Moving Motivators, How to identify the motivations of our team to make it work properly?

Hans A. Peña
6 min readAug 12, 2020

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When you start any project is never easy, the desire and talent are not total guarantees to succeed, sometimes members do not move in time to help someone because they have different priorities in their work, and we realize that this is a major problem within a project if not given the required importance, that’s why when solving the problems at a certain time, the team does not always agree as the urgency was addressed, as this was presented and assumed by some of the members, this is where I could show that in the organization there are teams that have different priorities in their motivations; How can I identify the frustrations that arise from this situation by helping your team to understand what motivates them?, This is where the practice of #Management30 Moving Motivators takes on value as a group exercise to help the team understand that each member is different and is motivated by different factors.

From #Management30, we propose the model to manage the motivations of teams in both the work and personal life context. This model is based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and on the mixture of both in our areas that we live together.

This is where my questioning in front of my work team is born about how I can identify the frustrations that arise from any situation and help them to understand what motivates them, then I decide to carry out this practice with the team, where we will meet virtually and use the technological tool Miro, in this previously we carried out the previous chart, where we will distribute randomly the pictures of each one of the members, they will have to identify their place in the chart, then we proceed to explain each one of the cards and the meaning of each motivator.

The motivators are grouped in a model made by Jurgen Appelo under the acronym (CHAMPFROGS), its name comes from the initials of each motivator in English. This model deals specifically with motivation in the work context, and is made up of the following motivators:

1. Curiosity: I have many things to investigate and think about.

2. Honor: I am proud that my personal values are reflected in how I work.

3. Acceptance: People around me approve of what I do and who I am.

4. Mastery: My work challenges my competencies, but it is still within my capabilities.

5. Power: There is enough room for me to influence what happens around me.

6. Freedom: I am independent from others with my own work and responsibilities.

7. Relatedness: I have good social relationships with the people in my workplace.

8. Order: There are enough rules and policies for a stable environment.

9. Goal: My purpose in life is reflected in the work I do.

10. Status: My position is good and recognized by the people who work with me.

This practice is an exercise of personal reflection in which the group is asked to order from left to right the factors that influence our professional and personal motivation in a positive way (In LATAM we always order it this way, but originally the practice is given oppositely), those on the left are the ones that influence us the most and those on the right are the ones that influence us the least in our lives, making it clear that it is not that the elements on the right do not motivate us at all, simply that other factors influence us more in our professional and personal motivation, for this activity, we can give a 10-minute timebox so that you can select your motivators.

Once everyone has finished selecting their motivators, I ask each person on the team to talk about their top three motivators and ask them the following question: How do they interpret these motivators and why are they important to them?

Then, we have each person talk about the lowest one and they must answer the following question: What does this motivator mean to them, and why is this the least important one?

We will notice during the practice that each person interprets the motivators differently, this is the most important part of the practice because for each person each motivator can mean different things. There are no right or wrong interpretations in the motivator, but you should make sure that each participant explains what the card means and why it is important or not.

For the next part of the exercise, this can be done in two ways: the first is to have participants plot their values on the largest shared impression. Using two markers of different colors (for example, red and black), ask each person to use black for the top three motivators and red for the bottom three. This allows everyone to see the similarities and differences in what motivates the team.

In our case, we went a little further. I asked the team to agree on what motivators should take priority in their daily work as a team, to clearly define the priorities that can be given to daily activities and problems that arise in the development of their activities, resulting in the following:

This practice in the organization’s environment helped us to develop a better understanding of what motivates each one to develop their activities, helping each situation or inconvenience to start on the right foot, giving as a general motivation the fulfillment of the goal that moves to the project’s objective, so in the team we identify their motivations and make possible to generate a team motivation, giving as a trigger the elaboration of objectives based on their motivations.

As a result of the practice, it was discovered that the first motivation of the team is the goal, which gives the fulfillment of the project objective and how this can be given, then we move to the second motivation of the team that was the curiosity, which allowed us to investigate and propose how to develop this goal objective and as a third motivation is a domain, which seemed very consistent with the previous two since this allows to open the field of knowledge, which must be provided by the organization for the team to seek its greatest point of motivation.

As a facilitator, I learned that with this practice of Moving Motivators we can identify the motivations that move the team and how this helps to achieve the objectives of any project more effectively and clearly, for which I will begin to develop at the beginning of any working group, and thus identify from the beginning the motivators of new members who can help achieve the objectives of the project, which I know are necessary to know and can identify anyone who performs this practice in their organizations in their working teams.

Tell me: How could you use this tool in your organization? Do you think your team can identify your individual and group motivators with the help of Moving Motivators? I look forward to your feedback

#Management30 #Peoplemanagement #Equiposmotivados #Practitioner #MovingMotivators

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/moving-motivators-como-identificar-las-motivaciones-de-pe%C3%B1a-pineda/

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Hans A. Peña

El limite es opcional, y la opción no es tener limites…