This blog post explains why an analysis of my eating habits is useful (all will be explained, I promise). I also share an executive coaching case study about a client who wanted to take control of her career development. I hope it will help you understand more about what motivates you and why that matters.
When I was 7, I ate vinegar sandwiches purely because I wanted the experience. I kicked the habit when the novelty wore off. Since then I’ve frequented sushi bars swallowing raw fish, and during a year in Italy learned to like pasta. All this I’ve done in the name of belonging, being one of the crowd. I’ve sometimes eaten as little as a dollar’s worth of food a day, in order to comprehend what it’s like to live below the poverty line. And I’ve eaten in order to keep myself healthy and defend my body against coughs and colds. So what?
Introduction
My bizarre food habits illustrate an important point about what motivates us, and why we do what we do.
We only have four real motives or drivers in our lives. The first is to Acquire either status or an experience (such as eating vinegar sandwiches). Secondly, we’re wired to Belong to a group (hence sushi and pasta). In third place – but only because I’m working alphabetically – is our need to Comprehend and become masterful at something. And last but no means least, we are motivated to Defend ourselves and our ideas so that we can flourish. This is my ABCD of motivation.
What makes you tick, for good and ill?
One of the most useful things that you can do in life is work out what motivates you. Not just what motivates you to do good, purposeful things. But also what is it that motivates you to behave in ways which seem counter-productive. And as an executive coach, I can help you unravel your motives. Together, we can dig deep and explore what’s really driving your behaviour. I can also be useful in supporting you to swap some of your habits for others that are more productive.
Our motivation changes as we grow. What got you out of bed when you were twenty won’t necessarily have the same effect as you approach forty. When did you last check in with yourself about what makes you tick? If you’re just going through the motions at work, perhaps it’s time to re-examine your motivation? Or at least work out what it is again?
Case study
Last year I worked with a client to get her mojo back. Here I explain what we did, what we learnt and how that has led to change.
We used a creative process to understand what the current drivers were in my client’s life. We looked at how she spent her time and why. For each block of time she described what the main things were that she spent her time doing, and why. “Why” works at two levels. I asked her what the purpose of the work was – “Why is this work being done?”. And I also asked about her motivation – “Why are you driven or drawn to do this?”.
It was a colourful process as we dissected her working life and mapped it! Each of the different motivations occupied one corner of a grid. She wrote each block of time representing part of her work onto a coloured post-it. She then placed these in the appropriate part of the grid. The results were astounding! There were huge blanks on parts of the paper. Other areas were crowded with intense scribble and drawings.
At a glance it was clear that she was much more motivated by some drivers than others. An interesting discussion followed about whether there was an ideal balance? Or whether what looks and feels right to one person would be of little interest to someone else.
Looking more closely, she discovered that she spent huge amount of her energy justifying her team’s existence. Often she had to present their results to sceptical stakeholders, and deal with the fall out. Furthermore, she was often drawn into others’ issues, as an ally and then as an advocate. That question, “What motivates you?” showed that she frequently felt obligated to defend her position and that of others. She spent very little time mastering knowledge and skills, and none to belonging. No wonder she felt spent! All motivators or drivers are important, including the desire to Defend. If she wasn’t motivated to defend her ideas, my client and her team would be trodden down repeatedly. But whereas the motivation to Acquire new experiences or status would give my client a thrill and a positive energy, so much time spent standing her ground and fighting her corner was utterly depleting.
Taking it to the next level
Curious to understand herself better, this client mapped her whole career in terms of her drivers.
Decade by decade, job by job, she peeled back the layers until she could see a pattern. It turns out she’s always been an Acquire and Comprehend type person. Her happiest times were when both the drive to have new experiences and to master a skill were in play. At these points, she was motivated without having to even think about it.
The less happy periods were always those where she found herself having to defend her position repeatedly. An unexpected outcome of Defend being too strong a motivator was the impact it had on her self confidence. My client reasoned, if I’m constantly having to defend my position, it must be because I’m not competent. Believing that she wasn’t on top of her game fuelled ideas about imposter syndrome, a dangerous double-whammy. We picked up these issues about lack of confidence of course, but that’s for another blog post.
Understanding cause and effect
In order to have a more fulfilling work life, my client wanted to understand how she’d got to this point.
We talked through the chronology of each of her roles, and how long she’d spent in them. We looked at what she’d achieved and how she had moved to the next role. This revealed that my clients key skills were advocacy, and managing upwards in order to empower those in her teams. Whilst she had accepted each promotion because it appeared to meet her desire to Acquire (both status and new experiences), in reality, once in role she was driven to Defend by the situations she found herself in. Her advocacy skills were highly valued by others. This had resulted in her being promoted into areas which were both under-performing and under-resourced. Her employers had recognised a good thing when they saw it! This new perspective led my client to acknowledge two important things. Firstly, that she no longer wanted to major in some of the things she was good at. And secondly, that not all motivators are equal.
By the way, we were both interested to find that she had rarely been motivated by a desire to Belong. Clearly this was not a woman who would eat sushi in order to be one of the gang!
Making change happen
This simple exercise has had a profound impact for my client. She’s using that to change how she manages her career.
She has decided that in order to be happy in her next role, she needs to be simultaneously driven by two or more motivators. What’s more, one of them has to be Acquire or Comprehend. She’s interrogating each line of the job specs she’s interested in, with those two coaching conversation questions in mind. Using a simple grid – a balanced scorecard – she evaluates potential new roles. She’s not applying for those which don’t meet her new criteria.
She also takes a more active role in parts of the selection and promotion process which are normally considered the domain of the interviewer. She recognises that all senior roles have an element of influencing and advocacy, and knows she’s good at this. But she now asks a couple of key questions about resourcing and performance when she’s being interviewed. These are helping her gauge which of her drivers she’s most likely to experience.
Happier endings…
The story ends happily, though my client is the first to say that she wishes she’d done this work earlier. It would have saved her some heartache. I asked her what she’d recommend a friend should do in similar circumstances. Her response captures some fundamental points. She said “If you don’t know what motivates you, or you think things have gone awry, find someone who’ll listen. But also someone who won’t tell you the answers. You need to work them out for yourself. And the solutions may be far simpler than you realise. Don’t believe that the answer is as complicated as the situation, it’s just not true”.
If you’d like to understand what motivates you, being listened to may be the first step. That’s part of executive coaching. For a good listening to, and a safe space to work out your own answers, book a Discovery Call.