terms – so that more people will learn about behavioral economics and that some will use the insights to enrich and change their lives.

Ariely has a series of TED talks but for our “How to be a Better Manager Series,” I wanted to point you to one that he did back in 2012 “What Motivates us to Work?”

Surprise! It’s not money. Take a few minutes to check out his extremely insightful TED Talk below.

Go to Minute 2 to learn about what “de-motivates” us and go straight to Minute 3 to hear how an experiment with Legos® helps us understand how to create “meaningful” versus futile work and boost people’s productivity and engagement in the process.

Intriguing and insightful – enjoy!

And to hear more managerial insights don’t forget to sign up for our  upcoming 10th Annual Growth Strategies Breakfast on April 1stSeats are filling up fast!

John Ratliff, Founder and former CEO of 650 employee Appletree Answers will be joining us as our Keynote and will talk about how he and his team created a Culture that motivated and inspired their employees and successfully scaled to over $30M in revenue before selling.

Or just reach out and connect to learn how you can become a more motivational leader too!

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