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Motivation Inventory
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Interpretation and Review
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In a perfect world there
would be a perfect correlation between the characteristics and requirements
of a particular job and the motivation profile of the person doing it. It is
rare in practice for an absolutely exact fit to occur; on the other hand unless
there is a sufficient fit the job is unlikely to be performed well, and also
the person doing it is unlikely to be motivated and fulfilled and may even
experience inappropriate stress. For example, in simple terms, someone who
relishes Structure and predictability may not also relish using Initiative
& Independence and vice versa, while obviously someone with high
Gregariousness needs is unlikely to respond well to Solitude. Again,
technical experts often have a Task Focus as opposed to Goal Orientation,
preferring to exercise their learned expertise rather than entering a
completely new territory.
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It is for this reason that an
individual’s ‘scores’ cannot be classified as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Whether they
are such depends on a match with a particular job. The following however
should serve to give some guidelines in understanding yourself more, and others,
in the context of motivation.
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The first thing to do is to
compare the overall balance between People, Achievement and Enjoyment.
Liberated Leaders tend to have both high Achievement and People motivation
scores (High Challenge for Achievement, High Support for People). Some
Enjoyment is required to enable people not to become overly stressed or to
develop tunnel vision.
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Now start to explore the
various factors within each general category. For example, it will soon be
seen that the expression that ‘he or she is a people person’ is meaningless;
the person may have a strong orientation towards others, but is it to influence
them or be liked, to dominate or support, to just be with people or to have
deeper relationships with them? In the
world of work, having high People motivation is usually not enough by itself,
it needs to be coupled with Achievement to secure movement, otherwise it just
becomes a social or friendship group with no task focus.
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This can be illustrated by
looking at the profile for a successful leader, who will be goal rather than
task focused, has reasonably high Responsibility needs (but not high Power
& Authority ones), welcomes being able to use Initiative and actively wants
Challenge. They will want to influence people, be comfortable with working
with a range of them, will have a team orientation without being submerged by
the team, and will want to support team members, but not to the degree that
they lose sight of the achievement part of the equation.
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There are other equations. For
example, the technical expert is likely to relish Challenge, applied with a
Task Focus where a prized skill can be used (Suitability) within a Structure.
Another example would be the combination of high Structure and low Independence
needs, which tend to result in difficulty with being flexible and solving
problems, or people with high Challenge and low Suitability who sometimes
bite off more than they can chew. Equally, people who do not want to be
distracted by others (Solitude) concentrating on the mixture of tasks without
much need for variety, can be worth their weight in gold in one context, and
fearfully inappropriate in another.
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This is where it is well worth
understanding the different sources of People, Achievement and Enjoyment
motivation. There is all the difference in the world, for example, between
Task Focus and Goal Orientation; both are important forms of Achievement motivation,
but they differ in kind.
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There is too the point that,
like behaviour, problems can occur if there is too much or too little of a
motivation source. Being overly high on Initiative & Independence can
mean that the person is difficult to manage, while being very low can result
in dependence. Ignoring a team member’s need for support can result in high
stress, too much support can smother. As well as this, there are no perfect
people - what there are are relative strengths and weaknesses for a
particular job.
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What will have been noticed is
that many of these motivation factors, and the rewards that come with them,
are intrinsic ones. They come from within the person, they are part and
parcel of him or her, and the satisfaction of the need brings the reward – eg
Challenge. They are more to do with what people put into the job – possibly,
of course their manager encourages, facilitates and recognises this, largely
through knowing the motivation pattern of the person. Other rewards are
extrinsic, the stimulus is provided to the person, such as with Tangible
Rewards and Variety, and are more to do with what people ‘get out’ of the
job.
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In this connection, if the
motivation pattern is one of low People and Achievement motivation, and
extremely high Enjoyment requirements – such as high pay, much glamour and
status, fun, variety and travel – with little challenge and hard work, the
expectation may be a little unrealistic, particularly in today’s world (“I’ve
been trying to find a job like that for years”). It is sometimes a
characteristic of people who are strongly dissatisfied with their jobs, or
series of jobs.
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One of the advantages of
frameworks such as the Motivation Inventory is that they enable you to think
more clearly about not only yourself, but the people you work with. Within
your group there will be similarity as well as much difference; being perceptive
about the differences will help in adjusting your approach, style and even
rewards to different people. It is a case of different strokes for different
folks, while monitoring your situational consistency.
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It is important, too, not to
let your own profile, or prejudices even, blind you to the difference in
others. Because you are one person, with a particular set of primary sources
of motivation, it does not mean that those who differ from you are wrong, but
just different, often with the richness that this can bring. Above all, to
understand others, the first person who must be understood is you.
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Copyright © Dr Derek Biddle
and Ali Stewart & Co
www.iconislearning.com
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