Creating High-Performing Teams: Understanding What Motivates Them

Yesterday, I was watching a very interesting and heart-warming interview of Michelin Star Chef Vikas Khanna. His humility and simplicity is striking and he doesn't even have the airs of a Michelin Star Chef, let alone the fact that he is the only Indian Chef to have that coveted recognition.

However, when you peer beyond his simplicity, you find an unbeatable track record of successes. His restaurant “Junoon” has earned Michelin Star by Michelin Guide for six consecutive years and that is quite a standard to achieve and maintain. Along with a repertoire of books that he has published, which is close to thirty-five titles now and innumerable awards and mentions. 

What really made me sit back and think was his recent initiative of Feed India where he served two lacs meals in Mumbai in the month of Ramzan and then later scaled it up to twenty lacs in another initiative in Ghaziabad. When he was asked about what motivated him to do so, he simply said that he  had to pay back the kindness that he received when he was struggling. I heard Sonu Nigam also saying something similar and same goes for a lot of philanthropic leaders be it Bill Gates or Azim Premji.

Recently, after joining ODA, I have been working on the concept of Motivation Drivers and Vikas Khanna took my work into a more reflective space. So here I am trying to give some shape to my stray thoughts. 

What motivates anybody possibly fits under three broad areas

Different Things - There could be various motives that trigger people to take action or propel them in the direction of their growth and success. What could be those?

Different People - Everyone is same at the core but the layers could be different, what makes each person unique and how to tap into that uniqueness?

Different Times - Does context matter? What motivates me right now, would I have been driven by the same motivation at any other point in the same way.

While thinking about this, it is useful to explore some existing frameworks and theories around this subject rather than just depending on my reflections.  Throughout history of management, motivation has been explored in depth by a lot of social scientists, researchers and management thinkers. Some of them came quite close to demystifying the concept. There are broadly two types of theoretical frameworks around motivation, process theories of motivation and content theories of motivation.

Process theories like that of Pavlov and the  associated famous experiment of dog salivating talks about the connection of stimuli, subject and object and how the subject will react to stimuli given fulfilment of certain conditions. A lot of extrinsic motivational factors have been explained by Process theories - rewards, recognition, money as a stimulator are all based on these foundational principles. 

Content theories however talk about intrinsic motivation and addresses the inner needs that drives any behaviour. The most prominent among these are Maslow's Needs Hierarchy theory and David McClelland’s theory of needs, both contemporaries at Harvard. Needs hierarchy theory talks about a pyramid of needs starting from physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem and then self-actualization needs. It states that the achievement of one leads to another in a sequential way, David McClelland’s theory talks about a combination of needs that an individual might have and one of these being a dominant one at any given point of time.

In this context however, I would like to explore David McClelland’s theory as that is also something that we have explored deeply in ODA for our Managerial Effectiveness module and we now have a power questionnaire around that.

According to him the basic inner needs of a person can be categorized into three that is, need for achievement, need for power and need for affiliation. This concept was further elaborated by Udai Pareek and these three motivation drivers were expanded to six namely need for achievement, affiliation, Influence, control, extension and dependence. Taking a cue from his article on A Motivational Paradigm of Development" expanding on these drivers a little more

Achievement: Characterized by concern for excellence, competition with the standards of excellence set by others or by oneself, the setting of challenging goals for oneself, awareness of the hurdles in the way of achieving those goals, and persistence in trying alternative paths to one’s goals. 

Affiliation: Characterized by a concern for establishing and maintaining close, personal relationships; a value on friendship; and a tendency to express one’s emotions. 

Influence: Characterized by concern with making an impact on others, a desire to make people do what one thinks is right, and an urge to change matters and (develop) people. 

Control: Characterized by a concern for orderliness, a desire to be and stay informed, and an urge to monitor and take corrective action when needed. 

Extension: Characterized by concern for others, interest in superordinate goals, and an urge to be relevant and useful to larger groups, including society. 

Dependence: Characterized by a desire for the help of others in one’s own self-development, checking with significant others (those who are more knowledgeable or have higher status, experts, close associates, etc.), submitting ideas or proposals for approval, and having an urge to maintain an “approval” relationship. 

Dr Pareek gives a simple formula here for development

Development = (Achievement Motivation X Extension Motivation) - Dependence Motivation 

To put simply, a person who is high on achievement and extension motivation, that is the need to excel in every possible way and has a larger purpose for being at the same time with lesser keenness for others’ approval, is bound to create sustained change not just for himself / herself but society at large. And that probably explains my intrigue about Vikas Khanna and other such leaders.

In the initial days, as it appears, while he seems to be driven by the need of achievement and thus constantly chasing success in fulfilment of one goal after the other. The current need that drove him to accomplish a feat as big as feeding twenty lacs meals sitting in the US seems like the need for extension.

Every person is a unique combination of these drivers and hence could be different from each other despite the same education, skills or proficiency level. The one which is activated the most in any given context is what drives an individual to perform and chase goals. So while we say that somebody is intrinsically motivated, it will really help to pause and see what that intrinsic motivation for that person looks like and how to tap into that uniqueness and give way to self-expression to create a sustainable impact for the person as well as the larger community.

I am now keenly looking forward to use this power questionnaire of ours and support managers who would like to understand motivation drivers for themselves and their team members!