Motivation, Job Satisfaction and Performance

DEFINITIONS

MOTIVATION is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals
Workers in any organization need something to keep them working. Most times the salary of the employee is enough to keep him or her working for an organization. However, sometimes just working for salary is not enough for employees to stay at an organization. An employee must be motivated to work for a company or organization. If no motivation is present in an employee, then that employee’s quality of work or all work in general will deteriorate.
PERFORMANCE
The accomplishment of a given task measured against preset known standards of accuracy, completeness, cost, and speed.
JOB SATISFACTION
Contentment (or lack of it) arising out of interplay of employee's positive and negative feelings toward his or her work.

Various publications focusing on organizational behavior have spent a considerable amount of pages on these three topics: motivation, satisfaction and performance. And rightfully so: it does not require too much brainwork to realize that this threesome must have an important level of interdependence with each other.
One way to explain the connection between motivation, satisfaction and performance is the following: Motivation is what people need to perform better. However, not everyone gets motivated by the same things: Where one gets motivated, obtains satisfaction, and consequently performs better from getting additional responsibility assigned, another may feel much better valued and encouraged to higher productivity if he or she is merely being listened to, or given some flexibility in his or her work schedule.
Yet, while the above paragraph may have summarily demonstrated the connection between the three here-discussed themes, it may be appropriate to take a closer look at the subject matter.
Starting with motivation: This act only works when people are receptive to it, and when it is done in the most applicable way. That is, when it feeds the needs of the...