Management Block you might be experiencing: not knowing what drives your team members - and how to find out!
When you go to work, you realize that you spend a lot of your time there. You spend so much energy and mental exertion on just figuring out things like, how am I going to be able to sustain this, because it's not always fun to go to work. I had a friend once say, “you know, they call it work for a reason. It's not supposed to be fun.” I beg to differ with that, because I think that work does not have to be miserable!
So remember… if you're thinking, I do not feel hopeful today; it's Monday, I'm a manager, and this is terrible. You know what? It can get so much better! And I'm going to help you.
It’s so important to be able to realize what the blocks are that are keeping you from your goals.
Let's talk about a management block you might be experiencing.
Not knowing what drives your team members to do great work. The problems that are associated with this block that you might be experiencing are:
you don't know how to get people motivated to actually do their work
they aren’t able to get things done on time
it’s not done the way you need it done
their negative attitude is affecting others on the team (they’re gossiping, complaining, or ambivalent about the work they need to do)
You as a manager and you as a leader in your company need to be able to have an eyes wide open leadership. Find what motivates, what inspires, what jazzes, what gets the vibes going with your team members.
What are the things that are going to drive your team members? You have to know what drives the people who are responsible for executing on the tasks that are needed and necessary for team success.
As a leader and as I manage my team, I like to know what drives each person. I have them take different personality assessments. They take the Predictive Index, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, and sometimes StrengthsFinder, too.
Let’s chat about them a little bit:
Myers-Briggs. It's good to get a full picture and understand truly what is going on inside their brains, their hearts, in their spirit. I always call Myers Briggs “my first love” when it comes to personality testing. If you haven't taken that before, you can find a really good assessment at 16personalities.com for free. This one is all about how you get energy, take in information, and make decisions about the world around you. Knowing this insight can help you understand people around you so much better!
When you know that about people on your team and when you know what their personality type is, you're able to connect better and see better outcomes from them.
Predictive Index. This behavioral report is great because it’s psychologically validated AND shows each drive on a scale from low to high. It measures the drives that all of us have (dominance, extroversion, patience, formality) that determine our workplace performance. For example, I’m called a Maverick - I have high dominance, higher extroversion, low patience, and super low formality.
You can take a free assessment for it here. It takes less than 10 minutes to complete - just be sure to read the directions carefully!
Enneagram. What I’ve found is that I continuously hire Enneagram Ones without even thinking about it! I just connect really well with them. I like people who are more structured, so they can help me get more structured and organized in my business, which I think is really cool to have diversity of like your cognition on your team. So if I know that my team members are a little bit more structured, process oriented, they don't need as much flexibility, they like systems and things like that, I know that they're motivated and inspired to create organization and order out of the chaos, which is great. I need that balance on my team.
That's going to help me not have the block of being able to not manage them very well. I can see that, hey, they like to reform things, perfect things, make it better, get things organized, create a sense of systems and familiarity with things that's good, that's really good stuff. If I know that, I'm able to help find out what drives them, and then support them and give them those things. But - you have to know what those are! You have to have people on your team take those assessments and then have conversations about their personality drives.
Encourage the people on your team to articulate to you what they need. For example, “I need a lot of familiarity, systems, and processes when I'm working on a project. I need a lot of clarity. I need to know what you expect and to know the ‘why’ behind something.” That's a gift for you to know that as the manager.
Values. If you're a business leader, you're building up a company, or maybe you got promoted and you're now a manager in your organization - that's amazing! You should be celebrating that. Now you should be looking outward from yourself and into your team and figuring out what you can do to understand what drives them more and better? Another way to do that is to ask them to analyze what their values are. Their values are a great place to start.
Figure out what your values are as a person and leader, so you as the manager can lead in a way that aligns to your values. Then, make sure your team members know what their values are. So, if they say, “Achievement is one of my values,” you can say, “Okay, great, I need to help you feel a sense of achievement. What does that look like for you? What kinds of things do you like to achieve?” They might say, “It is important for me to get opportunities to lead different projects, it's important to me to get appropriately timed promotions.”
If you know what drives your team, you can (and should!) provide it for them. Helping them feel a sense of connectedness will build trust on your team. Then, they’ll want to stay on your team and do the best work of their lives.
Always connecting the work they need to get done to their values and to what drives them is going to help you find so much more success.
Reach out if you have any questions and make sure that you're getting the support you need so that you become a truly revolutionary leader, a great manager in your workplace and just a better citizen of the world.