Enclaria: Influence Change at Work

Equipping individuals and teams to influence organizational change

You are here: Home / Archives for motivation

motivation

/

A simple way to assess motivation preferences

My son likes to challenge me to battles on MarioKart Wii.  While the main game is the traditional car race, there are also two options for battles:

Balloons:  Each player starts with 3 balloons attached to their cars.  The goal of the battle is to protect your balloons from being popped while trying to pop as many balloons as possible on the opposing team.

Coins:  Each player starts without coins.  The goal of the coin battle is to collect as many coins as possible.

It turns out I detest the balloon battle option.  I started thinking about why this is the case, and determined it is a matter of personal motivation preference.  The goal of gaining points by reducing the other team’s number of balloons does not appeal to me at all.  In contrast, seeing the number of coins I’ve collected and making the number go up up up is much more motivating to me.

The same is not true of everyone; my son on the other hand, prefers the balloon battle.  He likes to watch the balloons pop.

We can expand the learning outside of MarioKart Wii.  Understanding what games someone enjoys can tell you a lot about their motivation preferences.  Among my favorites are Trivial Pursuit, Clue, Blokus, Jeopardy, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Clearly, if you want to motivate me, find ways to let me show you how smart I am and challenge me with a puzzle to solve.  The conclusion might be different for someone who enjoyed playing Scrabble and watching Wheel of Fortune.

Consider the board games, video games, game shows and sports that you like to play and watch.  What do they say about your motivation preferences?  Do you like to win, or beat your own high score?  Do you prefer to play solo, or would you rather play a team sport?  Do you like to take risks?  Would you rather play for fun or for the challenge of it?

Perhaps organizations should have game closets to assess what types of achievements fuel their employees.

Based on your favorite games, what are your motivation preferences?

/

Overcome resistance with fancy purple shoes

My almost-2-year-old daughter is obsessed with shoes.  She will just sit in our shoe corner and try on everyone’s shoes and walk around in them for fun.  Her favorite ones, though, are her own pink shiny ones.

The trouble started when inevitably, her favorite pink shoes became too small – or rather her feet grew too large.  I took her to the store to pick out some new ones.  She chose the purple ones with flowers on them.

Given her love of shoes, I was surprised when she refused to wear them.  Even though she had picked them out, she would run away whenever we even picked them up.  If we were able to put them on, she would immediately pull them off her feet and toss them as far as she could.  She would then scurry around to find her shiny pink shoes that by now were scrunching her toes.

This morning we hid the pink shoes.  I fully expected the morning to end with tears and a barefoot daughter on the way to school.

fancynancyThen her Daddy had a stroke of genius.  “Let’s put on your FANCY shoes!” he said.

Every night at bedtime my daughter insists that we read Fancy Nancy, a story about a girl who enhances everything she wears and owns with accessories.  It’s a fairly long book for someone who’s not quite two, but she follows along with the story intently.

Catching on to his idea, I pointed out how the flowers made her new shoes fancy, like Nancy’s.

With a little bit of a struggle (but not the usual all-out wrestling match), she let him put them on.  And then they stayed on her feet.

Tonight, before leaving for dinner, she fussed a bit when he tried to put her shoes on again.  This time, it was because she wanted to put them on by herself.

When faced with resistance, how might you make the change “fancy?”

/

Got hope?

A common thread between change agents seems to be hope.

Considering all the challenges they face, that might seem ironic.  But, perhaps hope is the only reason to keep pushing the boulder up the hill, even when it doesn’t seem to be budging.

Hope that the organization has the potential to be better.

The belief that we can bring more meaning to the enterprise.

Knowing that financial success and doing well at the “soft stuff” are not mutually exclusive.

The belief that it’s possible to engage a large group in a collective purpose.

Hope that there is something good on the other side of the hill.

…And that there is truly another side to get to.

…And that it is possible to get there.

When the going gets rough, sometimes all a change agent has is hope, and their willingness to take action toward it.

After all, no one ever moves forward from a place of futility.

What is your hope?