Even as the cold, piercing wind nips at your face, sweat drips off of your brow and into your eye as you gaze up at the summit of Mount Rainer. You’ve waited for this moment for a long time and it is finally coming to fruition. The friends on your team have smiles that beam just as brightly as the sun cresting the ridge. Adjusting the pack on your shoulders seems to reset the weight to pillow instead of engine block. The pain that was in your back melts away a bit as you crane your neck to investigate the path ahead. The lactic acid that’s built up in your legs reminds you of the effort to reach this point, but it won’t stop your mind from reflecting on that unforgettable quote from Pele – “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you’re doing” – and you love this moment for both you and your team.
Congratulations on making it to the top of the mountain. How can you help others to get there, too?
Grit is a key component of success in both the military and life, more broadly. People with grit are more resilience and able to weather adversity. Angela Duckworth has spearheaded the recent push to understand grit with a TED Talk based upon her bestselling book. If grit encompasses effort and interest, where does one’s level of motivation play into the equation? Quite simply, I believe that motivation is the direct confluence of effort and interest (see graphic below).
Grit is a talent that exists within each of us and can be trained. Motivation, on the other hand, can be self-generated or externally generated. By definition, motivation is the psychological process that arouses and directs goal-oriented behavior. To truly understand this topic in its purest form, we should touch on some of the theory behind how humans are motivated.
Before we dive in, maybe this is a good juncture to ask and answer an important question: why delve into theory? There is little doubt that experience is life’s teacher. Experience, however, is only one side of the coin. Theory gives us a systematic way to look at and reflect upon those experiences. Theory gives us a framework to derive further into learning and there are four theories that shape how leaders and mentors can have positive (or negative) impacts with respect to motivating those around us.
1. The most famous motivational theory is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In the 1940s and 50s Maslow published his ideas about motivation after studying the healthiest 1% of the college population instead of the mentally ill, breaking the paradigm follow by many students of Freudian style psychology. Many are familiar with his triangle (see below) and its five levels: physiological, safety, love, esteem, self-actualization. A key idea to understand in Maslow’s hierarchy is that once a need is met, it activates the next higher need.
For leaders and mentors, we must remember what people’s needs are and think about the implications of meeting or not meeting these basic needs are on their behaviors.
2. A second motivation theory is Clayton Alderfer’s Existence, Relatedness, Growth (ERG) Theory. In his view Existence Needs are the desire for physiological and materialistic well-being, Relatedness Needs are the desire to have meaningful relationships with significant others, and Growth Needs are the desire to grow as a human being and use one’s abilities to their fullest potential. Alderfer improved upon Maslow’s idea by 1) collapsing five levels to three for easier understanding, 2) recognizing the emotional frustration associated with regressing to ‘lower/earlier’ stages as well as the emotional satisfaction associated with progression, and 3) positively correlating the strength of the need for progress with the strength of progress satisfaction (see below for comparison charts). In other words, he suggested that we are motivated to move both up and down the needs hierarchy, and the passion associated with our need to do so will determine how strongly we (re)act.
For leaders and mentors, finding out how to motivate and develop others from Existence, though Relatedness, to Growth can be a major determining factor of success.
3. In the 1960s, Fredericks Herzberg came to believe that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction act independently of each other which led to his Motivator – Hygiene Theory. In this theory of motivation, individuals are not necessarily concerned with the satisfaction of lower-order needs in our workspaces in comparison to Maslow’s theory (see below comparison). Improving upon Maslow’s work, Herzberg believed that individuals look for gratification of our higher-level psychological needs that have to do with achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement, and the nature of the work itself. His two factors were motivators – positive intrinsic conditions, and hygiene factors – extrinsic maintenance conditions. The key point is that it is entirely possible to have “no dissatisfaction” because of good hygiene factors, and “no satisfaction” because of a lack of motivators.
Leaders and mentors must understand both what satisfies and dissatisfies in order to provide balancing motivating factors and hygiene factors.
4. A final theory to consider is David McClelland’s Need for Achievement, Affiliation, and Power. During the 1970s McClelland stepped away from other theories of motivation by saying that we have three interrelated basic needs that are always ongoing and shifting in priority. He defined these three needs as nACH – the need to accomplish something difficult (achievement), nAFF – the need for social relationships, especially in the work place (affiliation), and nPOW – the need to coach and train people (power). McClelland’s research showed that most of us are dominant in one need, and that our dominant need dictates whether we are better top-level leaders, mid-level managers or bottom-level followers (take the FIRO-B Assessment in our resources page to find out where you fit in).
Knowing where we are both dominant and weak can determine how we interact as followers, leaders, mentees and mentors in our everyday spaces.
Putting It All Together
Let’s face it: we will always have to work with other people. As a leader, how others are motivated is just as, if not more important, than how you attempt to motivate them. These two factors are symbiotic – one trick won’t work with everyone. Leaders and mentors need to understand how to professionally nudge, prod, and push their teams and protégés to the next level. Here we discussed four content driven (re: ‘individual needs’ focused) motivational theories. Next time we will discuss four process driven (re: ‘behavior focused’) ones. Understanding different types of motivational approaches will help both leaders and mentors do just that.
People have basic (existence) needs such as need for safety, security
People have social (relatedness) needs
People have higher-order (growth) needs such as achievement, autonomy, growth, power
Needs can be acquired or learned- often develop as a result as what you see in environment (needs can change over time/ can come from parents)
Individual needs influence behavioral outcomes
What does this mean for us as leaders and mentors?
Specific needs trigger desired behaviors. How do we identify these needs?
Meaningful rewards help individuals satisfy needs. How can we understand these needs to maximize the motivational impact of the programs we design?
Offering appropriate rewards can optimize performance. How can we ensure that the rewards we offer are appropriate?
The needs of an individual will not necessarily repeat themselves in regular patterns. How can we design our programs to satisfy changing needs?
Get yourself and others to the top of the mountain. In the process of doing so, let MilitaryMentors.org help you to do so. Start a conversation, spark a transformation!