It was the great GK Chesterton who observed: "In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved." What this powerfully reminds us of in the modern period is that it is not only ‘faith’ that lacks proof – reason itself lacks proof in that we cannot prove reason by reasoning alone because if we do we have a circular argument. In a way this is similar to the ideal requirement in a court of law: one person can testify that they are speaking the truth and witnessed a certain event, but this is only convincing when other witnesses, particularly independent witnesses, corroborate that testimony. What could demonstrate that reason was reason-able? It would be like proving that a circle is round or curved; it is a tautology.
The only thing we can say about why we want to use reason is that it is self-evident, self-evidently right, or that by using it we obtain good empirical results: in other words the outcomes justify our confidence in the process. This is not, of course, ‘proof’ that reason is right, but merely that it works, a subtly different proposition. Ultimately, with reason as with faith we have to believe that they are right – it’s an emotional commitment, bizarrely, to what is a logical process. Naturally, many highly logical people utterly repudiate that statement, because for them they cannot accept the emotional or belief side of believing in reason or logic.
What has this got to do with Motivational Maps – the world’s number motivational diagnostic? Quite a lot. Everybody in the market place wants proof, wants certainty, wants validation, and this is good, but oftentimes it over-reaches itself and becomes a request for something that is inappropriate.
One technical question about the Maps that came to me recently asked what was the evidence – the proof! - that fast and slow decision making is correlated with the 9 motivators of the Maps? And I could only answer this in two ways.
First, by referring to the fact that some 20,000+ maps have already been done and when people and teams are fed back their profiles and this issue is covered then everyone recognizes the relevance or the truth in the description. In other words, this is the outcome justification.
And the second reason is the self-evident reason, which, to give it a posher title, is that it is axiomatic! Why is this? Because it is not something that can be proved, it is something that arises from the descriptors themselves.
To take an example, if we define the motivator Defender as being the motivator of security, safety, and predictability, then it follows that anyone who has this motivator at their core will be risk-averse, change-averse, and – in order to be secure – slower in making decisions in order to make the right one. Thus, as night follows day, it is inevitable that in taking that extra time to make a decision – to be secure – they will be 'slower': compared with a motivator higher up the chain.
At the other end of the 9 motivator chain and the Maslow Hierarchy with which it is correlated, we have the Searcher who seeks making a difference, mission and purpose. Thus in the very structure of being a Searcher we have somebody who seeks to change the status quo – make a difference – and who will, therefore, take a risk to do so. They will be risk-friendly, change-friendly and that orientation means they will tend to make quick or fast decisions, since they will not be preoccupied by getting things wrong – or ensuring they are right.
This, then, does not require ‘proof’ – it is axiomatic – it is built into what it means to have these definitions in place in the first place! One brilliant aspect of Motivational Maps is that they can tell us – can tell you – not just what motivates but how relatively quickly or slowly you will make decisions, and also how risk and change averse or friendly you or your team or whole organization is! Simples? Axiomatic, Watson.
The Mapping Motivation Series 