We have long held at Motivational Maps that performance is down to three core components: direction, skills (including knowledge), and motivation. So far as the operational work goes at middle and technical levels, then we are really concerned with two aspects: skills and motivation, and this since the direction – strategy, plans, goals, objectives – is invariably set at senior level and cascaded down. Thus, our homely and simple formula: Performance equals Skills times Motivation. And to make this really understandable we often ask individual to rank themselves out of ten points (maximum) for skill in their current role, and then do the same for their motivation levels. This gives a neat performance percentage score which is easily understandable and generally pretty accurate.
But let's be frank: it is not always enough. Yes, skills and motivation are what performance is about in all normal human work activities; however, unfortunately, there are abnormal situations where a 'fourth' component enters and clouds the picture. Unless one is wary of this, one can get trapped into thinking one has a solution to a motivational problem when in fact motivation is little to do with it.
What am I talking about? What is the 'fourth' component? Before answering that question it comes down to realising the source of motivation itself within us. One prime source is our self concept – our beliefs about our self – which includes our self-esteem, how we feel about our self. I have always maintained that the one instance where the Motivational Maps don't work is where we are dealing with chronically low self-esteem. This may affect somewhere between 10-15% of the working population – so a small number of the whole, but not insignificant.
So how do we know when self-esteem is chronically low? The absolute answer to this question is summed up in one word: games. People who suffer from chronically low self-esteem always play games. Bizarrely the Map reading can still be 100% accurate – right – but because one is dealing with a game player, it makes no difference, since the game player seeks primary motivation from the co-dependence, not the internal motivations aligned to the healthy self concept.
A case of this came my way recently. I was asked to deal with a member of staff who was not meeting performance criteria and over a two year period seemed to be slipping. Further, other members of staff were complaining about him, and he seemed to be out of control. Sometimes he seemed enthusiastic and committed, and others he just went off the boil. The point was that this up and down behaviour was extremely destabilising not only for the team, but also the managers.
They assumed there was a motivational issue, but to their surprise they found that on doing the Map he was 84% motivated – staggeringly high, and 'in the zone' in fact. In examining the top three motivators there was general agreement that these accurately reflected what the person was like; there was general agreement that this person was highly skilled and knew exactly how to do the job – they had demonstrated this in the five years preceding the two year problem period. So if motivation was high, skill was high, why was performance very weak?
The answer is: it's not the motivation – so far as the job went, it was motivating; however, in reflecting on this particular case, and going back over the history, we find someone overlooked for promotion (and for whom the Maps establish prestige as critically important) and who as a consequence from that moment has decided not to play ball. In other words we find a human being who has made a decision, actually counter to their own motivational welfare, to go 'slow', as it were, to play things by the book, and to do as little as possible. Despite their conscious intention to play 'their game', however, at times the job got interesting, and they get more motivated than they intended. Hence the variations in performance.
Motivation goes with the grain of who we are; when we honour it, we feel good and get more energy; when we play with it and think our rational minds know better, we screw up, as this person did. Ultimately, our lack of commitment shows through, the bare minimum becomes not quite enough, others notice and ask questions. Finally, we are made redundant, having become so by a failure to work with our own motivators.
So, key lesson: if the motivational score is at real odds with the performance, ask the question – am I dealing with a game player here? If you are, then supportive action is probably not your best option.
The Mapping Motivation Series 