As anyone who knows me well is painfully aware, I revere Goldman Sachs and look back on my time working there with fondness. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about Goldman is the quality of their training. It was the kind of place where their diversity training wouldn’t just leverage materials from Harvard Business School, but would also feature the professor who authored the leading research to lead the lecture. One particular managerial training I received that has really stuck with me and significantly changed how I manage people focused on intrinsic motivation, and more importantly, understanding the intrinsic motivations of people on your team so that you can become a better leader.

In the training we learned about 4 intrinsic motivators that drive people:

1. Mastery

2. Mission

3. Autonomy

4. Affiliation

Understanding intrinsic motivators is both a powerful managerial tool and a check to ensure you don’t miss a blindspot with your people. Typically in management, we focus on extrinsic motivators and how we meet them. Companies generally evolve to a culture that defines the most important extrinsic motivators. Some companies are all about the money, run lean and don’t provide a lot of fringe benefits whereas others try to optimize for quality of life at the expense of compensation. Occasionally, I’ve been polled to assess preferences ranging from compensation, to recognition, free snacks, job security, quality of life or promotions but typically any changes made are on the margins. The challenge with extrinsic motivators is that they may be valued differently, but all have a defined and measurable cost (or opportunity cost). Extrinsic motivators are limited, so it’s up to leaders to determine how to fairly allocate limited resources, while guided by their values, the law and corporate culture. Generally this involves a very complicated optimization function to reward high performers, retain consistent performers and manage out lower performers, while trying to maintain an inclusive culture that solves for gender & racial disparities, all while delivering business results (which many forget is the goal of any business — even at non-profits). It’s important to understand and manage to the extrinsic motivators of your people, but in addition to being limited, solely focusing on them leads to transactional relationships. Intrinsic motivators on the other hand, cost nothing and are limitless. As a leader, if you know what truly motivates your people people and manage accordingly, you can engender loyalty, satisfaction and deliver higher team productivity.

Mastery

Simply speaking, people motivated by Mastery are obsessed with their craft. Though this motivator typically reveals itself in individual-focused professions such as the performing arts and professional sports, mastery reveals itself in frequently in companies large & small. People motivated by mastery crave interesting work. It doesn’t necessarily mean people motivated by mastery reject repetitive tasks (in fact they may value them if it means perfecting a task or doing something they feel should be done a certain way), but those motivated by mastery will generally chafe against deadlines or pressure to compromise on quality or fidelity. Leaders who are themselves motivated by mastery often get frustrated with team members who don’t share their same commitment to the craft. Those who are not need to recognize that this innate motivation in those on their team members require the freedom to focus on doing the work they love, how they want to do it.

Mission

Whereas people motivated by mastery are driven by what they are doing and often how they do it, Mission-oriented people are near polar opposites; they are all about the why. Though this motivator typically reveals itself in government & non-profit sectors, this trait is very common in start-ups, particularly amongst their founders (i.e. Elon Musk). And there are many whose mission involves making as much money as possible too! Managing mission oriented people can be a blessing and a curse. As I observed from working on a successful political campaign, if people believe strongly in a mission, they will make unbelievable sacrifices and give incredible effort, often without being compensated to make significant contributions to the cause. Fire fighters, committed teachers & members of the armed forces, particularly elite special forces units, are also great examples of this trait. Organizations that are highly mission driven even in the private sector like fashion or professional sports provide wonderful outlets for their people, but run the risk of being exploitative. And if you’re not the most mission driven organization, leading mission-driven employees can be frustrating, constantly asking why they’re doing things or demanding that the organization support causes or values they strongly believe in themselves. Mission-driven leaders in mission-driven organizations (I was one, more on that later) encounter serious blindspots with employees that have other intrinsic motivators. Depending upon the leader, the organization, the expertise and depth of motivation involved, it can either work really well or turn out badly.

Autonomy

Unlike they previous two motivators where the focus is the what, the how & the why, people who crave autonomy care mostly about how they are treated; in particular it is critical that they be trusted. It’s a somewhat lazy, but true argument to make that people who crave autonomy most resent being micromanaged but it’s more than that; they need to feel valued for their contributions and trusted to deliver on their promises, with the latitude to do so in any number of ways. When managing people who value autonomy, I’ve found it’s important to clearly articulate where they have the space to independently operate and make decisions. What I expect in return is that they keep me updated on what they are doing. Leaders who value this trait often have a blind spot by leading teams that may be more isolated from their organizations or themselves don’t communicate information well to their teams so they need to remember to over communicate and work to keep their teams connected to others.

Affiliation

People who are motivated by affiliation care most about who they are working with and how they are working together. Culture matters to affiliation-driven people the most and conflict or strong personalities are the biggest watch outs. Often, large corporations appeal to people who value affiliation because there is less of a tendency to value individual contributions. Instead, to succeed in large companies, you have to work well in large, complex multidisciplinary teams where relationships are important. Smaller organizations where certain cultures are strong (e.g. faith based) often attract affiliation-motivated people as well. But sometimes there are other small businesses where people like to work with their friends and never want to grow to a place where they bring in too many outsiders who will dilute their circle of trust. Like the other motivators, having people on your team driven by affiliation are a blessing and a curse. On one hand, employees driven by affiliation are the most fun to be around. They remember birthdays, will be the first to organize team outings and lead the charge on volunteer activities. But often this comes at the cost of productivity and affiliation-driven team members will be the first to leave a team with a toxic culture. So as a leader, I find that it’s extremely important to ensure the culture is right, or at least make sure those who value affiliation understand the culture that’s being built, while also taking on the role as a trusted protector, to ensure those motivated by affiliation are both valued but contribute enough to be recognized for their work. Leaders motivated by affiliation are typically most popular with their people (hence the attraction to large corporations as well) but often struggle with the label of being “too nice.” As a leader striving to build affiliation, it’s important not just to recognize different the different motivations of your team, but also recognize that kindness may take many forms, often involving making difficult decisions that will leave some unhappy.

If you discuss any or all of these motivators, most will say that they are motivated by all of these elements, but I’ve come to find that the training was spot on: when prompted, I’ve never found anyone who wont’t highlight a single dominating motivator that defines them or at least they have a “major” and a “minor.” In my case, the Mission is typically my #1 motivator. If I care a lot about what I’m working on, I’m highly motivated to give extra effort and do unglamorous work for the benefit of the cause. In addition, autonomy is extremely important to me as well because I like to be recognized as competent & trusted to deliver results for a piece of business and value the space to chart my own path in doing so.

Why is this important? Not only is it an incredibly powerful managerial tool but it also avoids a typical pitfall of leaders: misunderstanding the motivations of their people —- typically with the assumption that their people share their own. In my case, I learned this the hard way when leading a full-time group for the first time in City government. I was both motivated by working in civil service and the mission of my agency and mistakenly believed that the same was true as well for my people. In fact, it was quite the opposite. My team was hard working, cared about what we were doing but didn’t share my passion. And though I didn’t feel this way at the time, it really was OK. Instead, most were generally motivated by Affiliation. They cared for each other deeply, much more so it seemed than the work we were doing. It drove me nuts! Meetings were unproductive and ran long with long discussions of their respective personal lives. And the team LOOOVED potlucks. It all felt awkward to me, I didn’t get it at all, missed all the signs and when I tried to push the team to work too hard on important projects, found myself alienated from them. When my manager moved on, I was passed over for promotion and instead they appointed a leader who didn’t really seem to be a natural fit in terms of her expertise, but better recognized the cultural needs of the team and helped me understand that. With time, I gained respect for her and also the mistakes I had made.

While this focus on understanding and adapting to the motivations of your co-workers may seem Machiavellian or a call to action to screen for people who share your motivators, I feel the opposite. When seeking to build a diverse team, it’s critical to build a team with as much diversity on this dimension as any other. Every team needs functional experts, people who care about what they’re doing, have the agency to get things done & people who will build esprit de corps. But it’s important as a leader to recognize your own motivations and recognize those in others. Lastly, if you don’t know or feel you need to guess, all you have to do is ask your people. It’s my experience that teams enjoy being asked question and don’t mind sharing.