Moving Motivators to win championships

In the coronavirus pandemic, we are affected by an unprecedented global health and economic crisis with consequences on people’s motivation to work and carry out their daily activities.

According to a 2013 Gallup’s 142-country study, only 13% of employees worldwide are psychologically engaged in their work and are likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations. About one in eight, out of 180 million employees in the countries studied.

Although these Gallup data are from 2013, it is very likely that this percentage will be affected by this pandemic and by the appearance of new phenomena such as, for example, the exponential growth of ecommerce because people prefer to buy from home to minimize the possibility of contagion. What was expected to happen in years is happening in months.

In our case, this causes a growth of requirements and constant changes of priorities to satisfy the needs and expectations of our clients. These constant changes in context cause some discomfort in the motivation of the members of the development team.

In this context, I was looking for how to discover what motivates each person on the team and what motivates them the least the most.

Because as Michael Jordan said: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

Then I remembered an activity we did when we introduced ourselves to Marcelo, our Manager, using our motivators on the move. We had an incredible conversation where we were able to show him what were the things that motivated us. I remember that we talked at length about mastery, honor, freedom, and curiosity.

Moving Motivators are based on the works of authors Daniel Pink, Steven Reiss, and Edward Deci about how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation affect people.

Successful intrinsic motivation is the result of the fulfillment of basic desires.

In the words of Daniel Pink they are based on autonomy, mastery and purpose.

• The autonomy to direct our own lives.

• The mastery of extending and expanding our capabilities.

• The purpose of living a meaningful life.

Extrinsic motivation is based on external rewards such as payments, bonuses or promotions.

I invite you to visit the Management 3.0 page to learn about this practice at this link:

https://management30.com/practice/moving-motivators/

You can also download the Moving Motivators game to print it and use it in your practices.

The objective of the practice is to reflect on the motivations that make sense for each of the people.

It works with ten motivators, which have these meanings:

• Curiosity: The workers have plenty of things to investigate and to think about.

• Acceptance: Colleagues approve of what people do and who they are.

• Power: There’s enough room for workers to influence what happens around them.

• Relatedness: People have good social contacts with the others in their work.

• Goal: The people’s purpose in life is reflected in the work that they do.

• Honor: Workers feel proud that their values are reflected in how they work.

• Mastery: The work challenges people’s competence but it is within their abilities.

• Freedom: People are independent of others with their work and responsibilities.

• Order: Workers have enough rules and policies for a stable environment.

• Status: People have a good position and are recognized by their colleagues.

To do the practice, I followed these steps:

First: I explained the meaning of each motivator.

Second: I asked the team members to order the motivators from highest to lowest, placing those motivators that represented them the most closer to their photo and those that represented them the least.

I left a helping tab with the motivators in Excel so that they could consult them.

I also commented to the team that this activity was an invitation to get to know theirself better and get to know each other better. It is a dynamic game because the motivators that most represent them today can change if they play this same game another time because our motivations also change over time.

Once they did the activity, each of the people explained what their three most important motivators were, justifying the reason for their choice. They also explained which motivator they considered the least important and why.

Then I commented that the exercise had a second part, which was to analyze how a change could affect its motivators. For which we should choose a topic to work on. Then, they proposed to analyze how the change in Product Owner affected them.

The next step was to analyze for each motivator if there was a change.

• If it was a positive change, they should raise the motivator.

• If it was a negative change, they should lower the motivator.

• If there were no positive or negative changes, the motivator should be left where it was.

I also mentioned that this part of the exercise can be applied to different types of personal and professional decisions (a move, a job change, etc.).

Finally, I told them the analysis they should carry out to make the decision:

• If their most important motivators go up they would be on the right track.

• If, on the other hand, if your most important motivators go down or only the less important ones go up, you should reflect on whether the decision to take is the correct one.

As a Facilitator I learned that people give different meanings to each motivator. That each motivator resonates differently with each person. That we can nourish ourselves with the reflection of a person when he talks about why he chooses one or the other motivator. That there were some logical coincidences in the elections, for example, the curiosity in the developers.

The team got a better understanding of their motivations. The person who takes the role of Product Owner proposed to the team to meet to show them how he likes to write user stories since it motivates him to put order to his tasks. They found that the majority found their motivators that rose when analyzing the new scenario.

In this last time I participated in many Management3.0 Community Webinars and saw applications of moving motivators to carry out job interviews, to analyze a change of role, of a team, to make a decision of a personal or professional nature.

The next experiment I will do with this practice is to show it to the people who do recruiting so they can apply it in their interviews. They also offered me a version to do it online that is very easy to use to generate conversations with people remotely.

It only remains for me to tell you that if you want a motivated team, a team that wins championships, invite them to reflect on what moves them and what motivates them with moving motivators!