How Much Does Mismatched Motivation Matter?

Here are two stories revealing the costly problems that unmeasured motivation can create among colleagues—and how mapping those motivations can transform collaboration.

The first story involves two people who had worked together before and liked each other. One moved to a new company as a senior leader and invited the other to join them, assuming there would be no friction.

After a while, however, their superior sensed tension. It turned out that both had been coming to work with stomach cramps for weeks—an inexplicable situation from the outside. Fearing one of them would soon quit, the leader sought an external coach, who quickly discovered a motivational clash between the two.

This clash hadn't been a problem until one became responsible for motivating the other.

The manager was motivated by security, stability, and predictability (The Defender motivator). His subordinate, however, was energized by free decision-making (The Spirit) and innovation (The Creator), which naturally involved unpredictability.

Until they understood this, the manager managed his subordinate based on his own motivational needs, which had a negative effect. Both felt like failures.

By understanding the situation with their superior and the coach, they restructured the roles and the relationship so that both could work in a way that suited their motivational profiles. The result? A fruitful, long-term working relationship that has now lasted for a decade.

A similar situation developed between a department head and a team leader who had also worked peacefully together for years. Suddenly, their relationship devolved into arguments and, for the team leader, stomach cramps.

Here, unlike in the first case, their superior did not help investigate why the team leader had become demotivated. The department head wrote off the previously high-performing team leader as "unmanageable," and the team leader soon resigned. Shortly after, several other team members also quit—a chain reaction that should have been a red flag.

Beyond the direct HR replacement costs, which can reach tens of millions of Forints (tens of thousands of Euros), this doesn't even account for the indirect costs (like lost clients).

If they had mapped their motivations, the clash would have been instantly visible. The department head was driven by money (The Builder) and power/control (The Director), and he made the team leader's role increasingly administrative and restrictive. The team leader, however, was motivated by meaningful work (The Searcher) and autonomy (The Spirit). A breaking point was reached where they were fed up with the heavy administrative reporting and the restriction of their autonomy. This dissatisfaction generated immense internal stress and led to their resignation.

Most people aren't even aware of their own motivators, so how can we expect their boss to figure it out?

Motivational Maps® makes an individual's motivational needs visible, clarifies the root cause of conflicts with colleagues, and promotes frictionless collaboration.