Motivating Drivers
Motivating Drivers explain why a person gets motivated, what makes them tick and drives them forward. The dimension covers 15 motivational situations that make sense and add value to them as individuals.
What is this dimension analysing, and why does it matter?
The list is not exhaustive. It consists of the 15 most common drivers found in a global survey, identified as universal values that exist across all cultures even though their expression varies.
Held against its neighbour: Motivating Drivers are why we act; Motivating Behaviour is how we are driven to act. Two people can both be driven by Achievement and pursue it completely differently, one through Classic behaviour, one through Influencing. The driver is the underlying value; the behaviour is the observable pattern.
Why it matters:
- This is the retention dimension. People leave roles that pay well and use their talents when the work cannot feed their drivers. It is the most common cause of a resignation that management did not see coming.
- It explains motivation that survives difficulty. Drivers sustain effort through periods when results, recognition and enjoyment have all disappeared.
- It is the culture-fit input. A culture either feeds a person’s drivers or starves them, and that is largely fixed. Talents can be worked around; a driver the environment cannot supply is a structural mismatch.
- It prevents expensive mis-incentivisation. Offering money to someone driven by Freedom, or autonomy to someone driven by Community, spends real budget on the wrong thing.
How do I read the chart?
The bars show the relative strength of each of the 15 drivers for this respondent. Read three things:
The top three. These are what the person is actually optimising for. Most people can name one of them and are surprised by the others.
The bottom three. Equally informative. A driver scoring low is not a deficiency, it means that appeal has no purchase on this person. Offering it as an incentive wastes it.
The spread. A profile with two or three dominant drivers is straightforward to motivate and straightforward to lose. A flat profile across many drivers is more adaptable and harder to move decisively in any single direction.
Where disempowerment or talent-table data is shown, read it as with the other dimensions: which of the respondent’s talents feed a given driver, and what happens to that driver when those talents cannot be used.
The 15 drivers
Grouped here by what they are fundamentally about. The groupings are a teaching aid, not part of the instrument.
Drivers about producing something
Motivated by achieving goals; incomplete goals produce restlessness and dissatisfaction. A clearly defined target gets them started, and continuously showing them the target makes them persist until it is reached.
Energised by being original and creating something from nothing. The motivation is in being the creator and in producing a visible result.
The feeling of defying the odds and receiving admiration. They strive to create things that can be described as breath-taking, magnificent and inspiring.
The satisfaction found in beauty creates motivation. What defines beauty is highly subjective; the desire to find or create it is consistent.
Drivers about people and belonging
Feels connected or attached to a group and is driven to protect or advance it. Gains strength from the feeling of “us”. The specific values of the community dictate the direction they will be motivated to go.
Being part of something bigger and accomplishing something together. The strength of taking action together is what brings the energy.
Bringing harmony and balance between the different components of an entity. Creating consensus, finding common ground, making all individuals fit into a structure.
Drivers about principle
Compelled to create or maintain a just system where fairness, equality and reasonableness prevail. Often framed in right and wrong, and built on punishment and reward; what dictates these is either the person’s own values or the group’s.
Being able to be honest and maintain integrity. It works twofold: staying true to oneself, and being honest and trustable in the eyes of others.
Motivated by undertaking responsibility that is important to them or others. Others’ expectations drive them to deliver and give them strength to persevere until the goal is reached.
Drivers about the self
Living and working without limitations. The perception that they can act, say, do and think what they want without obstacles is liberating. Autonomy and independence encourage them; hierarchy, reporting and systems demotivate.
The quest to be praised, respected, appreciated and looked up to. Being recognised enforces a sense of power, position and status.
Freedom from personal fears such as finances, health, challenges and doubts. Chasing a feeling of safety and security, from financial freedom through to double-checking appointments.
The drive to move from a less desirable place to a more comfortable one. The fear of regret, or redemption, drives the action.
Driver about understanding
Attaining new knowledge and understanding new contexts and experiences. Driven to solve issues and bring clarity to unanswered questions through logic, analysis and experience.
How to use the drivers
- Look at your top three and check them against your current week. If none of your significant hours feed any of them, that is the explanation for feeling flat in a job you are apparently good at.
- Say your drivers out loud to your manager. They are not obvious from the outside and cannot be inferred from performance.
- Use them when choosing between offers. Compensation and title are visible; drivers determine whether you are still there in two years.
- Ask directly what feeds someone rather than assuming your own drivers generalise. This is the single most common failure, managers motivate others with what motivates themselves.
- Match the reward to the driver. Public recognition for Status; autonomy for Freedom; a defined target for Achievement; a team stake for Community. Wrong-driver rewards are not neutral, they are wasted.
- Read a resignation risk here before you read it in engagement scores.
- Test whether the culture can actually supply the candidate’s top drivers. If it structurally cannot, a Freedom-driven candidate into a heavily governed environment, no amount of role fit rescues it.
- Note where a driver conflicts with the role rather than the culture. Justice in a role requiring frequent individual exceptions, or Safety in a role with variable pay, will grind.
Working with each driver, quick reference
| Driver | Give them | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Achievement | Targets and completions | Open-ended, unmeasured work |
| Beauty | Craft and quality of form | Indifference to how things look |
| Community | A team and a stake in it | Isolation, high churn |
| Creationism | Something new to own | Maintaining someone else’s work |
| Duty | Real responsibility, clear expectations | Work nothing depends on |
| Insight | Problems and access to information | Answers handed down |
| Freedom | Autonomy and outcome-based management | Approval chains and reporting |
| Harmony | Alignment and integration work | Sustained conflict |
| Justice | Fair, transparent process | Visible favouritism |
| Unity | Shared missions, joint delivery | Purely individual accountability |
| Atonement | A chance to put something right | Unaddressed history |
| Safety | Stability and clear terms | Uncertainty, variable pay |
| Truth | Permission to say what they think | Required optimism, spin |
| Status | Visibility and senior audiences | Anonymity, collective credit |
| Wonder | Ambitious, exceptional projects | Competent but unremarkable work |
Summary
- Start with the top three, and ask how much of the current role feeds them. The gap is usually immediately visible to the respondent and rarely visible to their manager.
- Use the bottom three to prevent waste. Naming what does not motivate someone stops an organisation spending on the wrong incentive.
- Keep the drivers/behaviour distinction explicit. Why versus how. Respondents conflate the two constantly.
- Treat drivers as more fixed than talents. Talent expression can be coached and worked around; a driver the environment cannot feed is a structural mismatch, and honesty about that serves everyone.
- In hiring, run the drivers against the culture before running the talents against the role, consistent with the culture-gates-role logic in the Job Fit Report.