In a previous post, I listed 16 primary motivators that drive our behavior. This at least according to a compelling theory laid out by Dr. Steven Reiss, a trailblazing psychologist in this arena.
This past week, I had the opportunity to work one-on-one with Dr. Reiss and gain more insight and depth into his approach. It was a fascinating experience.
For one, Dr. Reiss made a significant contribution to the acceptance and care of special needs children. He also developed a game changing measure of anxiety sensitivity, the “Anxiety Sensitivity Index” (ASI) that is, among other uses, being evaluated by the Army to assess soldiers’ response to combat conditions. Now he is fully engaged in his current work to transform our understanding of motivation. A graduate of Dartmouth and Yale and now a professor Emeritus at Ohio State University, Dr. Reiss is by any standard an eminently qualified psychologist.
What Reiss did for the first time was develop a list of 16 universal goals common to everyone. Tens of thousands of assessments later, the list is holding up extremely well and is being used for student counseling, marriage and couples counseling, sports motivation, executive coaching, and sales and marketing.
Principles of Motivation
Reiss bases his approach on several key principles:
1. Universal Goals: Certain goals are common to everyone and deeply rooted in human nature.
2. Intrinsic Motivation: These are basic desires that are comprised of universal goals and how much we want of it. These are different for everyone in terms of what we prioritize and the extent to which we pursue them.
3. Relationship Compatibility: People are naturally motivated to assert their basic desires in relationships. People with similar motivational profiles usually get along better than those with divergent profiles. Embodies the phrase “birds of a feather flock together.”
4. Strong Basic Desires: Strong intrinsic motivations are gratified in multiple ways. For instance, if you have naturally hearty appetite, you will eat many different kinds of food.
5. The satisfaction of each basic desire produces an intrinsically valued feeling of joy as well as a different joy for each intrinsic motivation. So people behave as if they are trying to maximize their experiences of their particular intrinsic motives.
5. Self-Hugging: We think our values are best, not just for us, but for everyone. Therefore, we pressure others to change their motivations to our way thinking and believe they will be better off for it.
6. Greater Motive: Personality change occurs only when one or more intrinsic motives are stronger than the one(s) motivating current personality traits. Since these motives are generally stable over a lifetime, that explains why change can be so difficult.
7. Motivational Set Point: individuals are motivated to aim for a particular level of motivational satisfaction. Any variation above or below this set point generates a corresponding reaction back toward that person’s “mean” or set point.
Intrinsic Motivators in Practice
People pursue intrinsic motivators because satisfaction of them produces a valued feeling of joy. Said another way, Reiss’ theory holds that people seek to maximize their experiences of the 16 intrinsic motivators according to their particular set points or “motivational signatures.”
For most people there are a few basic desires that are stronger than the rest and these are the motivators the best help to explain behavior. For example, some people spend their time satisfying their desire for curiosity, others seek power, while other are out for vengeance.
Another key component of Reiss’ theory is that our intrinsic motivations are never permanently satisfied. For instance if someone high on social acceptance leaves a party, the desire for social contact will likely reoccur at some point later in the night.
What actually propels motivation are the differences between the amount of an intrinsic motivator that is desired and the amount that was recently experienced. For example, when a person experiences more power than he or she desires, the individual is motivated to be power-less for a period of time to balance toward the set point. Conversely, when a person experiences less power than the set point, the individual is motivated to be powerful, perhaps manifested by domineering behavior for a period of time. Thus, a person who generally has a powerful personality may at times be motivated to be less so, and a person with a submissive personality may at times be motivated to express power-driven behavior.
If a person has a high set point for vengeance, they will be naturally motivated to seek high degrees of vindication, competition, contentiousness, conflict, and aggression. On the other hand, peacemakers are motivated toward cooperation and conflict resolution. Further, if a vengeful person experiences an extended period void of conflict and below their motivational set point, the individual is very likely to be motivated to get into arguments, fights, and competitions. The longer the period of time that is conflict free, the stronger becomes the motivation to satisfy that basic desire. If the person oversatisfies the need for competition or conflict, he or she will then exhibit peacemaking behavior to balance experience back toward the set point.
Further a person with a strong desire for vengeance will be attentive to insults or provocations, whereas a peacemaker might not even notice an insult. Similarly, a person with a strong desire for order will notice the cleanliness of a room whereas a person who has a weak desire for order hardly notices if anything is amiss. What this means is that we naturally pay more attention to what motivates us.
Implications of Motivation for Leaders
In light of the above principles and examples, several important implications arise for leaders:
1. Leadership and Relationship Compatibility. You can create deeper levels of mutual awareness of individual motivations among team members thereby leading to increased mutual understanding and tolerance. This in turn establishes the heretofore elusive conditions for reducing interpersonal friction, raising performance and increasing satisfaction.
2. Leadership and Strong Basic Desires. It’s important for you to know that 1) everyone embraces the 16 universal goals, 2) everyone manifests those goals in a unique, individualistic way, a “motivational signature” if you will, 3) everyone prioritizes the goal in differing degrees of priority. For instance, a person who is highly motivated by social status may work exceptionally hard to gain a promotion and therefore increase that status. On the other hand, one who is not motivated as much by social status may be perfectly content in their current job.
3. Leadership and Strong Basic Desires. You must discover the motivational signatures of team members and then work to align the organizational culture and climate to best meet the motivational signatures of the team. From an organizational standpoint, compensation is only one component of the overall motivational “package” for an employee.
4. Leadership and Satisfaction of Intrinsic Motivators. You can leverage the idea of motivational signatures to deliver more targeted and effective feedback and simultaneously seek to raise both employee performance and job satisfaction.
5. Leadership and Self-Hugging. By understanding your own motivational signature, you can better monitor and control the way you communicate with those around you, being more mindful of imposing your particular intrinsic desires in a way that reduces your options or otherwise closes off productive dialogue. Similarly, by understanding others motivational signatures, you can generate more accurate context of and perspective on the point of view of others thereby allowing you to better control your internal dialogue and generate more accurate and potential helpful responses. This ties directly into Emotional Intelligence.
6. Leadership and Organizational Culture. Given that intrinsic motivation is never permanently satisfied, the leader must ensure that the organization’s culture provides support for ongoing satisfaction of the members’ basic desires—to the extent that the culture continues to exemplify the organization’s core values.
Being able to understand, tap into, and leverage motivation is a powerful tool to have in the leader tool kit. In a certain sense, leaders can’t generate motivation externally since it’s inherently intrinsic and unique to each person. What a leader can do however is set the conditions to unleash those intrinsic forces by knowing what inherently motivates each member of team, and collectively, the team itself.
I don’t know about you, but this concept excites me in its potential and application. Wouldn’t it be great to work for an organization that aligns with your core values and your unique motivational signature?
The Reiss Motivational Profile could very well be a way to help toward this worthy goal.
What do you think? Send me your comments–I respond to each and every one
By Joe Scherrer | The Leadership Crucible