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What Really Motivates You?

By Will Turner

What makes you tick? What gets you excited and ready to go? Knowing the answer can make a huge difference in both your personal and professional life. But how do you determine what really motivates you?

There are five core motivators to sort through to understand what gets your heart and mind singing. Determining your core motivator can help you tap into your potential. Or on the flip side, if you don’t understand what motivates you, you may find yourself unfulfilled with your accomplishments or unable to push through the obstacles that get thrown in your path along the way.

The five main motivators that drive human behavior are achievement, recognition, control, affiliation and altruism. While you possess components of all of these, you have one or two that tend to be more dominant. By understanding your primary and secondary motivators, you can increase your chances of success.

Achievement

If you’re achievement-motivated you have a desire to improve simply for the sake of improvement. In other words, you have a strong fundamental desire to be bigger, better, stronger, higher, or faster. You’re very competitive, even if it’s just with yourself.

You like new goals because you get a strong sense of satisfaction and accomplishment by reaching them. If you see a challenge, you will figure out a way to get through it.

You enjoy:

* Setting the pace and determining the best approach
* Learning new material and improving your skills
* Working on challenging assignments
* Having clearly defined expectations and goals
* Receiving feedback on your performance

Recognition

If you’re recognition-motivated, you like attention and recognition. You like to be seen in a favorable light (or sometimes any light) by others. You like to be singled out and you’re all smiles when you receive trophies, prizes or other awards. While you may seek recognition for your accomplishments or contributions, you also may want to be known for your larger-than-life personality.

You like to be the center of attention or receive praise from others. You take pride in your accomplishments and proudly display your medals of achievement. You like to talk and share your ideas. If you’re the class clown or the local celebrity, you probably fall into this category.

You enjoy:

* Completing tasks or projects quickly
* Working on highly visible projects or tasks
* Using your presentation skills

Control

If you’re control-motivated, you like to be in charge. You want to set the course of action and have power over other people and situations. You like to be the authority figure and have ultimate decision-making power. You enjoy being the keeper of rewards and penalties.

You seek positions of power and will often be the leader of a team, committee or organization. You tend to see things in black and white or right and wrong.

You enjoy:

* Directing and managing others
* Implementing change
* Providing insights and guidance
* Controlling the work pace

Affiliation

If your core desire is to be part of a group or to be connected to other people in some way, you seek affiliation. As an affiliated-motivated person, you want to be liked, to get along with others and to make sure everyone else gets along with each other. You are collaborative and you value and seek harmony in your interactions with other people.

You are a people-person. You identify yourself through your family ties, the organizations you belong to and the teams of which you’re a member. You tend to have long-term relationships with many people. You enjoy working in a team environment and define your life by the groups in which you participate.

You enjoy:

* Working in a team environment
* Building and nurturing cooperation and collaboration among others
* Developing strong relationships

Altruism

Truly altruistic people are a rare breed - think Mother Teresa or Mahatma Ghandi. While you may have altruistic traits, it’s often not the primary motivator. In fact, most charitable work is done under the guise of altruism, but with other underlying motives. For example, the benefactor often has another underlying primary motive; he or she seeks achievement, recognition, control or belonging.

You’re an altruistic-motivated person if you do things for the greater good with no regard to self and with no ulterior motives. Those who give anonymously fall into this category.

You enjoy:

* Working with others with shared values
* Being part of a highly committed team
* Contributing to the greater good

So do you recognize yourself in one of the five core motivators? What is your primary motivator? What’s most important to you? Determining what motivates you will help you plan and achieve your goals. When you understand why you do the things you do, you can direct your behavior in a meaningful way.

It’s also makes it easy to assess the proper rewards and penalties to your goals which should be part of your goal achievement process. For example, if your goal is “to increase your new sales 20% to $1,000,000 by the end of the calendar year,” you would want to create rewards and penalties that are aligned with your primary motivator.

While the monetary impact to your personal income for increasing sales would be the same regardless of your primary motivator, what you do with that money and how you reward yourself should be different. If you’re recognition-motivated, you may want to buy a flashy new outfit or car to showcase your success. If you’re affiliation-motivated, you may want to go on vacation with loved ones.

In other words, you should find ways to tap into your core motivators by linking the achievement of your goals and the rewards (or penalties) they bring to those activities or things that you enjoy and want.

© Dancing Elephants Achievement Group 2006