How to become an emotionally intelligent leader during a crisis
Do you care about motivation at work? Specifically, what motivates employees intrinsically?
If you do, chances are that your team’s productivity and retention are higher than average.
Knowing how to direct the energy in each person will lead to higher trust and better communication. Essentially, you will be regarded as a person having high emotional intelligence.
However, finding out what motivates people takes time since it is normally done using trial and error and as each person is motivated by different things, it is hard to remember what the motivation is for each employee.
Luckily, there are ways for you to get your hands on such information in just a few minutes.
Taking a shortcut to becoming a great emotional intelligent leader
At Attuned, we think a lot about what motivates each employee, how a person’s value system is interlinked with their engagement and how friction in communication can be overcome through better understanding of what drives us.
We use organizational psychology to make the previously unseen knowable through the use of the Attuned Motivator Assessment which visualizes an employee's motivational profile.
Let’s break down the different layers which make up the image others have of us.
Behavior is the peak of the iceberg everyone can see. It’s something that can be consciously influenced and altered at will, meaning it’s easy to learn or mimic in a new environment.
Personality is located deeper down, at a partly unconscious level. It is solidified by the age of 25, after which it changes only very slowly, generally remaining stable for 4–5 years. It’s here that our capabilities, competences and dispositions belong.
Our values and intrinsic motivators are located the deepest, normally changing rarely and remaining largely stable for as long as ten years. These values are the most important for us in our relationships with others and in our working environment.
Do our values and intrinsic motivators really not change?
We have seen that a person’s values do not change much over time unless there is a radical change in their environment. For example, a senior manager might value Status very highly, but once they have been promoted to an executive they find that this is not such a strong driver for their motivation anymore. On the other hand, they might find that executives at their company lack the freedom to make decisions on their own, perhaps due to a micromanaging CEO, resulting in them starting to value Autonomy higher.
Still, we have not seen that all top motivators suddenly fall to the bottom.
Why do I need to care?
It is not easy to notice changes in intrinsic motivation, even for the person in question, but in case the new top motivators are not fulfilled, it may lead to active disengagement which is certainly an unwanted outcome. Think about what it means for your team’s productivity, employee engagement and retention. Are you in a position to handle the consequences?
On the other hand, if you display skills in keeping team members motivated despite frequent changes, you are on the right track to becoming an emotionally intelligent leader.
The takeaway here is that for every radical change in an employee’s environment; for example change of their manager, change of team, a promotion or demotion, or for a combination of these, it is important to observe if the change has affected their intrinsic motivation.
Steps to guide a person through a major change:
If possible, assess impact before the change for the top 6 motivators
Is the change likely to leave two or more of these motivators unfulfilled? For example, if the new manager does not have any need for Feedback at all, could that cause a problem?
Thoroughly think through if the impact can be properly managed
Inform the person about the change from a motivational perspective and encourage them to be proactive in having their needs fulfilled
Assess the situation a few weeks after the change
Consider re-taking the Attuned Motivator Assessment to establish a new baseline
A real-life example
Let me give an example from myself.
When I first took the Attuned Motivator Assessment back in 2017, I had just changed jobs and was very keen on taking on new challenges and proving myself. One and half year later, after having led Attuned’s initial sales expansion, my need for Competition has been greatly fulfilled, so when taking the next survey in July 2019, this was no longer my top motivator. This motivator bumped up again in 2020 when I started getting more involved in technical work and discovered that I had a lot of catching up to do.
COMPETITION - An attraction to challenges, struggles and competitive situations; a continuous striving to compete with others, to reach appointed goals and find success, in relation to both others and to oneself.
Autonomy has remained fairly stable over time and I can see this motivator as a constant companion in whatever I do, at work or privately. I believe that this motivator will continue to be one of the most important ones for years to come.
AUTONOMY - The need to develop and preserve personal freedom; striving for independence in decision-making, time management and working out solutions while assuming personal responsibility.
Rationality was high for some time, but started to drop once the management and development teams had established solid data-driven decision making processes. No longer is there a need for me to add a rational component to internal discussions, it works fine anyway and more rationality does not increase my motivation.
RATIONALITY - An attraction to logical, objective and scientific methods; the endeavor to make decisions based on factual data and connections of cause and effect, and by taking into account objective feedback from others.
Last but not least, a slow but steady increase in the need for Altruism can be observed which I believe has to do with the fact that I am getting more and more immersed in the activities at the company, even on a detailed level, and can see the benefit of being a servant-leader. Having said that, I do need to be mindful that I do not place the wellbeing of my co-workers and the resolution of their problems above business demands.
ALTRUISM - The endeavor to help, support and maintain the wellbeing of others, as well as the expectation that others will help us if we need it; the preference for a kind of environment where this comes about on a mutual basis.
Overview:
Changes in the world around us
It is not only company driven events that could affect changes in intrinsic motivation. Major external events can also change intrinsic motivation. Because of the major changes pushed upon us by the Covid-19 pandemic we have looked at the global data in Attuned and seen a few interesting shifts in motivations.
Rising needs
The need for Feedback has gone up a solid 7% since we’ve shifted to a WFH environment.
People’s enhanced need for Security is also intuitive. With all the surrounding uncertainty, worry if our company and jobs will still exist, many of us would like to have things more orderly and predictable.
The biggest change was an unexpected one: Rationality needs have jumped up by 10% across workers. For employee morale to be boosted, bosses and companies need to explain logically, and clearly the reasons actions are being taken. They need to set expectations clearly. If you want better team well-being you would do well to take that extra moment to give your team details as to how and why decisions were reached, and what you, and they, should expect. It relates to transparency, and will also help satiate employee needs for security as well.
Dropping needs
Another surprise from our data was that people’s needs for Social Relationships have dropped. The data tells a story counter to the media narrative. At Attuned we don’t have the answer as to why. Could it be because many of us are spending more time with our families? Making those Zoom calls with dear friends more regular? Satiating our needs for social relationships. Or is it the fear that the more social we are the more likely we will get Covid-19 and pass it on to our loved ones? The data teases that something interesting seems to be happening.
These with-Covid working times are also not a period when people have rising needs to innovate or achieve big goals. Our data are averages, and we have to take averages in mind, considering the spread, and also take into account the changes for Innovation and Competition motivators are not dramatic percentage shifts, but it is interesting to see that people’s ambitions and creative desires are hedgehogging a bit. Not unexpected, but not the most intuitive data shift.
Remember to keep an eye out for changes in the working environment for employees at your workplace and ensure that you are up to speed with their current needs.
Have a motivating week!
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Keep the learning going, and read more on “What Makes a Good Manager?”
More on Management & Leadership
Mattias Hallberg
CTO and Board Member at EQIQ
Head of Product for Attuned