The 3 Levels of Motivation
The Three Levels of Motivation
Have you ever struggled to motivate people? Have you ever struggled to motivate yourself? Motivation is a challenge that leaders, managers and salespeople face everyday. So here’s my take on motivation and what you can do to boost motivation for yourself and others.
Motivation expert Dr Jason Fox suggests that a useful - yet not entirely accurate - view of motivation is that everyone has a massive amount of motivation already... we just need to learn to tap into it. I love this idea. I think that there are three levels of motivation that we need to tap into, for ourselves and our people.
The primary level of motivation is the motivation people have around their life. This level of motivation is about a person's life ambitions and the life that they want to create for themselves. In order to tap into a person’s primary level of motivation, they need perspective. Perspective of where they are going, what is important to them and what they want their life to be about.
The secondary level of motivation is the motivation that people have around their careers. This is the motivation that people have around being the best in what they do and attaining a level of mastery in their profession. In order to tap into this second level of motivation, you need to give people opportunity. The opportunity to progress their careers and to learn, develop and grow.
Finally, tertiary level motivation is the motivation that people have around their role. This is the motivation that people have around the activities in their day to day job. Tertiary level motivation is often based on a feeling. In order to tap into tertiary level motivation, you need to create the right environment. A positive and productive environment where people feel good about coming to work.
When people appear to lack motivation, often they have lost perspective around their life (primary), or they have limited opportunity in their career (secondary). These people rely on how they feel around their day-to-day role for their motivation (tertiary). Feelings are fickle. If they're not feeling positive, or if they're tired, or maybe their coffee hasn't kicked in - they will appear unmotivated.
When managers and leaders try to motivate people, they are often working on the wrong level - the tertiary level. In order to tap into massive motivation, you need to work on the primary level first, secondary next and then tertiary. When all of these three levels are aligned, motivation takes care of itself. You don’t have to try to motivate people anymore, it just happens naturally.
Mark Windust is an influential Thought Leader in the areas of Sales Strategy, Sales Leadership and Sales Performance. Since launching his consulting practice in 2007, Mark has worked with 1000's of business leaders, salespeople and entrepreneurs’ to help them transform their sales results.