Why motivation is the big brother of success

…and almost every other area too!

Almost every medium of communication has a big chunk dedicated to motivation, including the movies and schoolbooks! It is fed by YouTube into our eyes and by our parents into our ears to be drained down through the tummy to the intestines and out. Out you go, silly motivation, for you seem of no purpose! Or are you…?

Motivation is the purpose behind everything we act upon. This ‘act’ could be representative of physical and mental actions like thinking, pursuing, preparing or doing. But a well-defined framework can even tell us about the motivation behind the motivation. So, I decided to design one. And then I created an assessment to help people figure out their motivational bias. And help me make some money. Well, there goes mine; what’s your motivation?

Our motivation lies behind our actions while the motivation beneath the foreseeable inspiration is our alignment towards the five scale hierarchy of motivation;

Social: Social high scorers believe that means justify the ends and do not mind partnering or engaging until it helps meeting their needs and garners higher social acceptance for driving income or assurance.

Reputation: Reputation high scorers would be the happy faces amidst social do’s, delivering smiles and supporting teams for the camera or motivating others to do better when their own reputations are at stake. They are always motivated to be part of teams.

Purpose: High scores in Purpose-driven individuals highlight the hunger for demanding roles and responsibilities, and a drive for challenging tasks which can address psychological achievement gaps individuals see as purposeful to gain autonomy or social acceptance.

Competence: Competence high scorers believe they have a lot of power through knowledge or expertise across certain subjects and thus are motivated when they are in command of teams through power and leadership positions over subject silos. Competence based leaders are very keen to push their own subjects over others.

Autonomy: High scores in Autonomy means being motivated if the work is interesting, or there is little interference, love of freedom and scope to adopt own views and approach. High need for independence will mean low respect for socialization as a counter value.

Self-motivation is often driven by pushing individuals into action without understanding the role of preference. It is like asking kids to drink milk when they want Oreo milkshake. Culture plays an oft-unnoticed role in how we develop preferences. The socio-omnipresence culture prevalent today is enough proof of its impact on greediness for social recognition. Communities often have their own horses and languages as a motivational agency. Preferences for motivation is also developed as a handicap over time; academics and skillsets are some great examples, including sports. All of this can be scaled into intrinsic versus extrinsic preferences, to make things simple as liking to do things individually or in groups. Noticed how most great inventors and creators were loners? Seems motivation also lends to your social behavior biases.

Assessing Motivation: It is important to assess for motivation at the middle to senior levels; while our juniors could be simply motivated about financial wellbeing for independence, there could be multiple primary and secondary motivators for people in the middle ages. It will tell you a lot about their preferences, their cultural affiliations and how they would react or fit into roles at the workplace. And to do so, let’s connect. Find me here or at LinkedIn or twitter @reubray to discuss further.