Once again, something completely unrelated to business has me thinking about employee motivation. This morning I was reading about conditional regard—a parenting concept in psychology that describes what happens when children feel valued only if they behave, perform, or achieve in specific ways. At first, conditional regard can look like a powerful motivator. Parents see children following rules, chasing grades, and striving for approval. From the outside, it can look like success.

But in the long term, the results are corrosive. Children raised on conditional regard often learn to fear mistakes. They come to believe that their worth depends entirely on what they produce or how perfectly they behave. Approval isn’t unconditional; it must be earned again and again. The cost is often anxiety, self-doubt, an inability to take healthy risks, or checkout of of ambition altogether.

The Employer Version of Conditional Regard

I think there’s a loose corollary to employment.

Of course, employment is not parenting. It is, by definition, conditional: we hire people for a role, we pay them to deliver results, and the basic expectation is that they meet the responsibilities of the job. Employment is conditional in a way parenting should never be.

But as managers and leaders, we also have responsibility for motivation. It’s in our best interests to cultivate a culture where employees are innovative, driven, and helping us outshine competitors. But here’s the thing: human motivation doesn’t come in separate flavors for different roles—whether parenting or management, the same psychology is at work.

Conditional Regard as Employee Motivation Often Backfires

Business leans heavily on conditional approval as a tool of employee motivation. But it often backfires. So much so, that one of the current themes in employment memes is that employees now declare they will “Not be excelling. They will simply be meeting expectations.” This resonates for a reason.

Too many organizations send the message that meeting expectations is never enough. That unless someone is always going “above and beyond,” they aren’t truly valued. Yet “meeting expectations” is not failure. It’s success—it’s exactly what the employment contract is for.

Most employers don’t pay 20% above benchmark salaries with the understanding that employees will are expected to exceed expectations by 20%. They pay the benchmark—the amount the market suggests is correct for a given role in a given context. Yet managers routinely expect employees to exceed expectations all the time. And the tool they reach for is conditional regard: approval only when performance exceeds.

The Flaw in Performance Management

This points to a major flaw in performance management. Exceeding expectations is not about producing more widgets, working later hours, or piling on additional tasks without recognition. True exceeding comes from insight, creativity, and innovation. It’s when an employee notices something in the customer experience that no one else has. Or understands a process so deeply they can redesign it for better outcomes. Or tests a new idea that may fail—but might also lead to a new level of achievement.

That kind of exceeding doesn’t happen every day (and if you have employees doing it constantly, I hope you’re paying them like the rock stars they are). Real exceeding comes in sparks and leaps. And it can only happen when employees feel safe in two specific ways:

The Biggest Drivers of Employee Motivation

First, they must know their “meeting expectations” selves are valued. That showing up, doing the work they are paid to do, and doing it well, is genuinely appreciated.

Second, they must know it is safe to make mistakes. To experiment. To bring their full perspective to the work. Because if every misstep risks their approval—or worse, their job—why would they take the risk?

So yes, employment is conditional. But if we want employees to go beyond the contract, piling on expectations won’t get us there. Creating trust, safety, and genuine regard are the true keys to employee motivation. When people know they are valued even when they’re “only” meeting expectations, they will choose, perhaps even often, to exceed them.