Moving Motivators: The key to having purposeful teams.
Motivation is defined as a determination or will that drive the person to do specific actions or behaviors to achieve a goal.
Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic according to Jurgen Appelo. Intrinsic motivation is defined as people’s innate desire to do well and to have an eagerness for self-control and self-direction in accomplishing objectives. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation refers to rewards such as payments, bonuses, or promotions.
Motivation is an internal process that activates and guides our behavior. However, there are external factors such as a bad relationship with colleagues, monotony, absence of objectives, lack of communication, among others. These factors negatively influence and can even lead to Bouret syndrome, whose symptoms may be related to those of depression. [2]
Currently, these factors, together with work stress in companies, lead to unmotivated employees. Only in Mexico, 75% of people suffer work stress, overtaking other countries such as China and the United States, according to figures from the Mexican Institute of Social Security. [3]
For this reason, in this context, which many of the companies are, having leadership that develops and transforms people, becomes a critical factor in reversing the mood of employees and turning their situation around.
In recent weeks, because I have applied some of the Management 3.0 practices, the opportunity has arisen for our team to share more information about our personal lives and joining as a team. As a leader, I had more conversations with each of them. Specifically, thanks to Personal Maps, Pedro, a team member, told us that positivism was one of his principal values as a person, in addition to the importance of it, because he experienced a difficult situation due to his depression a few years ago.
Two reasons led me to implement this practice with our team: the confinement due to the pandemic that the team is going through and because I want to guide my colleague to make his positive attitude strength.
The practice is called Moving Motivators. You can go to the official Management 3.0 page by clicking in the following link and look for more information:
The purpose of Moving Motivators is to be an exercise meant to help us reflect on motivation and how it affects organizational change. The Moving Motivators exercise is based on ten intrinsic desires:
- Curiosity: I have plenty of things to investigate and to think about
- Honor: I feel proud that my values are reflected in how I work.
- Acceptance: The people around me approve of what I do and who I am.
- Mastery: My work challenges my competence, but it is still within my abilities.
- Power: There is enough room for me to influence what happens around me.
- Freedom: I am independent of others with my work and my responsibilities.
- Relatedness: I have good social contacts with the people in my work.
- Order: There are enough rules and policies for a stable environment.
- Goal: My purpose in life is reflected in the work that I do.
- Status: My position is good and recognized by the people who work with me.
This practice consists of a template where the team member photo or avatar is placed with ten cards, one for each motivation. Each participant reflects on each card and prioritizes them by lining up the cards from left to right, where the most important ones are on the left. Later, she reflects on how that motivation has changed due to the current situation, moving them up, if the motivation increased or down if not.
Using a collaborative tool, I created the template and explained the rules of this practice, and give the team their time to reflect and place their cards according to they think their motivators were affected.
I learned the importance of knowing what drives my co-workers and what motivators we all have in common. As a leader, I consider essential how we must manage the work environment to reinforce the motivators of each one.
The next opportunity I have to apply the Moving Motivators with other teams at the beginning of the meeting, the first activity would be to invite the participants to reflect and make their definition of the principal motivators they have so far. The purpose is to make them see the importance of knowing what moves us and reflecting on whether we have worked on actions to strengthen our motivators. Knowing what motivates us commits us more to the organization.
The team was surprised to be aware of what their motivators are. We agreed to carry out sessions with this practice in later months, because we all agreed on the importance of each motivator and that our motivators may change because they also may depend on the context in which we find ourselves.
Besides, we were able to take action to strengthen the motivator. I supported Pedro, a member of the team, with his motivator: Master. I guided him and discussed the cases assigned to work, and that challenge his capabilities to achieve expertise and experience in specific areas of the product we develop. As a team, we considered the Goal a common motivator, so we focused on setting goals to close cases reported by clients and reduce our queue. We closed twelve client reports in little more than a week.
It does not matter how many programs exist to incentivize the team with bonuses, salaries, or material things, which may not be what motivates them and so it does not make them happy. We should not assume that the motivation of one person is the same for rest, much less motivation will always be so. Each collaborator lives in a different context, different priorities, even that context can change from one day to the next.
That is why I invite you to use this tool to rediscover the motivations and priorities of your co-workers, but above all, how they live them. As leaders, we must always look for the tools to meet the needs of our teams and help us reinforce their motivations.
References:
[1] CIPSIA Psicólogos. (2017, Mayo 05). ¿Qué es la motivación? Recovered from: https://www.cipsiapsicologos.com/blog-de-psicologia/que-es-la-motivacion/
[2] Randsta. (2018, Julio 09). Liderazgo: cómo motivar y fidelizar a un equipo. Recovered from: https://www.randstad.es/tendencias360/liderazgo-como-motivar-y-fidelizar-a-un-equipo-de-trabajo/
[3] IMSS. (2020). Estrés Laboral. Recuperado de: http://www.imss.gob.mx/salud-en-linea/estres-laboral#:~:text=Tipo%20de%20estr%C3%A9s%20donde%20la,lo%20laboral%20y%20lo%20personal.
[4] UP-Spain. La Motivación Laboral: ¿Qué es y como implementarla?. Revovered from: https://www.up-spain.com/blog/la-motivacion-laboral-que-es-y-como-implementarla/
