The 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation’s second drive is the drive to Bond & Belong. The drive is defined by our innate desire to form “close, positive relationships” with people around us. The image of the lone wolf going it alone or the inventor holed up in his workshop are atypical – most people want to bond with others and feel they belong to a group. Here are three tips to increase the B Drive:
Tag: Employee Engagement
A few weeks ago Susan and I spent the day interviewing 11 employees at Oak Ridge Hotel & Conference Center in Chaska, MN (see Oak Ridge Part 1 here). We had observed that Oak Ridge had “gotten the formula right on employee motivation” and wanted to probe more to find out how. From our original findings, we highlighted five things that stood out: 1) leadership counts, 2) It is not about the money, 3) It is about the team, 4) Genuine recognition rejuvenates and 5) It is all about appreciating people. I’m taking a different approach this time, looking at it from the 4-Drive Model and seeing how each of the drives showed up in the 11 interviews.
Here are the slides from our webinar
Harvard Business Review discusses a study that looked at what really drives employee motivation. While the study is really looking at emotions and what satisfies employees and makes them happy (and not really “motivation” per se), it does reveal some interesting findings. The most important is that employees having a sense of progress is a key driver in this aspect.
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Of course this ties right into two of the four drives: Acquire & Achieve and Challenge & Comprehend. As employees, we need to feel like we are Achieving something – i.e., making progress. When we feel we are stuck or not moving forward, we are not satisfying our drive to Achieve. We also are motivated to be challenged – but we need to see progress in this arena in order to stay motivated by it.
While the study shed light on how progress motivates, it did not dig in deep to how this works. For instance the HBR study did not explore what type of progress was greater motivator — progress on everyday simple tasks or those tasks that are challenging. I would theorize that progress on the challenging goals has a higher impact. Nor did it look at the effect of proximity to the end goal. In other words, is it more motivating to achieve progress towards a goal at the very beginning or closer to the end (e.g., example of getting the first 1,000 miles towards your frequent flyer free trip or getting the 24,000 mile (when you need 25,000 to earn the free trip))?
Overall the HBR article brought up some key insights that will help us all in understanding what motivates us. Read the HBR article here
I had a question poised to me in a group that I’m in regarding which is more effective/important, recognition or incentives? It got me to thinking about how we tend to try to simplify things into easily digestible answers (i.e., make the world black and white). It isn’t so simple. In reality, a truly effective motivational program needs to include both. It also needs to include a focus on intrinsic motivators (i.e., the three other aspects of the 4-Drive model: Bonding & Belonging, Challenge & Comprehend, and Define & Defend). When we look at motivation holistically, we have a number of levers that we are able to pull as leaders. The fact of the matter is, there is no one silver bullet. Everyone has a plethora of motivators that drive them everyday.
That being said, it is important to understand what those key motivators are. Asking people is obviously a key component of that, but I’ve found that often what people ask for, isn’t really what motivates them the most. It is important to get beyond the surface to the underlying motivators that people have. For instance, research that I’ve been part of shows that the majority of sales people will ask for cash if given the choice for an incentive reward (roughly 74% of the time), yet, we typically see a larger increase in sales performance for non-cash awards (on average about 15 – 25% better). Because of human nature, we don’t always know what really motivates us or we have been conditioned to respond in a particular manner to these types of questions. The difficulty is being able to identify what those real motivators are.
My belief is that incentive programs have to get more individualistic. That companies need to provide managers with more tools to be able to determine real motivators and set up individual programs for their teams. Of course, this is easier stated than done. The first step however is asking them. The second step is identifying peoples underlying drives. The third aspect is to ask them again after assessing their motivational profile, using probing questions to get at peoples real motivation.
Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this topic. What have you seen in your own business on recognition or incentives? How do you optimize them?
This is a great video that highlights some key things that companies can do to engage their employees. Love its fun presentation. I would add in there are some other aspects beyond the three that this video talks about that can help engage participants (look to enhance bonding, building challenge and comprehension into the work environment, and creating an organizational culture that you would want to defend) – but these suggestions are a great start!
