Better communication starts with sharing

Rather, it’s a visualization of the values that are most important to you and the things that make work meaningful to you.

Thus, being motivated by Financial Needs doesn’t indicate that you’re greedy, or that you only care about money. It just means that financial security is important to you, and that you view financial indicators, such as meeting revenue goals, as a useful way to measure success.

Likewise, having low Autonomy doesn’t mean you need to be told what to do, or that you can’t set your own targets—it just means you don’t mind whether or not you have a lot of freedom and flexibility in your workplace.

Have you ever left a conversation with a coworker feeling like you didn’t get through to them? Or maybe that they didn’t understand where you were coming from?

Often, this is because you each have different dominant Motivators, and have therefore brought different needs to the table. By sharing each other’s Intrinsic Motivator Reports, it’s easy to see the areas in which you are most different, and by understanding these motivational gaps (as well as similarities), you can develop a common language that works equally for both sides.

Here are two examples of how this played out for me recently:

So, rather than plough on regardless, I decided to ask her to show me her Intrinsic Motivator Report. In addition to Financial Needs, Feedback and Progress were two of her top Motivators—I could work with that!

From there, I tailored my training in two ways:

1. I scheduled time after each of our training sessions to give her feedback on her performance.

2. I talked her through some ways that could help her track her improvement in certain areas.

As a result of these tweaks, she became visibly more engaged and started leaving our meetings with a palpable sense of excitement about the work she was going to do.

Incidentally, Progress is one of my lowest Motivators—something I was ironically a little embarrassed about when I first took the Motivation Assessment. It’s not something I think about normally, but if I know it’s important to one of my team members, I make sure to keep it top of mind.

Suddenly everything made so much more sense! I realized that her quick and to the point way of training was a reflection of what she valued, not a reflection of how she felt about me.

In turn, she realized that I needed more feedback, and so offered me more chances to ask questions, which made me feel more confident in what I had learned.

The result: clearer communication and a much smoother and more productive working relationship.