You have heard it before, people complaining about lack of value in their employer. What do they do? they say. What good are they? Maybe you have asked these questions about your own employer, or employers in general.

The answer - apart from any specific management, technical or specialist skills they might possess - lies in original master-slave and master-servant relationships. These are what employer-employee roles are legally based on.

This master-servant division is based on a belief that former knows and has skills to create and drive work required, while latter carries out work required.

This division of roles relates to attributes or character or class or mental facility or education or evolution - according to its origin in past when servants and slaves were a normal part of workforce, and when master-servant relationships reflected principles and beliefs about superior and inferior humans.

This hierarchical attitude to human capacity is also basis of our other major relationships: parent-child and student-teacher relationships.

What your boss does for you

The original master-slave arrangement assumed that slave or servant did not possess an inherent desire to do what master wanted of them, and so force had to be applied to ensure work was carried out. The master fulfilled roles of motivator, discipliner, direction-setter and creator and maintainer of focus.

Similarly, children, needing to be taught many things including socially acceptable behavior and school lessons, also needed parent and teacher to perform these roles of motivator, discipliner, direction-setter and creator and maintainer of focus.

Your limitations

Now, let me clarify a vital point here. Employees, along with children, need to motivate themselves to perform their individual required tasks. They need to say, 'I will write that report now', or, 'I will wash those pots now', or 'I will teach that class now'. Yet behind these acts of self-motivation there is primary motivator: their employer keeping task expectation up, continuing to provide job, and continuing to provide pay-check.

Do not confuse secondary task motivation with primary motivation. Primary motivation becomes easier to see when you imagine taking employer out of equation.