How do we incite passion in our peers, clients and teams? What generates productivity levels that drive exponential growth? Quite simply, how do you get people to take action? If you can identify motivation direction within your people, and you know what to do with that information once you have it, you’ll be empowered to avoid and prevent problems and achieve goals more easily. That’s why leaders need to understand motivation direction.
What triggers you into action? Specifically, what triggers someone else into action? Most of us make the fundamental error of imaging that others are motivated in the same direction that we are. Even worse, we may assume that everyone is motivated in the same way. They’re not. In fact, nearly every member of your team will be motivated in a slightly different way. As a result, a one size fits all approach to motivation just doesn’t cut the mustard and can leave you with overdue deadlines, inaction and frustration.
What Is Motivation Direction?
Have you ever delivered a speech that you believed was truly motivational and yet it was met with blank faces and zero emotional response?
In simple terms, motivation direction refers to whether people move towards an objective or away from problems to be solved or prevented. At the basic level, if we can understand the primary motivation direction, we can tailor our language and concept framework to suit every person individually.
Better Or Worse Is Irrelevant - It's A Trigger
Towards and Away from mindset goes deeper than mere optimism or pessimism. Leaders need to understand motivation direction so they can push the trigger button for action. Frankly speaking, this isn’t about discovering the best way to communicate with people, it’s about using your words and communication frameworks to set the action in motion.
In the same vein, it’s common when we first become aware of motivation direction to judge it. Frequently, people assess the ‘towards pattern’ as positive and the ‘away from pattern’ as negative. Hence it’s important to remember that these patterns are simply triggers that will launch someone into action. Positive or negative is irrelevant to some degree.
Towards Motivation
People with a towards motivation pattern have a firm focus on their goal. They look forward, rather than backward, and they focus their mindset on goals and how to achieve them.
Towards motivated people are skilled in managing priorities and they get excited every time they move a step closer towards their objectives. Some people may consider them naive since they tend to be less skilled at taking potential barriers and challenges into account.
A towards mindset is very useful when leading a team, or when working as a salesperson. They tend to focus on the future, rather than getting bogged down in problems from the past. Even though this can result in the repetition of the same mistakes or problems, they work at a fast pace and will constantly be cultivating new opportunities.
Since we get what we focus on, towards-minded people often see or manifest more opportunities in their world and are frequently perceived to have the ‘Midas Touch’.
What do leaders need to understand about motivation direction in this instance? Leaders should know that a towards motivation mindset becomes demotivated if a leader constantly focuses on past problems and will leap into rapid action if ideas are framed towards what they want as individuals.
Away From Motivation
Is there anyone in your team with a firm focus on what could go wrong? Could it be you? Individuals with an away-from motivation pattern have a high awareness of what should be avoided or removed in a process, to minimise risk. Specifically, they get motivated when they move away from their focus. Effectively, they become highly active when there is a threat.
If you were the kid who left their homework to the last minute, you’ll be familiar with the away-from pattern. You may even have convinced yourself that you perform better under pressure! Enforced deadlines are often highly effective for motivating the away-from mindset.
In any given context, away-from people make excellent trouble-shooters and solve problems fast. They can also be skilled at identifying obstacles during planning since they’re naturally focused on what could go wrong.
Is Your Business In Crisis Mode?
Distraction is the major challenge to overcome when we operate this mindset. We may have difficulty maintaining focus, feeling compelled to respond to negative situations. We drop everything to fix a problem.
This thinking framework can have a negative impact when it operates either at the head of a department or the top of an organisation.
When leaders are fuelled by the away-from mindset the entire department or business may operate on crisis management. Not only is this extremely demotivating for towards-minded team members, but it can also minimise growth and movement forwards.
The away-from mindset may also have difficulty managing priorities since anything wrong will act as a beacon, stealing away their attention.
Moreover, since these people tend to feel hugely satisfied when they resolve a crisis, they often attract more to solve to prove their ability to themselves.
What do leaders need to understand about motivation direction with the away from pattern? Specifically, they must demonstrate that they are considering potential obstacles and problems when making decisions and discussing projects. Presenting thoughts in this way helps away from mindset trust that leaders have fully considered the business plan and vision. Away from mindset then knows it’s safe to follow the leader.
How To Recognise The Pattern
Firstly, it’s important to note that people operate a towards and away from mindset within a specific context. For example, a person may operate a towards mindset when it comes to work and an away-from mindset when it comes to their home life. Additionally, similar to brain function and dominance, most people tend to align with either towards or away from patterns in the same context. A few people operate both the toward and away from pattern equally.
We can ask simple questions regarding a specific context to elicit the pattern. For example, “what’s important to you about hitting your sales target this month?” The response, both verbal and non-verbal will give you an indication of the motivation framework within that context.
Indicators of Patterns
Towards Mindset
Away From Mindset
Digging Deeper With Questions
Now, we might imagine that we can identify motivation direction from one simple question. We can’t. In fact, motivation direction is nearly always hidden under learned responses, company culture or perceptions about being judged by others.
It’s useful to question someone between three and five times to discover the motivation direction. We ask upward direction questions such as those cited below.
What’s important about that for you?
- OK, so what’s in it for you?
- And what’s the point of that?
- Why would you bother doing that?
- I wonder, what is it you get from that?
- Big picture, what’s that all about for you?
- What’s the outcome of that?
Let's Consider Some Examples
Resist Making Assumptions Until You Dig Deeper
Building Rapport With Influencing Language
What leaders need to know about motivation direction is when they take the time to use language with purpose, the can get a person’s complete attention. This approach develops strong rapport because they feel safe. The other person unconsciously knows that you’re seeing things from their perspective, and thinking in alignment with them.
This level of rapport has many benefits. Firstly, you don’t have to continuously repeat yourself since people naturally want to focus on what you’re saying. Secondly, this approach tends to minimise misunderstanding and miscommunication.
Can We Change Our Motivation Pattern?
The simple answer is yes. A better question would be, “do we want to?”
In fact, through the coaching process and while engaged in the life long school of learning, our motivation direction can change. Let’s say a person has a towards motivation direction regarding their role as a salesperson. At some point, they may take a risk or perhaps make a mistake and it results in a job loss. A sudden awareness of the negative impact of taking risks or having a lack of attention to detail could shift their motivation direction. In the same way, someone who is 100% in health may imagine their body as invincible. When they have a heart attack, the emotion connected with this event shifts their direction away from death.
In coaching, we generally aim to move away from mindset towards the goal. This is especially true when we’re working to release the negative emotions triggered by life events, such as those mentioned above. We let go of limiting beliefs, negative emotions and unwarranted doubts. As we do this, we naturally become more ‘towards’ in our focus. The result tends to be a greater level of self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem. Therefore, addressing and expanding our own motivation direction can be extremely useful and positively impactful.
Finding The Balance
However, it’s useful to consider that we do benefit from a balance of both towards and away from mindset when we work on projects. That is to say, a team full of only towards mindset will forge ahead and yet waste time repeating problem patterns. Whereas a team comprised only of away from mindset may well work very slowly, miss opportunities, or operate in crisis mode.
Both perspectives and motivators are useful, and a balance brings a broader perspective and balanced action. Towards mindset benefits from being asked questions to assess risk and unforeseen challenges. Whereas Away From mindset benefits from questions to refocus towards the goal and establish whether actions are moving towards or away from the desired outcome.
Leaders Need To Understand Motivation Direction In Context
Recruitment
Clearly, it’s useful to identify motivation direction during the recruitment process. It’s useful to know whether a person is drive by attaining objectives or troubleshooting and problem solving. What’s more, someone operating an away from mindset will work at high speed and intensity until they are close to their goal. When close enough to mitigate risk, performance slows. Conversely, towards mindset has the ability to self-motivate repeatedly, and yet we will see diminished performance if they’re surrounded by away from mindset all day long.
Trends In Professions
Specific professions have towards or away from cultures. For example, an Investment Banker is more likely to have a towards making money pattern than their accountant, who’ll be away from problems, losses or operating outside the law. Both work in finance. In the same way, most medical doctors and researchers will operate an away from death pattern. What’s interesting is that a complementary health practitioner is much more likely to operate a towards health pattern. It’s easy to see how the clashes happen!
Pace
What is interesting is that slow-moving professions tend to operate from an away from perspective, prioritising focus on everything that can go wrong and mitigating risk before moving forward. Conversely, rapid growth industries tend to be led by a towards mindset.
Management Vs Employee
Different levels also have cultures. Think about the activities most people in leadership are involved in. Goal setting, objectives, and business planning are all towards activities. Let’s face it, what we do every day we become. What’s more, acknowledging that people facing the daily challenges may find it hard to feel motivated as we turn the ship about-face to take advantage of an opportunity. Therefore, we want to learn how to present our thoughts in a way that triggers others to become motivated and act.
Want To Understand Motivation In Detail?
If you really want to understand how different people are motivated and how to push the trigger button, you can.
Our Certified NLP For Business Training at Mastery level investigates Meta Programmes, Motivation and Demotivation triggers in-depth. Get in touch to find out how you can light the bonfire of motivation in your team.
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