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In this episode Joel and Antonia talk about the 6 styles of motivation and how to use them to relate better to others and change your life.
In this podcast you’ll find:
What gets us going? What has us reaching out for success?
6 Sermons Model
Simple way to recognize the different ways people are motivated.
3 major categories:
- Power
- Affiliation
- Achievement
Each category has two subcategories
- Away From – Fear pushes us away from these categories
- Toward – Desire pushes us toward them
Power Away From:
- Fear of being under the power of someone else.
- Desire to break authority structures
- Constant need to be outside the system. The rebel.
- An inability to be in a position of leadership
- Can be motivated by autonomy. Solo projects. Hate micromanaging.
- Can motivate self by finding the flaws in the system. Documentarians.
Power Toward:
- Love being in the chain of command.
- Respect authority and hierarchy.
- Seek out positions of authority and seek out people in authority.
- Can be motivated by gaining greater responsibility over others.
- Can motivate self with the prospect of promotion.
Affiliation Away From:
- Fear they will be isolated from the tribe through public censure or embarrassment.
- Prefer staying under the radar. Just do the job and don’t rock the boat.
- Small group of friends to avoid awkwardness.
- Can be motivated by frequent positive feedback.
- Can motivate self by asking people for feedback. Avoid isolation.
Affiliation Toward:
- Desire to be tied into the social fabric.
- Gain status and stand out in order to gain admiration. Wag the Dog movie.
- Typically surrounded by a large social tribe.
- Can be motivated by public approval, like a surprise party or Roast which acknowledges their accomplishments.
- Can motivate self by creating a tribe of people who will give honest feedback.
Achievement Away From:
- Profound fear of attempting something only to fail.
- May stick with the tried and true rather than risk failure.
- Working harder than they need to in order to assure success.
- Perfectionist tendencies, which can be a counter motivator.
Achievement Toward:
- Will work incredibly hard in order to reach the end goal and feel the pride that comes with achievement.
- Ambitious.
- Motivated by having access to the best tools for the job.
Varying degrees of healthy and unhealthy expressions in each of these categories.
Whichever style you identify with find the optimal level of health for each type.
Toward/Away From – basic carrot and stick concept.
Toward motivated appears to be a healthier expression because Away From is embedded in fear.
Living with fear does not serve us.
Toward is an expression of desire and hunger. Desire to reach out for something better.
Away From is more rooted in dissatisfaction and fear. May relate to a mentality of scarcity.
A lot of our fears seem more rooted in ancient programming. Programming that is no longer valid.
Another model of motivation:
-
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink – newest most advanced info in psychology re: motivation.
- Trifecta of motivation. Healthiest expressions.
- Autonomy = Power
- Mastery = Achievement
- Purpose = Affiliation
- Trifecta of motivation. Healthiest expressions.
Referenced in this podcast:
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35 comments
Thanks for your comment, Anthony! I think your alternative interpretation is a good one. It forces us to ask, what a world focused on Toward would look like? Would we want such a world?
Just wanted to say that I appreciated Lana’s multiple comments, especially:
“They can see breakdowns in the system and desire to change it for the better, and realize that often times this happens outside the current leadership (if they are unwilling or unaware of the need to change). In a sense, that’s extremely healthy, in my opinion, because it recognizes the bigger picture and is filled with the hope that the status quo isn’t all there can be.”
She sounds very much like the ENTPS and INFJs I know and love… I’m not entirely sure why. I think it’s the desire for freedom and the authenticity piece. Very appealing. “Moving away” can have a life affirming aspect to it – not only doom, gloom, negativity and cynicism. Moving away can be working towards.
Since I use a lot of Ti, I think I can comment more on why I attributed Ti to Power Away From and Te to Power Towards. I agree that there are too many variables and I actually am not an expert in any of these theories that I’m juggling with, and that I can’t confirm any of the links that I claimed to make but I can just put these links out here for the purpose of sharing my intuitions that I find interesting and might have some truth in them.
The “Power” that the 6 Sermons Model is referring to seems like the ability to organize the outer word. The higher up you get, you get more respects, resources and stuff, which ultimately gives you more ability to make a difference in the world, no matter it is for personal or altruistic reasons. I certainly want to get that power but only in the future, when I think I am intelligent enough to wield this power and when this kind of top-down organization is examined, refined or evolved and is holistically valid.
But as I progress in life, I have been starting to go through things like, group work problems or social dramas where people are inexperienced and the problems are unresolved. I started to realize that everyone is inexperienced(coz I’m only in uni and my peers are just students), time is running out as meanwhile there are also other problems that everyone need to start dealing with, so. All these coupled with my realization that I can actually handle these situations better than most others that are involved, I got over the thought that I don’t know what is the best way to do things and my fear for failing in my task in leading then people would look down on me, and I felt, hm, I should handle them, make stronger stands and set the instructions so that people can move on from the confusion state and start making a change. Now I realize more about the logical and life sustaining side of the Te.
Back to my initial point, the two examples are, I believe, examples that have connection with healthy Power Away From and Power Towards respectively, as well as the healthy Ti and Te perspectives respectively.
Btw, It’s the sentence “stick with the tried and true rather than risk failure” that reminds me of Sensors. The descriptions of Achievement Away From has a ‘grounded on the past and present’ feel to it while the descriptions of Achievement Towards has a more ‘forward looking’ feel to it.
“The natural tendency for humans to desire integration and wholeness trumps any particular motivation that we can assign a category.” There seems to be some profound truth/pattern in here. Reminds me of Aristotle’s theory on opposite attracts and Socionics’ dualism and yin yang and my good feelings towards some opposite types.
Just my interesting thoughts. Btw, I suspect my motivation of leaving these comments is Affiliation Towards :p
Thanks for the feedback, Sarah! I’m glad you were able to benefit from the podcast. :)
Cool, Anthony! I always like INTPs and their interesting analysis.
As far as making links to achievement, if you consider money (salaries) as a measure of achievement or success (I don’t – but some people do) ENTJ ‘achieves’ the highest salary, followed by ESTJ, ESFJ, INTJ, ENFJ. For education, the highest level of ‘achievement’ is found among ENTJ and INTJS, followed by ESTJ and ISTJ (I’m not sure how accurate that data is -I got data from some career assessment site…) But it seems to me, if you consider that data, there’s not a clear distinction between S and N Types and their level of achievement by our society’s standards. It’s seem logical that those who achieve the most would be those most likely to also be the ones who move towards achievement.
Fe = Toward Affiliation and Fi = Away from Affiliation sounds, for the most part, pretty accurate to me (at least intuitively speaking…) That’s sort of what I commenting on and thinking about earlier. Although I think an ESFP or an ENFP could be very affiliated oriented, not so much an INTJ or INFP. This isn’t clear cut either. As Charis suggested earlier, I would think extroversion and introversion would be a greater determining factor (if such a correlation exists at all!)
Ti = Away from Power and Te = Towards Power I don’t see any connection here at all. I could continue trying to analyze this… But I think there are two many variables.
I was also thinking about enneagram and Karen Horney’s work. She talks about “moving towards” and “moving away”. That was picked up by some of the leaders in the enneagram field who talk about the relationship between fear and motivation. It’s hard to generalize about any particular type because motivation and individual personality structure is quite variable and complex. With enneagram you also have subtypes (Sexual, Social, Preservation). When you add that to the mix, any attempt to try to make generalizations is almost impossible. For example, I am an INTJ Type 1w2 sx, sp – I am not a “social” type, and I am definitely not so motivated by the need for “affiliation” with others (at least not consciously). But if you look at a person’s unconscious motivations (or shadow aspects), sometimes you find the opposite drives in motivation – in moving against their can be the unconscious motivation to move towards… There’s so much more than what we typically know of ourselves when it comes to motivation. The natural tendency for humans to desire integration and wholeness trumps any particular motivation that we can assign a category.