It’s a question that’s been on everyone's minds, “how does the moment we’re in effect motivation and performance?” We’re past the initial disruption, and we’ve figured out new systems, tech, and processes to handle the ever-evolving changes in environment, production, and flow. Now, how do we go from “keep on keeping on” to a place of fully realized potential and high-level performance in this new reality of home, hybrid, in-office, virtual, and beyond? How do we motivate people to show up as their best selves and contribute at the highest levels?
On the surface, it seems the reality on the ground is changing so fast, methods that were often relied upon to motivate participation, engagement, and performance in Before Times aren’t up to the task of delivering results in Perpetually Evolving Real Time. But is that really what’s happening?
Truth is that the longstanding “outside in” motivational methods that have dominated the organizational landscape for decades were actually pretty broken to start with. This is not a new problem it’s just been surfaced on a level and in a context we’ve never before been faced with. Now is the perfect time to reexamine how we support people in the quest to not just get through this moment, or get comfortable with it, but find new ways to tap into their fullest potential and unlock exceptional performance.
Years ago, in his seminal book, DRIVE, Dan Pink pulled back the curtain on carrots and sticks, revealing their ineffectiveness for anything beyond short, unsustainable bursts of performance. Mining years of research, he invited us to focus on more intrinsic sources of motivation. What that looks like has been a source of continued exploration, without a lot of agreement or clarity. Figuring it out requires a fair degree of time, resources, nuance, and personalization. It adds complexity, long-term thinking, and requires an openness to change, sometimes on the paradigmatic level, that is often seen as so laborious or risky, we just default back to shinier, newer versions of carrots and sticks, which continue not to work well. Especially, now.
When you zoom the lens out, the invitation to reimagine motivation really isn’t a pandemic problem, it’s just a generations-old problem that was never adequately solved and is now bundled to the trip-wire of outmoded fears about people slacking at home now in a way that is surfacing the issue like never before.
Thing is, we don’t have a motivation problem as much as we have a misalignment problem. We all have a unique imprint for work that makes us come alive (your Sparketype®), and work that empties us out (your AntiSparketype). The more you align what you do with this imprint, the more likely you are to report higher levels of meaning, flow, excitement, energy, accessed potential, and purpose. Motivation then becomes the organic outgrowth of these states. External promises of gain or fears of loss aren’t needed. You show up, work hard, devote yourself to growth and excellence simply because of the feeling it gives you. This is the intrinsic motivation we’ve been heralding, yet rarely accessing for years.
The corollary is also true, the less you do this work, the less likely you are to share these same deeply desired states. The less internally motivated you become, and the more likely the need for external scaffolding just to hit baseline levels of performance, let alone full potential. Even that won’t serve as effective or sustainable motivation over the long haul, as we saw in the devastating data around a pervasive lack of meaningfulness, purpose, and engagement in the workplace long before the pandemic took its toll.
The Sparketypes are different than and complementary to many of the older, more traditional metrics or indicators, like strengths, tendencies, relational styles, and generalized personality orientations. They function at the level of intrinsic impulse for effort, rather than talent, skill, competence, or tendency, or preference. It’s time we start speaking to a deeper, more primal driver of sustained high-level effort in the name not just of some external goal or measure, but rather the feeling the work gives you: meaning, flow, engagement, expressed potential, and purpose.
What, then, is the solution? Rather than trying to figure out how to bolt new, improved, tech-enabled carrots and sticks onto the current situation, look instead at giving people what they have been clamoring for all along. Invest in tools, processes, and programs that support individual, personal growth. Help them cultivate a stronger self-awareness, so each person can better understand the essential nature of work that fills and empties them, regardless of skill or competence.
Among other tools, show them how to discover their Sparketypes via the Sparketype Assessment (free online tool), then guide them to find ways to better align what they do with those intrinsic impulses for effort. At that point, motivation emerges more as an organic “side-effect” of Sparketype-aligned action, rather than some inartful and, often, ineffective driver of high-potential and performance.
The world may have changed, but the need to come alive has not. In fact, it’s stronger than ever. As leaders, we now have a rare opportunity to not just reimagine motivation and performance, but also guide people into work that helps them rise into their best selves and live the lives they want to live.
