Know Your Team’s Motivational Mindset
before you can motivate the people on
your team you need to understand their
motivational mindset specifically you
need to know whether they are more
focused on what they have to lose if
they don’t succeed or what they have to
gain as the Associate Director of
Columbia Business School’s motivation
Science Center I’ve been one of many
researchers studying what psychologists
call prevention focus and promotion
focus it’s important to know the
difference and to lead individuals
accordingly whenever we see our goals in
terms of what we have to lose we have
what’s called a prevention focus but if
we see our goals in terms of what we
might gain we have what’s called a
promotion focus now people with a
prevention focus care about security
about avoiding mistakes and fulfilling
their responsibilities they tend to work
slowly and deliberately and they’re
always prepared for the worst but they
can also be stressed out by tight
deadlines feel anxious when things go
wrong and are not the most comfortable
with trying new things now people with a
promotion focus work quickly and they’re
great brainstorm errs they’re willing to
take risks but they also tend to plan
for best case scenarios and tend to lose
steam without a lot of positive feedback
of course each of us is sometimes
focused on promotion and sometimes
prevention but we also usually have a
dominant focus and if you can figure out
which one predominates in your team you
can motivate them much more effectively
when you give direction to individuals
on a team match your communication style
to their needs for example in one of my
favorite studies coaches in a semi-pro
soccer league in Germany were told to
prep their players for making
high-pressure penalty kicks in one of
two ways – half of the players they were
told to say you are going to shoot five
penalties your obligation is to not miss
more than twice – the other half they
were told to say you’re going to shoot
five penalties your aspiration is to
score at least three
times now you might expect that with
such highly skilled trained and
motivated players this subtle change in
wording wouldn’t make a big difference
but it did players performed much better
when the instructions matched their
motivational focus this was especially
true for the prevention minded players
they scored nearly twice as often when
they received their instructions as
warnings not to miss instead of his
opportunities to score in addition the
coach is found that the prevention
focused penalty kickers were more likely
to be defenders or goalies while the
promotion focused kickers were more
likely to be offensive players as a
manager think not only about the kinds
of instruction your team needs but
whether the roles you’ve assigned them
makes sense given what motivates them
people with the prevention focus are
great at structured detail-oriented jobs
people with the promotion focus tend to
be more innovative than practical more
creative than detail-oriented when
people’s natural motivational instincts
match their job and when you use
communication styles that fit their
needs a lot of the mystery around
motivation falls away to build a
motivated team start by understanding
their motivational mindset
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