8 Career coaching

One of the most obvious applications of the Motivational Map is with career coaching. With so many people considering career moves and life changes often decisions can be made on a whole variety of factors including, financial, geographic, familial and of course emotional. Very few people considering a change in their career review their subconscious values and seek a decision that is 100 per cent aligned; keeping in mind, of course, that values and, even more so, beliefs can change over time!

Here is where the Motivational Map helps us – to find what precisely is motivating us in our career right now, how we feel our work is meeting our needs right now, and how our values are likely to change over time.

This point about ‘changing’ over time is significant because it means that Maps resist stereotyping people in the way a psychometric tool will often do. That said, however, it should come as no surprise to learn that certain professions tend to have certain Map profiles, and when we consider our career choices it’s as well to keep that point in mind. Research done by us on more than 28,000 people across 144 sectors clearly shows a number of things.

Here is, in Figure 8.1, a cross-section of 10 sectors¹ with their top three motivators, and the sample size on which the rank ordering is based. Clearly, the numbers can be finessed further to take account of nationality, age, role and gender,² but even as they stand they are striking. Most striking of all being the fact that all 10 sectors have Searcher³ – the need to make a difference – as their number one motivator. In a way this entirely validates two other pieces of information: first, the view that people do not simply want to work for money. True, in Banking it (the Builder) appears as the third most important, but that’s all. Second, Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start with Why.⁴ He argued that organisations had become too preoccupied with What they do and How they do it; this was largely de-motivating for staff because what employees wanted was a big WHY – why are we doing this to get them out of bed in the morning. Our research⁵ shows that Sinek’s point is true: making a difference is the outcome of mission or purpose, the central concern of the Searcher motivator.

The other noticeable thing about Figure 8.1 is that four whole motivators are not mentioned at all in these statistics; they are mentioned in some of the other 134 sectors we have covered, but much less so. They are, for want of a better word, rarer! What are these motivators? They are the Friend,⁶ the Director, the Creator, and, in fact the least frequent of all, the Star.⁷ Some fascinating, if not worrying, ideas emerge from this: first, the fact that people generally are not inclined to want to belong to an organisation, or indeed do not desire to manage it.⁸ But secondly, if your Map profile is high in these four lesser desired motivators, how can you be sure you will thrive in a sector environment that maybe does not operate or respect their particular energies? This, again, is why knowing your Motivational Map is key to your career development, and key for coaches seeking to help their clients.

Of special note is the absence of the Creator motivator in the light of the fact that business turns on the reality of innovation: people may have innovative skills and knowledge but if they don’t actually desire innovation, then they will always default to some other activity that pleases them more – and satisfies a motivator they do want. The implications of this, especially in recruitment, really need addressing.

One final point is that three of the four ‘rarer’ motivators – Friend, Star, and Director – actually are sequential on the Map hierarchy, and they share some common properties. Of significance here is that Friend and Star are Relationship motivators, and although Director is an Achievement motivator, yet being on the border of Relationship, it often requires relationships to function. In other words, to want to manage people does itself require we develop relationships too. Thus, taking all three together, we would appear to have in a way a chronic absence of effective relationship-building motivators. The net effect of this would be, if a larger data-set substantiated this finding, an overemphasis, perhaps, on transactional relationships at the expense of transformational ones. Again, as with the Creator motivator, the potential implications for business are wide-ranging.

Before we get onto a case study this all leads to another career issue, especially given the prevalence in our culture today of the Searcher motivator. Earlier we referred to knowing what one’s mission – your mission – is in life; but how do we know what it is or ascertain it? This is not the same as vision, that ideal state we aspire to in the future, or values, which are our most deeply held beliefs. It is more about what were you – we – born to do?

This is not an easy question, and it may take some considerable teasing out. Coaching is an ideal methodology for helping anybody get greater clarity on this issue; that much should be obvious if only because of the profound questions coaching asks, and which we looked at in Chapter 1. But the Motivational Map has its own techniques to help address this issue.

The key thing to understand about Mission⁹ is that it is about finding out what we ‘do’; we go on at length in our culture about each individual being unique, but then we seek to package them just like everybody else in a standard job. This, perhaps, more than anything else is why most surveys estimate that approximately two-thirds of the work force in the USA and the UK, and other countries too, are disengaged. Employees are doing things that do not bring out their unique gifts and talents – or draw on what they were born to do.

When we say ‘do’, then, it may remind us that in every full sentence in the English language there is what is sometimes familiarly called a ‘doing’ word; it is the verb, in fact. And here is our first clue. If we truly want to know what defines us, what is the verb that I associate more than any other with myself, that best describes me?

Verbs are the strong words; but you need to be aware that there are thousands of them, and that they include such ‘fuzzy’ ideas as ‘dreaming’ – to dream is a verb. So in doing this exercise we don’t have to, at this stage, choose words that are hard-edged. No, at this stage we are investigating where our own true interests lie.

Here are some examples of words/verbs¹⁰ to give a range of ideas:

and whatever else comes to mind.

Having established what your verb is, we can go on to create our mission statement. A mission statement is a short paragraph at most that sets out what you do, and we like it when it covers the three bases of our Relationships, our Achievements and our Growth. In this way we align our life, not just even our work, with our mission.

You are now in a position to create your own mission statement. This selfsame exercise was done by co-author James some years ago. He discovered – to his surprise – that ‘to motivate’ was indeed his verb. Surprise because, yes, even as a teenager he had had the ability to motivate and energise others around him, though at the time had not considered this significant or important in any way.

James’ Mission Statement based on his verb, ‘motivate’, is:

Notice how this mission statement covers his own development, as well as family and work. Notice, too, how once it has been formulated it can be the bench mark for all James’ activities: is he motivating in the way he suggests he has been called to do? And notice how the mission statement has an element of “being” in it: that James himself has to be motivated to live his mission, and that this therefore is a crucial element of a mission. A goal or vision is usually an end outcome, as opposed to a statement about how you will be each and every day; so you can hold yourself accountable to your own mission, and have others do that for you!

Finally, before looking at case studies it would be good to consider, since we are thinking about your career development, what are employers actually looking for? Different organisations will have different emphases and priorities, but we think that there are about 10 key aspects, and they are almost certainly – Pareto again (so 2 or 3 out of these 10 points will be crucial) – hierarchical. These factors are in possible rank order:

1. Energy¹² and initiative – and here we know motivation is energy
2. Consistent upward trend – or, promotion – are you progressing in your career?
3. Comparable accomplishments to date – or groundwork pointing in that direction
4. Experience, education, background, cultural fit – are you suitable?
5. Problem solving and thinking skills – suggesting agility and strategic nous
6. Talent, competency, knowledge, skills, potential
7. Managerial and organisational competence
8. Team qualities – including motivating others
9. Character¹³ – integrity, honesty, resilience, commitment, values
10. Personality – will yours comply with or complement theirs?

In all these 10 factors of employment, the employer is always looking for ‘more’ of them! So, they want to know that the candidate has more energy (or initiative or motivation) than the other competitors; that the upward trend of their career is superior to another’s trajectory; that – to go lower in the list – some aspect of their character or personality, other things (e.g. honesty) being equal, is better than your rivals also applying for the post. But of course, in making a decision, employers usually consider a balance of factors, so whereas you may be manifestly weaker in a certain area, say, your experience or education, this may well be offset by your superior energy, or talent, and this may count for more with the potential employer. Whether they are explicitly aware of it or not, they too will be operating under Pareto Principles – two or three factors will be critical for them. Your job in advance is to know which ones, and ensure you can score strongly in those factors.

With these ideas and tools now firmly in the forefront of our thinking about career development, we return to the use of the Motivational Map and its applications. On completing a Map, clients receive a 15-page report, which is detailed, useful and interesting for them; but coaches receive also a 1-page report with what we call the ‘22 numbers’. No text, just the numbers; and these are so revealing.

Some key points to pick out and use in a coaching session:

1. Client is 11 per cent motivated – astonishingly low and worrying for long-term well being
2. Client’s top motivator, the Creator, currently only 1/10 satisfied, the lowest possible score
3. Not one motivator, whether significant (> 20) or not to Jake, scores 6/10, the average – so Jake is in a very bad place motivationally and emotionally regarding his work

This extreme result actually made preparation for the coaching session quite straight forward. Following his plan to build rapport, ask open questions about specific motivators (note: The Builder motivator is not important, but a satisfaction score of 1/10 indicates that Jake is dissatisfied with the money he earns), and focus on the main thing: namely, his client’s dissatisfaction with his top motivator, The Creator.

In essence one question was incredibly useful during the session and that was: “In the context of your career how is your ability to work creatively, to be able to innovate and make changes going for you right now?”

Bevis was able to weave that question in numerous times, coming back to it even when seemingly dealing with other motivators.

These questions elicited the fact that Jake had left a job 8 years previously after being overlooked for promotion; he’d left, in his own words, in a fit of pique, a job that he truly loved. Yes, he’d gone on to make more money but had become increasingly disenchanted by it. This is a classic case: the whole Builder motivator – being commercial, competitive and materialistic – wasn’t really a driver for him, but he had fallen into the trap of chasing something that he imagined, falsely, was.

Inner career conflicts

The session and the Map also flagged up an internal career conflict. We have seen this before in Chapter 6 when we considered ‘people’ as our block and how we may perceive others as a result. But, whilst a conflict may lead to procrastination and indecision, if we look at Figure 8.1 again we see internal conflicts are typical; So note, for example, how frequently the pairing of Defender and Searcher occurs. Before returning to the specifics of Jake’s case study, we might ask, why is this? And the answer is not hard to find: it is the fact that we as humans are often on a paradoxical knife-edge whereby the tension drawing us in two different directions can sometimes be the very ‘stretch’ we need to have high performance in a given field or sector. Hence, if we take the first sector listed in Figure 8.1, Accounting, and consider what might make a good accountant, then it is not hard to see that Searcher, with its strong customer-focus, is necessary in a service-based type of sector; but then so is Defender with its need to be safe and secure, to get the figures right. They are definitely opposite types of motivator, but in the real world of accounting, they both can be powerful drivers. The consequence of saying this, of course, is that we, as coaches, are not simplistically trying to sort out client’s internal ‘conflicts’ – or at least not where the conflict may work for them or be advantageous in a given role. The conflict may be a good or a bad thing. Again, context is everything.

So, with that in mind, how would or did Jake reconcile the fact that he wanted innovation and change (the Creator motivator) and yet was closely scored with the desire to be stable and secure – to avoid change in other words (the Defender)!

Jake admitted part of him wanted to relax and have a steady job with a good work–life balance; and part of him wanted to strive to be innovative and creative and to be constantly doing new things in new ways. Following the principles and questioning techniques outlined in Chapters 1, 4 and 5 especially, Bevis discovered that Jake’s dilemma was deep rooted: his mother and father had split up when he was a teenager. His dad was a tradesman who enjoyed a good work–life balance; but his Mum was much more driven and wanted to achieve. This conflict in the home Jake had taken on subconsciously.

Naturally, seeing this clearly for the first time was a revelation to Jake, as was the fact that further questioning revealed that his whole life to date had seen him stuck between a stable lifestyle and a high-flying job, never fully committing to either, and therefore constantly feeling torn. No wonder his performance at work had suffered alongside his work–life balance.

The task, then – the action that Bevis coaxed him towards – would now be linked directly to his motivational preferences: where could he find work which would both allow him opportunity for innovation and creativity yet at the same time provide security and good relationships?

Jake spoke to his former boss at Headline Radio in Ambershire and accepted his old job back! Less than a year later Jake’s boss moved onto bigger and better things, and Jake was promoted to head Headline Radio – both enjoying his role, and having his core motivators met. A great outcome from a coaching intervention.

The most common internal motivational conflicts are outlined in Figures 6.4 and 6.5 in Chapter 6. Let’s consider them now in terms of career development.

What if there is internal conflict within my map?

Well, the first thing is not to panic; this is quite natural as we change and our values evolve around work and life changes. And as we have seen, it is entirely possible to find jobs and roles that thrive on these tensions. The key thing is to develop the necessary self-awareness about them, so that we don’t get wrong-sided by them. Let’s take another real example, then, to work through.

One of the secrets of Motivational Mapping is to realise that things change over time. More specifically, given that the Maps’ hierarchy is correlated with the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs,¹⁷ then over time there is a normal or usual propensity for people to ascend the hierarchy. The same is true for Maps. A typical example would be multi-millionaires who clearly had Builder as their dominant driver in their younger years, but now we sometimes find that Builder is their lowest motivator! This is not as odd as it might sound. Whilst Bill Gates, the richest man in the world (and who has never done a Map, incidentally!) once ran a company that was a commercial marvel, latterly his intention seems to be to give away a large proportion of that wealth to help eradicate malaria throughout the world. In short, what was once Builder has shifted up a gear to become Searcher.¹⁸

Thus, over the longer term certain what we call Growth motivators will become stronger (specific and circumstantial changes not withstanding). The three Growth motivators are, Searcher (meaning and purpose), Spirit (freedom and autonomy), and Creator (innovation and change). So, as you get older, and as you develop as a person, there is a high probability these motivators will become more important to you. This certainly seems the pattern in the case of Leon.

We see that Leon has two Growth motivators in his top three; and as these are likely to increase in strength, they are possibly a priority in terms of fulfilment. Leon, historically, was heavily motivated by money, competition and targets, and controlling the people within his business. This led to long hours of work. But now, as his marriage evolved with parenthood, these old patterns were now no longer fulfilling; note how dissatisfied he is with his number one motivator, Spirit, the desire for freedom.

Internal conflicts for Leon

Spirit v Director or in everyday language FREEDOM v CONTROL

The Map crystallised what Leon had been thinking for a while: his desire for personal freedom had overtaken his need for power, control, and influence. Therefore, he needed an exit plan. This was a big step.

Searcher v Builder or in everyday language MEANING v MONEY

Leon stated that currently this wasn’t a conflict for him, as he was paid well for what he did and still found his work incredibly meaningful. This meant that whatever exit plan was devised needed to allow him to continue to earn and do what he found most meaningful. So in essence this is another example where a potential conflict turned out not to be present.

External conflicts

Leon explained that he was finding his potential exit route blocked through his relationship with his co-director with whom he had built the business. They were good friends and Leon felt both guilty about leaving his friend behind and also felt blocked to a degree with regards to having to agree the exit plan with Shaun.

The two external conflicts in play here were:

• Director (Leon)     v     Friend (Shaun’s map)
• Spirit (Leon)     v     Defender (Shaun’s map).

Shaun’s need to keep things stable and secure and to keep things on an even keel financially were constraining Leon’s plans for personal freedom and the changes required within the business to facilitate that.

The outcome

Through the coaching, Leon and Shaun agreed an exit plan whereby Leon would set up a new office in Singapore (their first overseas office) once he had assisted the London branch to a performance target.

This was successfully executed and now Leon is in the process of selling his share of the business to spend greater time with the family (meeting the growing Spirit motivator) and to do what he now finds more meaningful: himself pursuing a career in coaching (fuelling the growing and evolving Searcher motivator)!

As career coaches we want to boost the success of our clients; and this, from what we have already covered, is a complex issue. Rather than focusing, as most career coaches do, simply on promotion, getting ahead, and the usual symptoms of what constitutes a ‘career’, we, as Motivational Mapping coaches, are advocating a slightly different approach: what constitutes success itself is the first thing to determine – it’s actually easy to be successful at what you subsequently discover has little value – and what that is must be defined partially by our motivational profile. In other words, by what we really want. That said, we have also advocated digging down at a deeper level, especially to one’s core mission. Alongside all this we still have to be savvy and recognise that employers – if we wish to be employed – have requirements that either play to our strengths, or prove to be problematic for us; and as coaches we need to help our clients address these requirements.

Ultimately, this coaching for a career comes down to finding a fit between what we really want, or what has been called our “deep gladness”,¹⁹ and what the world hungers for us to offer it! Seven steps, then, may be useful for a career coach to review with their client:

1. What are your motivators – what do you want?
2. What is your mission, your verb, that you must stay focused on?
3. What subjects or topics²⁰ interest you?
4. In what sectors/fields do these subjects operate?
5. What role or occupation in this sector/field do you really like?
6. So what type of career would meet these criteria?
7. What organisations, if any, offer these kind of jobs and hire these kind of people? If none exists, then do you want to create such a position for yourself²¹?

We have looked in Figure 8.1 at the data which show how specific sectors attract certain motivational types. Now it would be good to reverse that pattern and show how certain motivators are perhaps best suited to certain types of occupation (see Figure 8.6).

When you have done that, consider column 3: What type of scenario or situation actually provides that sort of opportunity? Figure 8.8 gives an example of how this is done.

We see the conclusion from wanting a ‘stable and secure organisation’ means, inevitably, that we will want to pitch our efforts at larger corporates, or better still, large local or municipal authorities, or – better still – government employment where the risks of losing one’s job are markedly reduced. If we start considering each of our motivators in this way – viewing it from the perspective of the qualities that we want in our role or job – then a picture begins to emerge. In this case, with someone with Defender, Star, and Searcher – and often when Star is in the top three it occurs with Searcher – we see from the selection of qualities we need to consider a possible role within a corporation or government agency, which will certainly provide a clear and hierarchical management structure, and where there will be customer services that one can operate within. Given the motivators and qualities selected, conversely, the client would be ill-advised to start applying for a post in a start-up company or a small-to-medium sized business which invariably function in a ‘seat-of-their-pants’, ‘all-hands-to-the-wheel’ kind of way.

Finally, what are some good ideas to boost your career; ideas that really are proven to work? Here are six that can really help anyone develop faster.

1. Seek more training. Training is the key. Do we have the knowledge, the skills, the motivations to cope with the accelerating rate of change? Use the Pareto Principle: Seek to be in the top 20 per cent of the top 20 per cent – one of the top 4 per cent!
2. Review your motivation/commitment to your job every month. It’s strange how nearly everyone has 100 per cent motivation when they first start a job. Suddenly, four years or four weeks or four days later, they don’t. Don’t wait till everyone else knows your heart’s not in it.
3. Update your CV every 6 months. This increases your sense of control – which boosts your self-esteem, which – in turn – boosts your actual performance levels.
4. Start a diary. If that sounds too much hassle, then at least log daily what you’ve achieved. It’s estimated that some 70 per cent of our self-talk is negative.²² Concentrate on your achievements.
5. Actively request new tasks from your boss! Don’t wait to be asked. Don’t, in fact, be passive – like most people.
6. Imagine you are the boss. They have problems to solve – who can solve these problems for them – can you solve them now? The more problems you solve, the more they like, recommend, depend on and are likely to advance and reward you.

These ideas are suggestive for both client and coach; using them yourself or suggesting them to a client can make a big difference to future outcomes. It’s certainly true, however, that we have not covered all there is to cover in career coaching or simply in the topic of careers itself; but we have provided here some key insights that Motivational Maps add to our understanding of the issue, and of the ability to generate effective change.

Summary

1. Different sectors tend to develop differing motivational profiles over time.
2. Verbs help us define our mission.
3. Employers consider about 10 different factors in employing anybody.
4. Usually two or three (Pareto) of these factors are critical.
5. Energy, or motivation, is almost certainly the single most important factor in a successful career.
6. Motivational Maps can be used to help gain greater clarity on career choices.
7. There is a seven-step process to bridge the gap between your ‘deep gladness’ and the world’s hunger for it.
8. Each of the nine motivators has three defining qualities that help identify what we are looking for in our career options.
9. Six proven ideas can accelerate your career, if you use them.