Which Motives are MOST Important for Your Team to Thrive?

Leaders and teams are always intrigued when they see where their team or organization falls on our “motive map,” to understand the true diversity of needs among them. If you are new to Motives Met, employees take our 15-minute Motives Met Human Needs Assessment™ and uncover the top 5 motives out of the 28 that matter most to them today, along with their personalized report to help them meet their motives. What I need most to thrive at work is going to be different than what you need most.

After taking the assessment, each leader gets their team’s report and motive activity & discussion guide, which includes their team’s unique motive circumplex that shows the motives that are rising to the top for their collective team. It sparks conversations around similarities in values like BELONGING, GROWTH, and FAIRNESS. It also ignites insightful dialogue around differences and friction points. In a workshop for example, it came to light that one team member’s need for SECURITY and being in their comfort zone at times caused a rift with another team member’s need for INNOVATION and risk-taking. These motive insights beg questions like, “Which of these top needs for our team are thriving and which ones have room for growth?” or “How can we appreciate our remote FLEXIBILITY while also amplifying the CONNECTION we crave?” 

*Side note – If you want to learn more about our framework you can download our research report here or dive into the background around the 28 motives here.

There are a lot of amazing advantages to understanding the motives at the heart of your team’s well-being, so many I could write a whole book on it. Oh wait, I did! If you want to explore deeper check out the bestseller Work Life Well-Lived  but for now, I’ll touch on 5 key benefits of bringing Motives Met to your team.

The Power of Motives to Build a Thriving Team

1. Creates a Caring Two-Way Relationship & Culture Team Members Don’t Want to Leave 

When you and your team understand, evaluate, and communicate motives, you have a much better shot of actually meeting these motives. Using the assessment you gain the critical insights that you are then able to put into action to ensure motives are met. Employees with well-met motives are more likely to believe their organization and leaders care about their health and happiness. Caring goes both ways – When employees feel cared for, they care more about their organization, leaders, and team. It creates a win-win relationship. 

Data like this chart below from our research drives home the point that employees with strong motives are less likely to be looking elsewhere for a new job now, 80% with well-met motives intend to stay at their organization for the next year compared to only 41% with unmet motives. Those with strong motives also intend to stay at their organization for the long haul, 67% with well-met motives and only 33% with unmet motives. 

Using the assessment is saying to your team members, “Hey I care about mental health and happiness, I want to get to know you as a human being, to connect and offer support and for us all to work to strengthen the needs that drive us.” And let me tell you, that goes a very very long way! When team members get to share what matters most to them, they feel seen, heard, and valued. 

2. Cultivates Shared Meaning & Mindset Around Thriving at Work

If you ask each person on your team how they would define work well-being you will get a different answer. That’s a problem. For a team to successfully achieve any goal, there must be clarity on what the goal actually is. Goal clarity equals goal achievement. The goal is to create a culture where motives are respected and each person’s unique top needs are healthy and ideally thriving. Without this unified goal, it becomes almost impossible to create a cohesive strategy. When each person is working from a different playbook, efforts to improve workplace well-being and team culture can become fragmented and ineffective. Our research and assessment create that shared meaning and mindset, the thoughts and underlying beliefs around what thriving at work is truly all about.

3.  Establishes the Co-Creation of Well-Being & Shared Responsibility

Well-being at work happens when individuals, work peers, and leaders show up for themselves AND one another to keep everyone’s fundamental needs healthy. The degree any motive like APPRECIATION, CLEAR EXPECTATIONS, FREE EXPRESSION, or WORK-LIFE HARMONY will be met is going to be impacted by everyone. When you use the assessment it’s a motivational call to action: if we want an awesome team culture and everyone to be happy then we all have to step up and do our part, it’s a joint effort and shared responsibility. 

When you set the standard for a culture where motives are met you are building a shared commitment, empowering your team, and also raising the bar in expectation. At Motives Met we pride ourselves on taking a no-B.S. approach to work wellness. Not every team member is going to love one another, but each team member should be expected to honor your shared humanity. No one should be the person who stifles someone’s PASSION, stunts their GROWTH, makes them feel invisible instead of APPRECIATED, or be the reason they feel they don’t BELONG. You establish a “good human standard.” As Gary Vee says, “Focus on people that show humanity. Remember, A+ human beings with B- skills always beat A+ talent with C- personality.” When you bring the assessment to your team you are reinforcing there is only room for A+ human beings on this team who will help not harm motives. 

Ultimately sharing “motive stories” allows your team to connect not just as “work selves” but “human selves,” which grows compassion and offers new perspectives that strengthen relationships and the ability to co-create well-being together. 

4.  Helps Your Team Embrace Motive Diversity & Live in the Tension of These Needs Well 

As I touched on previously motives can hold tension with one another. Our data placed these motive variables strategically around the circumplex. Motives that are across from one another can at times conflict or be friction points while motives close together can tend to complement and hold more similarities. The assessment helps your team embrace the messy truth: thriving at work is multi-faceted, personal, and evolving. It’s NOT about pretending there are easy answers or that certain motives are better or more important than others. There are NO favorites. But do we always embrace this truth of need diversity? Definitely not! The disconnect is this, we tend to think what we find most important, is what others should think is most important, that they feel how we feel. It can be unconscious but biases abound. Sometimes the question isn’t how we connect; it’s how we limit judgment. 

Your team learns to truly be inclusive and embrace motive diversity, to live in the tension of these needs well through compromise, communication, and smart strategy. It’s not about perfection, but optimization. Another great benefit? The team deepens their compassion for you as a leader. There are 28 needs that hold different weight for everyone, that can conflict, that can be tough to satisfy at the same time. It’s a huge challenge and this recognition brings greater care and empathy all the way around. 

5.  Opens the Door to Motive Communication with Greater Vulnerability & Psychological Safety

Motives tend to be a missing conversation at work. That silence costs us big time. We don’t get to hear about the good stuff, the real stuff, even the bad stuff because it’s vital we hear about that too. Using the assessment your team can celebrate strengths — something we don’t do nearly enough! Team members notice and acknowledge the good in each other, share what’s working, and feel motivated to keep doing those things or even improve those positive aspects. 

People share stories that illuminate what motives like FUTURE SUCCESS, FUN, or PRESTIGE mean to them personally and why they are so important. New things are learned about one another. New connections formed. New ideas about how to support or work better with others. It also provides the opportunity to discuss weaknesses, to uncover small problems before they become big problems which is critical because we can’t solve invisible problems right? Rather than take a passive or reactive approach you are taking a proactive and preventative one, and prevention is better than cure. You gain thoughts and ideas from your team about how to improve weak areas and develop an action plan.

The assessment is the gateway to this dialogue, it normalizes talking about things that aren’t typically normalized, it creates a time, place, and brave space for motive communication, while inviting greater vulnerability.

You can learn more about our assessment here! Want to see how our tools can help you? Drop us a line, and we’ll send you some info to learn more. 

Explore Our Human Needs Assessment™

Want to see how our tools can help you? Drop us a line, and we’ll send you some info to learn more.