How do you motivate smart people who find positive reinforcement patronizing?

Giving appreciation for small efforts and recognizing people for jobs well done motivate most people. However, I've found that when I'm working with someone really really smart, those same practices are demotivating. They tend to roll their eyes at my appreciation efforts. How do I motivate those really smart people to want to work harder without making them feel patronized?|||Hey! Round of applause for the clever dude sitting all alone in the corner...





I think anybody would find your approach to motivation patronising - either sooner or later.





You motivate people to work harder by giving them progressively harder puzzles to solve. You give them things that make them think in new ways - or make them address a problem from a different perspective.





Problem solving and curiousity makes us what we are. Doing something exactly the same way, day in and day out kills creativity - do something different.|||Depends on what sort of appreciation you're handing out and what the setting is. Are you talking incentives or just a pat on the back? Is this a business setting or some therapeutic situation? Professionals don't want little "best of the month" certificates or insincere fawning over small accomplishments, and if they're "really really smart" they probably don't need a cheer coach squeezing motivation out of them because that would be quite patronizing. Smart people don't want to work harder, they want to work better. If they're getting the work done, the sense of accomplishment is already there, they don't need you echoing it. But if you're offering some tangible incentive they might be more responsive to your efforts.|||They roll their eyes because they don't need the recognition of appreciation for small efforts.





Find something that actually challenges them.