How many times have you asked yourself the following questions: Why did I make this decision instead of another? Am I aware of the motivators that drive me? If I take another option, will I feel good?
These questions and many more can be answered by the game of Management 3.0 “Moving Motivators”. It consists of a deck of cards with ten motivators that are either intrinsic, extrinsic or a bit of both that help to reflect on motivation and the way they influence organizational change.
The motivators can be of two types: Intrinsic and Extrinsic.
- Intrinsic Motivation: According to Jurgen this is defined as people’s innate desires to do well and to have an eagerness for self-control and self-direction in accomplishing objectives. Successful intrinsic motivation is the result of the fulfillment of basic desires
- Extrinsic motivation: These are external rewards such as payments, bonuses or promotions.
Each card represents one motivator: Curiosity, Honor, Acceptance, Mastery, Power, Freedom, Relatedness, Order, Goal, Status. CHAMPFROGS
It is a practice to motivate and engage people. You can do it individually or in groups, you can identify and reflect on what your main motivators are or what our motivators are as a team by asking powerful questions related to any personal or organizational decision, you can analyze the impact they have.
In this exercise, I would like to share with you my experience in applying this practice at an individual level. A few months ago I had the opportunity to change my team, and even though I thought about it, I did not conclude. So I decided to apply “Moving Motivators” and ask myself questions to visualize and reflect on the impact of the change on my motivators. Here is how I do it:
- I ranked my 10 motivators CHAMPFROGS in order of importance, from left (least important) to right (most important.)
- I started asking myself questions, analyzing which motivators are affected positively or negatively. When a motivator changes positively you move the card up and down when it is a negative change. I asked myself, At a professional level, what does that project mean to me? What does it mean to start in a new team? What does it mean to stay where I am?
- For each answer, I visualize the full picture of all my motivators, the number of cards up and down.
- Finally, visualizing all the cards, I noticed that in most cases, the change represents a positive increase in my motivators. So I decided to proceed and accept the change.
After doing this practice and reflecting on the results, I consider that “Moving motivators” allows you individually, in groups, or all the organization:
- Make decisions by observing the behavior of motivators.
- Increase productivity by making decisions that increase motivation.
- Know what conditions a change must meet before doing it.
- Improve engagement.
- Reflect on the decisions that have been made and understand their outcome.
With this practice, I learned on an individual level that it is an excellent practice to understand which motivators identify me, I learned that by asking powerful questions and responding with sincerity you can discover if a change is favorable or not.
At the team level, I have done the same dynamic, seeking to know the team’s motivators. Each person in the team determines his or her top 10 motivators, then assigns a value from 1 to 10 from lowest to highest and finally adds up all the point counts. In this way we can obtain a radar or a graph with the team’s motivators ordered from highest to lowest. You can also ask powerful questions and analyze the impact on all teams before making any changes.
In my experience, teams participate openly, it is a practice that activates people’s curiosity to get to know each other better and to meet their peers. One of the most important parts of this dynamic is to define actions that generate a context that favors the growth of these motivators.
In some experiments working with external teams I have applied this dynamic and few actions are established, since the company considers that it is not its responsibility. In these cases, I believe that it is necessary to work on changing mindsets to make people understand the benefits of having motivated teams.
Motivators can change over time, it is recommended to apply this practice with a high frequency and visualize the changes obtained.
You can use Moving Motivators for your remote team, you can download this .xlsx file and put it up as a shared Google Spreadsheet. Don’t forget to talk about the motivators as you would in an in-person session. The conversation about the cards is the most meaningful part of the exercise
I invite you to do this practice in your teams, it is an excellent dynamic to know what motivates them while allowing you to create solid relationships by increasing engagement, collaboration and self-knowledge.
Playing Moving Motivators 
Rosana De Faria 