Hi, I'm Melinda Hoffman here at Ideal HR and I'm continuing our conversations with Liz Parker. Welcome Liz!
Thank you very much, Melinda. I am happy to be here and continue our TTI discussion.
That's right. And there is an awful lot to discuss. So today we decided we're going to talk about motivators.
Yes.
And you're going to kind of lead us through what we need to know.
Exactly! Let me give you a little bit of a framework for how motivators fit in within the TTI assessment family. TTI has several different types of assessments, and they all fall under what we call a science. So, in an earlier podcast we talked about DISC. DISC is the science of behaviors. Motivators is the science of looking at why we do what we do. That's why we call them motivating driving forces. Why do we get out of bed in the morning? Why do we want to do things in our life? That's what motivators are.
And motivators are in our life, not just our workplace.
Yes.
So they really are who we are.
Who you are, yes. So, what happens is we have 6 categories of motivators and within each category, you are either motivated towards something and you are activated by it, or we have found that through some of our own studies, you can be motivated by avoiding. So, you can be motivated towards something, or you can be motivated by avoiding something. And so when we have gone through our research we have found hey, you're motivated by information under our knowledge, attitude and so you're motivated by all the information you can gather and you can gain. I am instinctive. I come in with the knowledge I have, and I don't want to go and research everything. I use what I know and if I don't know it, I'm a Googler. I'll get on and I'll look it up. I'll look up the information I need for that moment. And that is the difference between going towards a motivator. And I go against it by being instinctive.
The interesting thing about this Liz is that there's nothing to be fearful of. When you take this 10 minute assessment test and now you have this data about me or whoever. It's very it's fascinating and interesting and not scary.
It's what I like to say is it's validating. It is validating to allow you to be the person you are. There is no right or wrong in this. It says, this is how I think and that's okay if it's different than how you think and why you're motivated. And I think when we look at motivators, you find that it's what really creates conflict in people. Because if I'm really resourceful, which I am, we actually looked at that one right. So, I'm extremely resourceful where I am not wasting any my time, my talent, my resources, my money. I am like I knew the quickest way to get here today. I am not wasting my time. Right. You on the other hand are very selfless. That's the opposite of this motivator. And by being selfless, you're like, take your time. Don't worry. We have all the time in the world and I'm on the other side going ohh no, I promised I'd be there by then. You're like, it's okay. Just it's alright. It's okay. We'll get all this done together. And so, you're very selfless and not worried about the fact that we did that.
So as a company, when you have three people, eight people, fifty people. You've got all this going on?
Yes.
And so why do I need this?
So, what happens with this is when you think about how companies operate, they usually have values. And they make their decisions in the company by values. When you want or to hire somebody who's going to stay with your company, you want to make sure there's at least one of your values in that person. That's what's going to keep the retention. That's why this person will stay with your company because you're operating under that same reason why they want to do things. And so, when you're looking at a team of people, you have lots of variety, but you want to have at least one or two common denominators among the whole team. So, you have that commonality and that stickiness to keep people there. And you'll find that if they're not all in agreement, you will have conflict. And that's where drama comes from. But we make a wheel where we can put everybody on that wheel, and you can see where people have differences. So once people understand that, and they have an awareness about it. They see that people are not purposely trying to make them angry. It is just how they tick.
Okay, so let's run through these basic motivators.
Sure. So, there are six as I mentioned and what we're talking about is the first one is called theoretical or knowledge. So if you are driven towards this motivator, we call you intellectual, you're the one that's researching and wanting to know all the information there is to know about everything. If you are avoiding the motivator, you're more instinctive where you want to just use the information you know yourself. The second one is utility or utilitarian. If you go towards it, you're more resourceful, which I talked about using all the time, talent and resources. If you go against it and you avoid it, you're more selfless. It's not about you. You don't need to have all the wins in this. You don't care if it's a good ROI on something and are sourceful person will only talk ROI. The third one is aesthetic or your surroundings. If you are driven towards this one, you are you are looking for that harmonious. Everything is Zen. You want your family, your work, everything in your life to be in balance. If you are not motivated by it and you avoid it, you're objective, you're the kind of person that could be in a construction zone and you can think you can just isolate all the chaos and just think clearly and know exactly what you need to get done. And you're not bothered by the noise. In a harmonious environment, you'll find people have soft lighting, which, by the way, today we have no lights on.
By choice!
By choice. And so that's the harmony and the surroundings you're creating for us, right? So that we're at peace. The next one is called social or others. Now this is different than our DISC because we talk about people. This one talks about how you look at society. An aesthetic person who is going towards social is all out there trying to save everybody in the world. They want to be there to help homeless people. They want to be in food shelters, they want to be anywhere, they can be to help their fellow man. On the opposite, if you're not driven by it, you're intentional. And so what that means is, you pick and choose where you donate your time. You pick and choose the groups you want to help. You are not all about every Tom, Dick and Harry. You are about Harry. And the last one is what we call individualistic or I'm sorry the 2nd to the last one is individualistic or power. These are the people who are driven to be in charge. They're the commanding or the people who are not, they're the collaborators. They're the ones that are going to support the team. Then the last one is what we call traditional. This used to be what we called our religious one. We have since changed the name to be methodologies, because if people are driven towards a certain belief structure then they are what we call structure. There's our right way a wrong way. A black and white way. There could be people that are very militaristic and they follow that way of thinking. There could be big people, very religious and they follow the system of their church. There could be people that are atheists and they follow that belief system, so that is the person that's more structured. If you don't have that, you go against that. You avoid that, you're more receptive. You're nonjudgmental, you're open minded and you believe in helping your fellow man, which kind of balances with that social side.
So, this is like looking into yourself and just seeing how you tick.
Yes, it is and it's why you want to go to work for somebody. So, you'll look at this environment, right. Ideal HR is very much about harmony. So, you'll see the president is all about making sure that everybody has the right office space, they have the right lighting, they have the right support, tools, everything works.
And of course. We're working with clients to have healthy workplaces and all this plays in, doesn't it?
Yes it does. It does. And so, what happens especially as Ideal HR, you're out there trying to identify what are the values of this company, what are the motivators, who do they need to hire to bring in so that they stay in the company. And that is the gift of Ideal HR is to help you find those people that fit.
Very interesting. And you're the gal that helps us find those people that fit.
And I am one of them. But yes, I like to be the one that could get called a lot.
You train us on how to help clients have healthy workplaces. All right, well, this has been an interesting conversation again with Liz Parker. And I'm Melinda Hoffman. And we’re at Ideal HR!
Thank you!
Thank you!