What's Your Motivational Focus?

Everyone has motivators and understands, in a leadership context, that motivating others is critical to individual and team success. According to Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson and Dr. E. Tory Higgins, there are two primary ways in which we work to fulfill personal and professional goals:  (1) through a focus on promotion, or the opportunity to advance, grow, and avoid missing opportunities; or (2) through a focus on prevention, or a concentration on staying safe, not losing anything or incurring detrimental effects.  Promotion- and prevention-focused people can be recognized this way:

“Promotion-focused people:

• Work quickly
• Consider lots of alternatives and are great brainstormers
• Are open to new opportunities
• Are optimists
• Plan only for best-case scenarios
• Seek positive feedback and lose steam without it
• Feel dejected or depressed when things go wrong

Prevention-focused people

• Work slowly and deliberately
• Tend to be accurate
• Are prepared for the worst
• Are stressed by short deadlines
• Stick to tried-and-true ways of doing things
• Are uncomfortable with praise or optimism
• Feel worried or anxious when things go wrong”

Each type has its own strengths and weaknesses and most teams, regardless of industry, thrive when both types are involved.  Knowing your focus can help you choose a field in which your motivational focus strengths are utilized and understanding the focus of your supervisor and your team is critical to effectively persuading and motivating them.  For example, promotion-focused people can be best motivated through praise, inspirational stories, and understanding what they gain when they achieve something.  Prevention-focused individuals are motivated by understanding what they did wrong (criticism), cautionary tales, and understanding what they will lose if they don’t achieve something. 

I’d also like to point you to an hour-long webinar presented by Dr. Halvorson in which she delves deeper into this interesting topic, including describing how your focus can be changed by circumstances and by different domains, such as work and parenthood.  She also gives specific advice about working with people of both types of motivational focus.  I highly recommend it.

Dr. Halvorsen says you can figure out your motivational focus by reading the descriptions.  I’m pretty sure I’m a promotion-focused person.  What’s your focus?  Does reading the description immediately make you think of people you know who fit into them?