Outstanding in the middle by Birgitta sjöstrand

Author:Birgitta sjöstrand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Panoma Press

The direction of motivation: ‘towards’ or ‘away from’

Goal-oriented people are motivated to have, get, achieve, attain, win etc. Their focus is on the outcome and they get excited when they think about their goals. They are great at prioritising but no good seeing what can go wrong, because they don’t see obstacles. They go towards the goal. People with the ‘away from’ pattern are excellent at noticing things that one could get rid of, could go wrong, or should be avoided. They love to solve problems, see obstacles and are energised by treats. They need deadlines to get the work done. You need them when you plan because they quickly work out what could go wrong. For them, it’s harder to keep the eyes on the goal and prioritise because there are things to be fixed and sorted out along the way.

Depending on the context, we can change. Also, it’s a sliding scale, which means a person can be in the middle. A friend of mine, Anders, likes cross-country skiing and has his eyes on Vasaloppet, a 90km race held in March every year. He trains hard, running and cycling in the summer and autumn, with lots of intervals. Anders also goes to the gym and eats healthily. He sets time targets for his race. The goal is not to win but to be in the top 50% of the 15,800 people taking part in the race.

He has a strong ‘towards’ pattern when it comes to skiing. He is continually thinking about his goal. Anders works as an auditor, and his job involves checking accounts. He is excellent at finding errors in the books. At work, Anders has an ‘away from’ pattern. He has both patterns, but in different contexts.

Rodger Bailey did a massive informal survey in North America and Europe in the context of work, which showed ‘towards’ pattern distribution of 40%, ‘away from’ of 40% and in the middle 20%.

If you wanted to motivate your team and talked about the organisation’s goals and the benefits and advantages of achieving the goal, you would probably take away half of your staff members’ motivation. If you don’t know who has the ‘towards’ or ‘away from’ pattern, you had better spice up your motivational speech with some sentences about what you together solve, prevent, fix or avoid.

People tend to hear what comes through their filter and discard the rest. It’s a little like tuning into a radio station. When someone talks in your pattern, you listen to them loud and clear. If not, there is mainly just noise. Let’s go back to Alex and check for ‘towards’ or ‘away from’ patterns.

You:

• At work, you said you liked a challenge, a good career, learning new things and working with people – why is that important to you? (As always when asking why questions, use amiable eyes, a warm heart and an animated voice.)

Alex:

• I don’t like doing the same thing over and over.

You:

• So why is that important for you, not to

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