Understanding Your Motivational Direction
How well do you understand your own motivational strategies? Do you tend to move towards achievement or away from problems? This is Motivation Direction.
Are you someone who clearly sees something you want to achieve and gets motivated?
Or are you someone who tends to scan for possible issues, and then becomes motivated about solving them?
Or, are you somewhere in the middle, someone who finds motivation in both moving towards achievement and away from issues?
Tony Robbins has been fond of saying that we are either motivated towards pleasure or away from pain. The research indicates this is a bit too simplified.
Most of the research in Motivational Direction has been in the workplace, but we all have consistent patterns in other contexts. In the workplace, according to research by Rodger Bailey, there is an interesting distribution of these patterns.
Distribution Percentage in the Workplace
Mainly Towards
40%
Equally Towards and Away From
20%
Mainly Away From
40%
Understanding your own Motivational Direction can help you increase your motivation. You can either think about all the positive results you can have, all the problems you can avoid, or a mixture of both.
Understanding others' Direction can help you understand how they work. It can increase your ability to help others become more motivated. You can reduce your frustration with those whose Motivational Directions are different from yours. Towards people can become very frustrated with Away From people and vice versa. Each style has both strengths and challenges. As it is largely unconscious, it is important that we learn to be patient with others who are different.
Each style has different strengths and challenges. Towards people can often overlook potential problems. They can overlook details in pursuit of a goal. Away From people aren’t easily motivated by goal-oriented language. When there are no problems, their motivation can lag.
Do you want to become more motivated, or want to have a more successful team in the workplace? If so, contact me to discuss what we can do together.
https://rayhoskinscoachingandconsulting.as.me/