Motivators combines the research of Dr. Eduard Spranger and Gordon Allport into a single, in-depth diagnostic revealing the inherent motivations of each user. While we are all aware of our motivations to some degree, research shows that successful people share the common trait of exceptional self-awareness. Exceptional self-awareness means these individuals are better at recognizing opportunities that correlate with their inherent motivations, thereby increasing their likelihood for success.
Like-wise, business leaders are better equipped to make informed personnel decisions when they understand what galvanizes each new job applicant or team member. Steadfastness, attention to detail and accuracy aren’t issues for someone whose motivations align well with the values necessitated by a particular job.
“Employers who invested more in training and development outperformed the market by 35%.”
~ Harvard Business Review
The Motivators assessment identifies seven potential “drivers” of motivation which exist in everyone, to varying levels. By taking detailed measurements of these seven key impulses, the Motivators assessment is able to offer the practical applications and insights necessary to maximize performance and project outcomes.
The Motivators Assessment measures variances among seven key dimensions (i.e. drivers) of personal motivation:
Expanded Definitions for Each Dimension-Aesthetic: The aesthetic person sees the highest value in form and harmony. Each experience is judged from the standpoint of grace, symmetry, or fit. He regards life as a procession of events; each event enjoyed for its own sake. He need not be a creative artist, nor need he be decadent; he is aesthetic if he but finds his chief interest in the beauty of life.
The aesthetic attitude is, in a sense, diametrically opposed to the theoretical; the former is concerned with the diversity, and the latter with the understanding of experience. The aesthetic person either chooses, with Keats, to consider truth as equivalent to beauty, or agrees with Mencken, that, ‘to make a thing charming is a million times more important than to make it true’. In the economic sphere, the aesthetic person sees the process of manufacturing, advertising and trade as a wholesale destruction of the values most important to him.
Altruistic: The highest value for the altruistic person is love of people. In this dimension, it is the altruistic or philanthropic aspect of love that is measured. The altruistic person prizes other persons as ends, and is therefore herself kind, sympathetic and unselfish. She is likely to find the theoretical or economic attitudes cold and inhuman. In contrast to the power type, the altruistic person regards love as itself the only suitable form of human relationship.
Economic: The economic person is characteristically interested in what is useful. Based originally upon the satisfaction of bodily needs, (self-preservation,) the interest in utilities develops to embrace the practical affairs of the business world in the production, marketing and consumption of goods, the elaboration of credit and the accumulation of tangible wealth. This type is thoroughly practical and conforms well to the prevailing stereotype of the businessperson.
More than perhaps any other, the economic attitude frequently comes into conflict with other values. The economic person wants education to be practical, and regards unapplied knowledge [often sought by the theoretical person] as waste. Great feats of engineering and application result from the practical demands economic people make upon science and theory. The value of utility likewise conflicts with the aesthetic value, except when art serves commercial ends.
In his personal life, the economic person is likely to confuse luxury with beauty. In his relations with people, he is more likely to be interested in surpassing them in wealth than in dominating them (power attitude) or in serving them (altruistic attitude). In some instances he may have regard for the regulatory attitudes, but inclines to consider it as a means to rewards of wealth, prosperity, and other tangible blessings.
Individualistic: The individualistic person seeks to be separate and independent. Her desire is to stand out, to express her uniqueness and be granted freedom over her actions to champion her own bearing. Unlike the power attitude, the individualistic person seeks neither power nor control of others or the environment in general. She is only concerned with controlling her own fate and protecting her own sovereignty. The individual person rails against his subjugation by any external force, and when she feels so, her only focus becomes her own emancipation.
Power: This dimension reflects an individual’s internal and behavioral drive for control over their environment at-large. At whatever their vocation, individuals with high Power dimensions can appear as a Machtmensch (i.e. “control freak”). In any field, leaders generally have high Power and control values. Since competition and struggle play a significant role, touching all aspects of our lives, many philosophers and psychologists have viewed Power as the most universal and fundamental of motives. There are however, certain personalities in whom the desire for a direct expression of this motive is supreme. These individuals posses a drive and wish, above all else, for personal Power, influence and renown.
Regulatory: The highest value of the regulatory person may be called unity. She is mystical and seeks to comprehend the cosmos as a whole and to relate herself to its embracing totality. The regulatory person is one whose mental attitude is directed toward achieving structure, and is permanently directed to the creation of the highest and absolutely satisfying value of order and constitution.
Some of this type finds their life’s value in the affirmation of life’s systems or processes, and in active participation therein. The ‘traditionalist’ seeks to unite herself with a higher order to be one with the system.
Theoretical: The dominant interest of the theoretical person is the discovery of truth. In the pursuit of this goal, he characteristically takes a ‘cognitive’ attitude; one that looks for identities and differences; one that divests itself of judgments regarding the beauty or utility of objects, and seeks only to observe, reason and understand. Since the interests of the theoretical are empirical, critical, and rational, he is necessarily an intellectualist, frequently a scientist or philosopher. His chief aim in life is to gain, order and systematize his knowledge.