"Motivation" in Four Secrets "The deepest reasons for our actions are not negotiable; they are “hard-wired” within us. We don’t even have the ability to change our own motivation on a moment’s notice, much less someone else’s." Chapter 4 "We rarely argue about our motivational factors directly. Usually, we argue about something more tangible." Chapter 5 "When we ask someone to do what they already want to do, no 'motiv-ational techniques' are necessary." Chapter 4 "If our work satisfies our strongest motiv-ations, we will feel as though we are produ-cing value in the world. If not, we might grow to dread our jobs." Chapter 5

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The Secret of Motivation
Exercises

Each new perspective allows you to interpret what you see in a new and useful way.  New interpretations lead to new understanding, which leads to new actions and ultimately new results. This is the only way to permanently defeat job misery and to like work again.

			The perspective of Motivation gives us insight into the invisible forces that work behind the scenes to drive our own actions and those of other people.

If you are reading Four Secrets to Liking Your Work, you may have tried some of the exercises in Chapters 4 and 5.  These exercises help you to work alone to build expertise with your Motivational perspective.

The Motivational perspective can also be used by teams, to help define strengths and weaknesses, identify risk areas for decision making, and to get to know each other better and have some teambuilding fun!

Try the following exercise with any team or group:

1. Work as a team to generate a list of three decisions that have been made by either "this team," or this team's management, in the past six months. Start by brainstorming many possibilities, then narrow it down by focusing on those decisions that were the most difficult or had the most impact.
2. Look at the summary of Motivational Factors in Four Secrets, Figure 5-1 on page 72. Make sure everyone in the group has at least a basic understanding of the factors in that figure.
3. Choose one decision.  Try to decide as a group which factors were supported by the decision that was made.  In other words, which areas were helped by the results of the decision?
4. Then, discuss whether any of the areas in Figure 5-1 experienced a detrimental impact due to that decision.
5. Repeat the process for some other decisions made by the same group (either "this team" or its management).  See if you can identify tendencies, trends, or motivational "themes" in the decisions.
6. Discuss the impact of any trends that you discover.  How are they appropriate to the job?  What risks do they present?  What predictions could be made about future decisions?

Why this works:  This exercise begins to highlight the decision-making trends of either the team itself, or its management, using the perspective of motivation.  This can help to identify possible blind spots, as well as to make future decisions more predictable.

Why it's not enough: Often it can be difficult to find enough valid instances of decision-making to establish a trend.  Without a more formal measurement of the behavioral tendencies of a group, there remains a lot of uncertainty in any guess about motivational trends.  Teams that invest in measurement of these factors get a more thorough understanding of tendencies and trends, and one that can translate into specific follow-up actions to maximize effectiveness. (Learn more...)