let's take a look at what happens when you offer incentives and rewards there was a group of young kids who showed up and they played they were playing street hockey or ball hockey right in front of this elderly gentleman's house it was a canadian story so that's why hockey's being used but they were playing ball hockey and they came every single day and inevitably the ball would go up onto his lawn so these kids were constantly trampling on his lawn and he had a lot of time on his hands being retired and looking out the window watching these kids just beat up his front lawn and they'd even take their sticks and they'd be hitting the ball on the lawn and finally he got fed up he said i've got to get rid of these kids how am i going to do it you know they're on public property on the street so he came up with an idea so he went out to the kids and he said hey guys i just want to let you know that i think it's awesome that you're coming here and playing ball hockey street hockey every single day in fact i'm enjoying it so much that i'd like to start paying you to come out and play i like to turn you guys into professional athletes so every day when you come i'm going to give you one dollar each and the kids were just blown away by that they are going to get paid to come out and play street hockey so they started showing up each day as they already were and at the end of the day he'd come out and say thanks guys give him a dollar each well after about a week he said guys this is costing me a lot more than i expected i'm gonna have to cut this back to 50 cents and they say sir that's all right we understand and that was a lot of money and they kept on playing and he kept on giving them 50 cents a few days later he went back to them and said guys this this is still a lot more than i had bargained for and you guys have been playing so consistently i'm only going to be able to give you guys a quarter from now on and the kids said a quarter forget that we're out of here and they never came back again that's the power of extrinsic rewards and extrinsic motivators and what it does to deplete the intrinsic motivation that each of us has here's a quote by a theorist and researcher alfie cohn rewards are every bit as controlling as punishments as they control by seduction if reward recipients feel controlled it's likely that they'll that the experience will assume a punitive quality over the long run even though obtaining a reward itself is usually pleasurable in other words when you motivate with incentives and the carrot and some form of reward over the long term it will have a negative impact on the athletes that you're working with i'm not saying don't ever use an extrinsic reward but just know the strategies that you're using and determine and give thought to the frequency by which you're going to use them [Music]