Motivation is top of mind for many leaders looking to drive better performance from their team. But what is motivation, and do we understand how to use it wisely?
One way to think about motivation is extrinsic — motivation driven by rewards. You, the leader, motivate your team through rewarding high performance and, in some cases, punishing poor performance. There’s also intrinsic motivation, where you do something because it’s enjoyable or meaningful for you. But overlooked in this discussion, says think2perform consultant and Senior Vice President Ray Kelly, is a crucial question for leaders: “What motivates you?”
“The reason why you have to understand what motivates you is you are going to be demonstrating something for your people,” Ray says. “They’re going to be watching what you do.”Previously on Making the Ideal Real, Ryan Goulart and Ray talked about the five levels of leadership. In this episode, Ray returns to discuss how people think about motivation, why our traditional thinking about rewards is flawed and why everyone has a different set of motivations.
Moving Beyond Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
So many organizations think about motivation as intrinsic or extrinsic, with a heavy emphasis on rewards and other forms of extrinsic motivation. But Ray points out that research shows that extrinsic rewards can sometimes be harmful rather than helpful.
For example, incentives might motivate people toward goals but cause a negative impact as to how they accomplish those goals. “Maybe I’m thinking about the award, not what’s in the best interest for everyone — the short-term obvious versus the long-term not-so-obvious,” Ray says. That realization is important because leaders need to figure out what motivates them.
Another reason leaders need self-awareness about their motivation is because employees are paying attention and forming their own conclusions.
“We judge others based on their actions and behaviors. We judge ourselves based on our intentions. But you, for example, will judge me based on my actions and behaviors,” Ray says. “So if I’m the leader, people are watching me all of the time. I better be really aware of what truly inspires and motivates me, what gets me going.”
Understanding the 7 Motivations for Leaders
Ray recommends applying the seven motivations for leaders as defined by John C. Maxwell. These motivations are:
- Purpose
- Autonomy
- Relationships
- Progress
- Mastery
- Recognition
- Money
To figure out your motivations, Ray recommends writing down each of these motivations, why they matter to you (or not) and then scoring each motivation on a scale of one to five.
“I ask people, what are their top two? What are the two that they score the highest in? And you may have three or four there or more that are fives [on the scale]. But I’m going to try to get you to narrow it down and list, ‘What are my top two, and then what is my bottom one?’” Ray says.
Like the Values Card Exercise, listing and ranking your motivators helps you understand yourself. And both are important in tandem. “The values card really gets to the internal inspiration: What inspires us? What’s inside of us, our values that drive us? Who are we ideally? This is really … ‘Hey, if you pull this lever, this motivates people,’” Ray says.
Pulling the Right Levers for Purpose
Everyone has a different ranking of these seven motivators — and they can shift over time, as Ray has experienced.
“If you’d asked me when I was 24, money may have been in the top two slots. Mastery was always there,” Ray says, “And then on the bottom side, recognition used to be important to me, less so today. Money, less so today. If you tried to inspire me by pulling the lever around money and recognition, I’d go, ‘Not interested, dude, unless you’re connecting it back to a higher purpose.’”
The key for leaders is to understand that they might not share the same levers as their people, nor will all of their people be driven by the same things.
“DNA plus what I call your triple Es — education, experiences, environment you grow in — form how you think,” Ray says. “And I think this is one of the big epiphanies for me, for leaders, is to help them understand: Don’t assume that everyone’s going to be inspired or motivated by the same lever. It just doesn’t work.”
People in This Episode
Ray Kelly: LinkedIn
Ryan Goulart: LinkedIn
Transcript
Ray Kelly:
DNA plus what I call your triple Es—education, experiences, environment you grow in—form how you think. And I think this is one of the big epiphanies for me for leaders is to help them understand. Don’t assume that everyone’s going to be inspired or motivated by the same lever. It just doesn’t work. But if you can go ask people and, then again, collect data points, watch them behave, and their actions and behaviors will either reinforce that data point or go, “Maybe it’s not all about recognition. Maybe it’s about something else.”
Ryan Goulart:
That’s Ray Kelly, senior vice president of think2perform. We’re talking about internal and external motivation and how to lead people to their best. I’m Ryan Goulart and you are “Making the Ideal Real.”
I have with me today a featured guest of “Making the Ideal Real,” Ray Kelly, our senior vice president here at think2perform. Ray, welcome back to “Making the Ideal Real.”
Ray Kelly:
It’s great to be back, Ryan. I’m honored that you actually value the stuff I have to share and you keep on inviting me back. It’s always been one of my goals, is to be invited back to people’s homes, restaurants. Sometimes I’m not invited back, so this is quite an honor.
Ryan Goulart:
Well, I have a lot of questions about that, but we’re not talking about that today. We’re talking about motivation, and one of the things that you and I have discussed within the last week, even, is just the sense of people’s understanding about what motivation is and why it exists and, really at the foremost of our conversation today, what to do about it. So if you wouldn’t mind just giving us a little bit of an understanding from your point of view about “What does it take to motivate individuals to do their best?”
Ray Kelly:
Yeah, great question. Actually, one of the most frequently asked questions that I get as an executive coach is around how to motivate my people. How do I get the best out of them? And it comes in different directions and flavors in terms of how the question’s asked, like, “Hey, Ray, have you ever led someone who doesn’t have any motivation?” “Hey, Ray, I got a high-end achiever on my team, and I’m having a hard time keeping up with their expectations of keeping things in front. What would you recommend?” It just comes in a lot of different ways. And a number of years ago for a gift I was given a book. My children often don’t know what to get their old man, so they give him a book, and I get a lot of books from my kids, and one of them was a John Maxwell book, “The Leader’s Greatest Return.”
And it was weird. I’ve been asked this question on like a Tuesday coaching session, and I don’t think I answered as well as I could have. And I happened to get this book for the holidays, and I open up the book, and there the chapter was called “Motivating Leaders.” And the person I was specifically working with was a person that had a bunch of leaders directly reporting to them, how to motivate through people. I’m like, this is weird. And I know I may have shared this with you, Ryan, but maybe not the whole audience. I’m an oddity, and I miss my bookstore experience, the Barnes & Nobles of the world. I used to go in there for hours at a time just pulling books off the bookshelf and opening them up and start reading them or reading the back cover and seeing if I’m interested. And at the end of 45 minutes or an hour, I’d walk out with a load of books.
But it’s not unusual for me to just open a book like I did this one, and I opened it right to this chapter, “Motivating Leaders.” And the first question that says, “One of the questions leaders asked me the most is how can I motivate people?” I’m like, this is weird. Maybe why I opened it to that chapter was that question. And one of the things that Maxwell talked about was a study that Daniel Pink talks about in his book, “Drive.” In “Drive,” Harry Harlow and two of his colleagues, one including his wife and another gentleman named Donald Meyer, did a study in the late ’40s where they did an experiment with rhesus monkeys. And they gave them puzzles to see if they were able to learn something from this, and they learned something quite unexpected in terms of the motivation of the monkey. It wasn’t what they had thought it would be.
The monkeys actually just enjoyed the process of solving a puzzle. They didn’t need rewards. Kind of the extrinsic, you know, we’ll give you an award for doing this or also the biological need thing of food, water, sex, which were the two theories at the time. These were the two things that motivate people: the internal, and you had external. And they’re like, “Wow, there’s actually a third one. These monkeys just enjoyed accomplishing the puzzle.” And he publishes this, and one of the things he talked about was Harlow’s thought and Pink’s thought that this would change the world. There’s more motivations than these extrinsic and intrinsic things, and there’s a third motivation, but it didn’t change the world. And I think one of the reasons why it didn’t change the world, Ryan, is this was so contrary to hundreds of years of thinking.
I led a sales organization for a period of time. I can tell you how much time we spent on trying to align our incentives, our awards. What will motivate the people? And most of it was extrinsic type stuff, money, recognition, [inaudible 00:05:30], all these different things, all these different things we could do to get these people running faster, running harder, and it didn’t change the world. And then a guy named Edward Deci came out with an experiment about 20 years later that dove into this even deeper. And one of the things that Deci found out, which really should change the world but still hasn’t, is sometimes these extrinsic awards, money as an example, not only does it help you, it actually hurts you.
I remember the first time I heard this, and it was actually from Doug Lennick. Doug Lennick shared it with me, and I remember it stopped me in my tracks. You mean it doesn’t work? And Deci found out not only does it not work long-term, it actually hurts you long. That blew me away because we do—organizations, HR, leaders—spend tons and tons of time in terms of what motivates people. And it was Pink who talked about the seven deadly flaws. And I won’t go through the seven deadly flaws, but there are things [that] foster short-term thinking. You take shortcuts. And a lot of these things, when I looked at the seven deadly flaws, I was like, some of these have impacted me. Maybe I’m thinking about the award, not what’s the best interest for everyone. The short-term obvious versus the long-term not-so-obvious. And I’m like, “Huh.”
So back to the question of how do I motivate my people? And one of the things I start with, Ryan, is a leader is understanding what motivates you. You really have to understand that. And the reason why you have to understand what motivates you is you are going to be demonstrating something for your people. They’re going to be watching what you do. Back to self-awareness. We judge others based on their actions and behaviors. We judge ourselves based on our intentions. But you, for example, will judge me based on my actions and behaviors. So if I’m the leader, people are watching me all of the time. I better be really aware of what truly inspires and motivates me, what gets me going. And if you become aware of that, you’ll actually see certain things get you going that are different, and I watch you do your stuff, different things will get you going. It’s crazy to think as a leader that all of us are going to be motivated by the same stuff. We’re not, not at all.
So one of the things that I picked up from reading this chapter was Maxwell’s been in this leadership business for 50-plus years. And one of the things he concluded was there’s not just three motivations, there’s seven of them. So I’m going to go through these seven with the audience. I encourage you all to write them down. Then I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I’m going to ask the questions to you, Ryan, as you just love when I do sessions with you.
Ryan Goulart:
Oh man, I was waiting for it. I knew he was going to do this.
Ray Kelly:
So all of a sudden he gets his pen and paper ready?
Ryan Goulart:
Yep, I’m ready.
Ray Kelly:
I’m going to go through these seven motivations, and if I were doing this in front of a group of people, often I try to get the group to guess these seven. Since it’s just the two of us, I won’t force you to guess because you actually know them because we covered these last week. But I’m going to encourage the audience to write these down, and the reason why you’re going to write them down, I’m also going to ask you to give yourself a score of one to five, one being low, “Hey, this really doesn’t motivate me at all, or this definitely is one of my key motivators.” You can be five in all seven of these, or you can be a one in all seven. Typically we’re all over the range, but I’m going to ask you to just self-assess what are the things that motivate you the most.
So these are the seven motivations for leaders. The first motivation is purpose. Leaders want to do what they’re created to do. Purpose. This happens to be one of my highest, purpose. Second, autonomy. Leaders want to control their lives. Leaders want to have the freedom to control what they want to do. Autonomy is the second motivation. A third motivation, Ryan, is relationships. Leaders want to do things with and for other people. So it’s about relationships. That’s what motivates with or for other people. Number four, progress. Leaders want to experience personal and professional growth. Progress. I know this is an important one to me as well. Number five, which is real close to four, but it’s called mastery. Leaders want to excel at what they do. They want to be the best. They want to excel. This has always been one of my big drivers since I was a young man. Wanted to excel. I wanted to be the best. So mastery is number five.
Number six is recognition. Leaders want others to appreciate their accomplishments and what they do. Recognition. And the final, number seven, is money. Leaders want to be financially secure. Leaders want to be paid for what they do. So again, Ryan, I’m going to ask you to look at these seven; give yourself a minute, people out there. One being low, “Hey, that’s not one of those things that motivates me.” So for example, autonomy is not a big one for me. I’ve always been part of a team. Having complete control is not my big thing. I’m used to being part of a bigger group. It’s one of my low ones. But on the high end, purpose is very high. I give myself a five there. Autonomy, I probably give myself a two or three. And again, if I’m a leader, first I want to find out what mine are. Then I go ask my people.
And the way I’ve done it historically is I ask people what are their top two. What are the two that they score the highest in? And you may have three or four there or more that are fives. But I’m going to try to get you to narrow it down and kind of list what are my top two, and then what is my bottom one? So what is my bottom one? So, Ryan, if you would play along with the audience.
Ryan Goulart:
Yes, I’m ready.
Ray Kelly:
Get undressed in front of a thousand-plus people. What are your top motivators?
Ryan Goulart:
Hey, I’m an open book over here. So, top motivators are progress and mastery.
Ray Kelly:
OK, progress and mastery. So tell me about progress. Why is that so important?
Ryan Goulart:
So one of my values is achievement, and I kind of quantify it in a little different way in terms of the traditional sense of climbing a corporate ladder, but it relates to mastery as well. So this is where I’m going with this. I really like learning, but not just for the sake of learning. I like learning to have an impact. And so I constantly am looking for ways in which I can, I don’t know, disrupt the status quo, but I don’t like to feel content. And so that is one way to keep me motivated is to provide me challenges and opportunities to further my skill set with the things that I’m focusing on.
Ray Kelly:
Connect that to mastery because they’re close, but they’re not exactly.
Ryan Goulart:
Right. And so mastery then is as I continue to refine these skills, it makes me feel confident when I’m able to perform in a way that signals to myself that was a great job. And I think for me that looks like mastery, knowing that it’s a constant improvement over time and not a point in time, but it does provide me motivation to continue down that path.
Ray Kelly:
I have a lot of the same stuff for some of the same reasons. Maybe that’s why we get along so much better.
Ryan Goulart:
Yeah. Hey, listeners, Ryan here. Recently we’ve learned through J.D. Power that advisers in the financial services industry are craving information on how to be better business people. Luckily for you, our Evolve Conference is October 3rd and October 4th for you to learn about new information on how to grow your business and grow your relationships. Visit think2perform.com to learn more.
Ray Kelly:
Let’s talk about your bottom one. Which one really doesn’t motivate you?
Ryan Goulart:
And this is just probably like most people, comes from their own upbringing, I would imagine. But recognition isn’t something that I pursue. It’s more of an ancillary benefit through the things that I do on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment task. I always know there’s more that I can do. And so sometimes it’s hard to accept that.
Ray Kelly:
So recognition is on the low end.
Ryan Goulart:
Um-hum.
Ray Kelly:
Think about providing leadership to yourself if you’re another human being. I’ll share with you. Mine were mastery and purpose. I’m at a point in my life—if you’d asked me when I was 24, money may have been in the top two slots. Mastery was always there. And then on the bottom side, recognition used to be important to me, less so today. Money, less so today. If you tried to inspire me by pulling the lever around money and recognition, I’d go, “Not interested, dude, unless you’re connecting it back to a higher purpose and it came with it, I’d be OK, whatever. But at the same time, I’m not going to say, “Don’t pay me,” but don’t use that as the lead lever going, “Hey, there’s an opportunity to make six figures this week, but go do this XYZ thing.” I’m like, “What is it for? What’s the purpose, and can I excel and be the best at it long-term?”
So when you think about the two of us and you’re the leader, number one is we’re different. I’m not going to be motivated by the same stuff. And one of the things that Maxwell talks about in his book is he scores high in almost all of them. And he says, “You can pull almost any lever. I’m a leader’s dream. All of them work for me.” And this is… one of the clients that got me thinking about this whole thing was one where he had a person on his team that didn’t have any of them. He said, “I’ve tried every lever, and nothing seems to work.” He goes, “You ever had anyone like that, Ray?” And I said, “I have. Toughest people in the world to lead.” I don’t know what to do. Well, the funny thing about that person… This is a couple years ago. Well, that person no longer works for them. He’s just like, “I’ve tried everything. I don’t know what inspires this, gets them out of their thing.”
This a little bit different from the values card exercise. We’ve talked about the values card exercise from prior podcasts here on think2perform. The values card really gets to the internal inspiration. What inspires us? What’s inside of us, our values that drive us? Who are we ideally? This is really, this is, hey, if you pull this lever, this motivates people. And that’s why I like having both of these. I want to know what’s inside of them, ideally, but at the same time, people say stuff that, “Hey, ideally, the most important thing to me is health,” but I can’t get them off the couch. And it’s just like, what gets them off the couch? Because one way is to ask people. I just asked you these things. Think about some other ways that I would figure out are these really things that motivate Ryan?
I used to use the term called “collecting data points.” I observe things. I have one of my clients, and I hope she’s not listening. She says to me recognition, she’s like, “Recognition is not that important to me.” But she talks about it all the time. “I’m not getting recognized, and I can’t believe so-and-so’s being recognized.” All you do is write, my little pencil writes, “Recognition’s very important to this client who doesn’t think so.” OK, that’s the real self. It’s like, recognition is important. But my thing is this is so valuable as a leader because often I hear people talking about money and how do I motivate people with money. And I’m just like, “Have you ever asked your people if it’s that important to them?” “Well, of course it is. It’s important to me. Oh, it’s always about money.” Bull. I can’t tell you how many times people have said that to me. It’s always about money, comes down to money. Follow the dollar. You won’t get it with me. I don’t mind getting paid, but I’m in my point in life I got money.
Ryan Goulart:
Do you think that people gravitate towards the money solution because it seems like the most obvious or it doesn’t require the most time, even though sometimes it does. Where do you find that they identified as part of a solution but might be falling down on what?
Ray Kelly:
Yeah, this is … the thing about money that I personally have gone through. Growing up without money, the need to want to have money, but once you start getting money, you realize it actually gives you the ability to live, the freedom, the type of life you want. Autonomy for example. Often, a lot of autonomy comes from the fact, that I don’t have to worry about money. I don’t have to have a boss. I don’t have to do all of these things. It gives me freedom and flexibility. So underneath money leads to other choices. And sometimes that comes through life that you start to connect what that leads to. Because in the end game, you don’t get to take any money with you. That’s one of the things I’ve thought about is legacy is more important to money than me.
Ryan Goulart:
Um-hum.
Ray Kelly:
Leaving something behind. And it’s not about leaving money behind for my family and friends. Can I actually give them something they could go make a difference with other people’s lives? OK, back to that relationship and purpose. That was much more important to me than financial, but I had to live through those things in my life, Ryan. It’s different for everyone.
Ryan Goulart:
Right.
Ray Kelly:
Morgan Hostel’s going to be one of our speakers, was last year at the Evolve Conference for think2perform, and will be again this year. Fantastic speaker, and he’s got a book called “The Psychology of Money,” and one of his chapters is “People Aren’t Crazy.” Again, when I first got that book, it was referred by one of my clients. She says, “He’s wonderful. It’s one of my favorite books.” So I got the book and again, I open it, and I open it right to that chapter, “People Aren’t Crazy,” because I always thought people were. OK. So, country-western song that God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy, kind of like that theme. So, I read that chapter, and one of the things he describes in the chapter is what is crazy is to think that a person who grew up in Warren Buffett’s house thinks about money the same way a person who grew up in poverty in Argentina thinks about money. That would be crazy. Huh.
That really helped me resonate with how we think comes from our DNA plus what I call your triple Es—education, experiences, environment that you grow in—form how you think. Ryan, you and I are very different ages, different upbringing, all these different things. We have some similarities, but at the same time, it would be crazy that the same lever works for both of us. It just doesn’t. And I think this is one of the big epiphanies for me for leaders is to help them understand is, don’t assume that everyone’s going to be inspired or motivated by the same lever. It just doesn’t work. But if you can go ask people and then again, collect data points, watch them behave, and their actions and behaviors will either reinforce that data point or go, “Maybe it’s not all about recognition. I think it’s about something else.”
Ryan Goulart:
Love that. And a great way to frame how, again, money is just a component of the puzzle. And as people are listening to this, one of the things that they might be thinking about are the obstacles that are ahead of them when trying to implement something like this. And I would imagine, Ray, that in a presentation that you might give on this with a large audience or your clients, that oftentimes an objection might look like, “Ray, I don’t have enough time,” or “I don’t have enough systems to do this.” How do you start to connect action to something like this where people might, even listening to this podcast, feel motivated to want to do what you just did in walking through those seven motivations and asking their team about this, and they’re gathering those data points and they find out that Ryan has this and this. Then what? Where do you go with it?
Ray Kelly:
Since I’ve been teaching this, I often get the opposite, which is, “Huh, I’ve been pumping resources and energy trying to push a rope. I’ve been working on the wrong thing.” And you’re like, “Possibly.” So often I talked about… I was just talking to a client earlier today, and he’s the CFO for an organization. We were talking about the seven motivations. And again, I was reinforcing it’s not all about money. It can be other things. And there’s an episode, I don’t know, have you ever seen the FX show “The Bear?”
Ryan Goulart:
No. Everyone keeps recommending this show to me.
Ray Kelly:
Yeah, me too. Then all of a sudden, one of them sent me a clip, and then I watched. It’s Season 2, Episode 7. The episode’s called “Forks.” And for the people listening, “Bear’s” all about a restaurant in Chicago. And the guy basically takes over his brother’s restaurant who’s died, who used to run a sandwich shop that was legendary in Chicago. But he’s a Michelin-level chef, very skilled, worked at some of the best restaurants in the world before he came back to Chicago to take over the family business. But they’d made the decision to reopen the restaurant. They’re going to make a Michelin-level restaurant. And one of his cousins, it’s not really his cousin, his name’s Richie, in Season 2, Episode 1, is having a challenge with purpose. He’s literally standing there going, “I don’t have a purpose. I’ve been reading about the value of having a purpose, and I don’t have a purpose.”
And he’s talking to Carmen, the lead chef and star of the show, and Carmen’s just shaking his head, “I don’t have time for this. We’re trying to get this restaurant open. We’re on timelines. I don’t have time for this.” And then he realizes, “I got to spend time on this. This is real important.” OK, fast-forward to Episode 7. And this is where he gets him, basically, an internship. I know Jack’s watching this thing, internship. They call them stooges in the restaurant business. I’ve never been in the… I worked at Burger King as a 16-, 17-year-old. Besides that, I’ve never worked in the restaurant business. But it was really fascinating. He gets a job as this intern stooge at the top restaurant in Chicago. Carmen calls one of his friends and asks if he’d take Richie, work for you for a week, and he works there.
And his first job, Ryan, is shining forks. He basically gets to do that almost all day long, shining forks, make sure there’s no streaks in the fork. And this is below him. He is pissed. “Carmen got me this job shining forks. He’s just trying to stick it to me” and all these different things. And he’s negative, negative, negative. Make a long story short, he works at this restaurant, and he finds out the purpose, why these people are so good at what they do. Waiting lists that are years long trying to get into this thing is because they’re trying to make someone’s day. Every single day they get to make someone’s day. And they go above and beyond to create a meal, an experience, that would blow your mind. And Richie sees this over the course of a week. Let me tie this back to my CFO friend who’s thinking it’s about money. It’s about money. And I just said, “Sometimes you’re pulling the wrong lever.”
When you see the power of purpose, what Richie experienced, all of a sudden this dude in the next few episodes, he saves the restaurant. And he has an inspiration. He’s jumping out of bed earlier. His attention to detail’s through the roof. And this is what I tell leaders all the time. If you can find that lever for people, tremendous difference in terms of the output. The results that you’re going to get from that person or those people, not necessarily a big difference in terms of the leader’s effort, just different stuff. This is one of those examples where, if you as a leader can figure this out … Another one of my clients, one of the first groups I went through with it, he had 16 people worked for him. Twelve or 13 of them, maybe 14 of them, their bottom one was money.
Guess what he used to talk to me about all the time? “Yeah, I’m working on the incentive grid, and I’ve got this going. I’m thinking this. I can’t see why they’re not running for… So I’m going to change it this year, and can we change this, and stuff like that.” And I was like, “Make up a name, Rich. Rich, did you learn anything about your group?” And he was like, “Oh my goodness.” I said, “I’m sure they’re saying they’re all right if they get paid more, but stop using that as the lever. They told you a whole bunch of other levers.” “Hey, I want personal growth. I want an opportunity to try new things. Relationships are real important. Recognition.” Next thing you know, you’re like, you’ve been pushing up a rope, pushing a rope off the hill. So back to the pushbacks I usually get, Ryan, is I’d never thought of that.
It’s not about more resources. It’s about “How do I apply it differently?” This is why I call this the values card on steroids for leaders because all of a sudden they’re like, this isn’t the ideal self, this is what’s impacting them right now. So we did this with a group last week, and one of the feedbacks from the person in the group said, “Ray, have you ever done this where you force the people to rank them one through seven?” I said, “I haven’t.” And she started doing it, rank and forcing people to rank it. So for all of you, it’s usually the first time people have ever thought about these seven truly in this context.
I made Ryan do this in two minutes or less, one to five, one to five, one to five, and then we could have a dialogue. If I was giving Ryan homework, I’d say, “Hey, go back. Re-look at these. And what I’d like you to do is one to five, one to five, but I want to force you to rank them one to seven. One being the thing that motivates you the most, inspires you the most, seven the least. And then let’s talk in our next one-to-one.”
Ryan Goulart:
Very good. We’ll leave it there so that people can start to think about how they would talk to you, Ray, in the future.
Ray Kelly:
Yeah, I just tell the audience, I have found it to be a wonderful tool. So in my one-on-ones now, if I have a one-on-one with Ryan, this would be written on the bottom or inside cover. Top two, progress, mastery. Bottom one, recognition. So that when I’m trying to get the best out of them, I’m going to be talking about those top two. And I’m definitely not going to be going, “Hey, Ryan, we’ve got an opportunity to get the XYZ award for being the most important person in the office.” “Like, oh, that’s nice. Do I get to work on something where I can grow and develop and get to make an impact on people?” “No, but you may get some recognition.” It won’t work.
So I always have that in the back or front of my mind as I talk to Ryan, just like I have his top five values and his witty wiffy in front of me as I try to bring the best out of him. Not necessarily a big difference in terms of the amount of work I have to do, just different work should lead to completely different actions and behaviors from your followers. So good luck. Again, if you need help, that’s what we do at Think2Perform is help in these areas.
Ryan Goulart:
As we wrap this episode, we’re committed to helping you make the ideal real. If you found this program helpful, share it and help someone else make their ideal real too. Until next time for think2perform, I’m Ryan Goulart. Take care.
