Activity 1.1

If you have read Mapping Motivation, the earlier book, you may remember the answers to this question, but keep in mind that personnel in teams change all the time. We need to be constantly asking our groups/teams, what are the characteristics of a real, high performing team? Ask any team you work with this question, and jot down your own answers to it. Comparing your answers with those in your team can be very revealing.

My earlier book suggested that there were four distinctive characteristics that enabled a group to become a team.

Teams have a clear remit, by which we mean a mission, a purpose, something definite that must be achieved. Teams practise interdependency, not independency and not co-dependency! By this we signify that each person’s gifts, abilities and talents are needed, are necessary, to achieve the remit or the objective. Not too many people, so there is redundancy and bloat; and not too few, so that there is under-capacity to deliver. Teams hold a strong belief. In what exactly? By this we connote a strong belief in working as a team: that it is better to co-operate – more can be achieved – than to rely on individual effort. Finally, teams are accountable. By this we suggest that team players understand that they are accountable in two ways. First, they are accountable to each other, so that they can rely on and trust each other. Second, that they are accountable to the wider organisation for their results; in other words, they practise the avoidance of creating fiefdoms, silos, autonomous units within that organisation. In this way they minimise friction, conflict, inefficiencies and ultimately ineffectiveness.

Thus, the journey from being a Group, which is more or less random, to becoming a Team, which is more or less structured and purposeful, goes something like Figure 1.2.

We need, then, to encourage the shift from the group state and its attendant long- and short-term problems to the team state where high performance is possible. How do we do this and how can Motivational Maps help? An initial question which we did not deal with in Mapping Motivation, or the subsequent books, is this: can a Motivational Map help us identify a weak team, or more accurately a group, in the first instance? Put another way: remit, interdependency, belief and accountability do not on the face of it seem subject to motivational states, but are they?

Activity 1.2

Thinking motivationally, how might a motivational profile have a bearing on whether a unit of people is a group or a team? In order to answer this question, you may wish to review the material in The Summary of Motivational Maps after the Introduction. Also, consider Figure 1.3, which is a Motivational Map for a small IT company (we will anonymise and call it Business on Line Ltd, or BoL) employing seven people, and who create webpages mainly for other businesses. What two or three pieces of information in this Map might provide a clue as to whether this is a group or a team?

Now we need to do two things: first, without having any further background information on this particular case, let’s see what the numbers and the configuration suggest to us. Second, if we add some more context, is there anything else the Map tells us? Keep in mind the central question: is this a group or is it a team?

As an initial assessment three things indicate that this may not be a top performing team. The most obvious fact is the motivation of the seven people averages only 56%. This puts them in the third quadrant of motivation,⁶ the Risk Zone. Motivation is beginning to drain away and some serious actions need to occur to reverse that; therefore, this seems highly unlikely to be a team.

Second, we do know that this is a small IT company that creates websites for other businesses; it is a B-2-B (business-to-business) type of company. Therefore, we also know that it is a professional company trading on its expertise to create value for its clients. In other words, it is not a standard shop selling common-place confectionary or ice cream! But how committed to expertise is this company? Only one person, Max Eaton, has the Expert in their top three profile, and overall Expert is only fifth. The Spirit/Builder combination of the top two motivators instead suggest a sales-driven rather than an expertise-driven company. So, are the motivators really at odds with the ostensible purpose of the company? If so, that would also suggest a group rather than a team.

Finally, we see with the Spirit as the dominant motivator, and five people with it very strongly in their profiles, plus what we call the ‘polarity reinforcement’⁷ of the Director motivator being so low, there is every chance that this unit has no real leadership. This point needs some careful unpacking.

So consider: we have three threads of evidence pointing to a group not a team. Put another way, a coach or consultant could without having met any of the members of this team form a reasonably accurate impression of what is going on. The motivation is low – 56% – which practically means energy levels are low, whereas energy levels are usually higher in high performing teams. The motivators of the group are almost certainly at odds with the central purpose (remit) of the organisation in terms of its service delivery to clients. In fact, one could go further: it is highly likely that clients are being ‘overcharged’ for services, since making money (the classic sales combination of Spirit and Builder) is highly motivating. And the polarity reinforcement is fascinating. Essentially, Spirit (highest motivator) and Director (second lowest) are in conflict: one seeks autonomy and the other seeks control. Thus, if an individual or team had both in their top three there would be an inner tension as one was faced with having to go for more autonomy, and so relinquish control, or take on more control (via responsibilities) and so limit further one’s autonomy, or freedom to act. But here they are spaced far apart, which in a sense doubles up the power of the dominant motivator, Spirit, for the Director motivator is not present to curtail or weaken it. This we call polarity reinforcement whereby a dominant motivator is made even stronger.

But that said, in the creation of teams Spirit is one of the more ‘difficult team motivators’.⁸ If we think, then, of seven people, five of whom wish to be ‘free’ and quite strongly so (consider the scores: 29, 23, 25, 34, 27 out of 40 maximum) and only two wish to direct and control, and no-one does as their top motivator, then it is apparent that in the absence of strong management, the team is not likely to function as a team – individuals will do their ‘own thing’ according to their own job titles.

Activity 1.3

We have established purely from a consideration of their Motivational Map team profile that this is not a high performing team. How does this analysis relate to the four key characteristics of a team that we identified in Figure 1.1?

We only reviewed three points evident from the Motivational Map shown in Figure 1.3, but they are telling. In particular, the point about how the motivators may conflict with the work that the company undertakes suggests motivators and purpose (The Remit) are not aligned. Surely, a fundamental issue? Second, the dominance of the Spirit motivator in a group this small, alongside the polarity reinforcement of the low Director, points to independence within the group, rather than interdependence, which is necessary for the team to be high-performing. Further, the same dominance of Spirit also indicates potentially a lack of accountability within the group, either to each other or to the company itself.

In other words, three of the four key characteristics are almost certainly not met and we can know this merely from studying the Motivational Map. The one characteristic that this analysis is not being specific about is the third one: belief. Do they collectively believe in the power of teams over groups? The Spirit motivator alone being so dominant would not answer that question, for what if the team were 88% motivated? Then, we might think there were some significant mavericks in the team but with the right leadership that still might be high-performing; however, here we have the weak motivational score of 56% which rather clinches the notion that there is no real belief. Low motivational scores are usually, but not always, correlated with low performance⁹ and productivity levels, and there is nothing here to suggest otherwise. In short (and I think quite incredibly), we can see at a glance, and without reference to any other information about BoL, that this is a group and not a team, and certainly not a high-performing team.

If we now return to this company/team Map and begin supplying a little more detail, we can go even further.

Activity 1.4

Figure 1.4 is exactly the same as Figure 1.3, except that abbreviated job titles have been added and we have added the PMA scores. So we see, for example, that Louise Smith¹⁰ is a company director; in other words, a senior manager of the company. Actually, the managing director, Theo Smith, is her husband, so this is a husband-and-wife, mom-and-pop, classic small business. But given this information, what does it add to our understanding of the Motivational profile? What else might one deduce knowing what each individual’s role is within the company? Make some notes on your observation studying Figure 1.4.

A number of important points emerge as we move towards suggestions for improving the situation. But we need now to do a more sophisticated reading of the PMA scores in two ways: first, what their overall pattern begins to tell us; and, second, how the motivators relate to the job roles of individuals.

What we are talking about here is how ‘satisfied’ are the motivators, especially the most important ones, the top three in fact.

If we study the top motivator, the Spirit, we find that five people have it in their top three. Bob has it as his top motivator with a score of 29/40. How satisfied is he with that particular motivator? 3/10. Not very, then! Now if we take each individual who has Spirit motivator and look at their satisfaction rating, we get Figure 1.5.

Activity 1.5

What deductions would you make from looking at these numbers?

At Motivational Maps we consider 6 to be the ‘good’ or average score, so here we have 5.¹¹ So what we are seeing is how the majority of people in the team (and this case the company) feel about the motivator that is most important to them: namely, how much freedom and autonomy do they feel they actually get working for BoL? Clearly, not enough. The deduction we would make is that there is not enough freedom and autonomy to satisfy the team. 7 would be the minimum acceptable number and 8 would be preferable by far. How will this be addressed? We will come to this important question shortly.

But first, there is more here: Theo has Spirit and it is his number one motivator, and yet as leader his score is only 6 – average, OK, will do, but hardly getting the kind of motivation that might seriously energise him. And when we consider that he is overall only 66% motivated, then we know that he is in the Boost Zone of motivation, but not well in; there is a danger of falling back in the Risk Zone below 60%. It is true that he and his wife (76%) are the most highly motivated of all the staff. This is something we frequently comment on as being highly necessary: leaders (in this case the owners as well) are more highly motivated than their employees. But whilst this is good in itself, as being less motivated would be truly disastrous and unsustainable as a business, there are reasons in the Map for suspecting just how ‘energising’ or motivating their higher levels of motivation are for the rest of the staff.

If we look at the nature of why they are more highly motivated, then something quite obvious emerges: five staff have the Builder in their top three. How satisfied are the employees (not including the owners) with the financial remuneration of the company? Well, the answer is staring us in the face: they are 5/10, 5/10, and 2/10 satisfied! In other words, not satisfied at all. How satisfied with the financial remunerations are the leaders/owners? They are 8/10 and 7/10 satisfied. In other words, pretty satisfied, though doubtless still wanting more. Clearly, the business is making money, which it is, but the rewards are going to the owners. Thus, the higher motivational levels of the leaders/owners are not really so significant since its source is largely monetary, which they control.

And the monetary control and acquisition can lead into other motivational areas too: it is probably significant that Louise is 8/10 satisfied with her top motivator, Defender, since that means security. It is highly likely that remunerating oneself sufficiently promotes high feelings of security too. Note here that her third motivator, Searcher, is only ‘OK’ at 6/10.

Here, for now then, we have a final point to make: both Louise and Theo have conflicting top motivators. For Louise it is the Defender/Searcher in the top three; for Theo it is the Spirit/Director, which we have commented on before. The point about this is that although conflicts in motivators can be productive, giving, for example, someone a dual perspective on situations, they can also be extremely stymying: indecision and procrastination can result from motivators pulling in different directions. In Louise’s case this can be in the area of going for change (Searcher, making a difference) and yet actively seeking to resist it (Defender, security and maintaining the status quo). Further, especially with Theo’s Spirit (I am free) and Director (but I manage you) motivators, it is easy for him to appear inconsistent with staff and even failing to walk the talk: as in staff perceiving Theo saying one thing, but the rules not applying to him.

Before we come to the vital issue of what to do about all of this, let us now extend what we did in Figure 1.5 to all the PMA scores for all the motivators. What does that look like?

Activity 1.6

From this Figure 1.6 you will clearly see that Spirit and Builder are far and away the two most important motivators driving this group/team/company. However, it is always good to review the ‘non-motivators’ as it were, and see if any issues might arise. The three most important low motivators here are: Star, which is in no-one’s profile and scores significantly lower than any other motivator, Friend and Expert, which have only one person each who have it in their top three profile. What issues might these low motivators suggest for the functioning of the team?

Indeed, there are some very important points to make as a result of what seem inconsequentially low motivators. Are they that important? After the work of Hertzberg, we call these ‘hygiene factors’.¹² Another way of explaining them would be as Achilles’ heels: weaknesses that can trip you up if you don’t pay attention to them, and finally, as in the actual case of Achilles, kill you – your team’s productivity, your business – if the heel becomes exposed.¹³

Take Star, then, the most obvious and seemingly irrelevant motivator to this ‘team’. Could this possibly have any adverse effects in the functioning of the group/team? Surprisingly, yes! And this is to do with the remit or purpose of the company. We always have to, with Maps, consider the context. It is not enough to say that a very low Star motivator in any team is going to be a problem, for that would not be true. But in this case we have to ask, what does this team actually do? What is their remit?

Their remit is to create web pages for clients who wish to …? To what?

Activity 1.7

Think about this carefully before reading on. What do most clients wish to do when they commission a web company to create their site and pages for them? If you have a website, what do you wish and hope it will do for you or your organisation?

They wish to stand out, they wish to be noticed on the internet, they almost invariably want to be found and for their particular offering – whatever it is – to be attractive, to be compelling, and to convert browsers into leads and ultimately paying customers. In short, one aspect of creating web pages is understanding how to make clients shine – that is, to star!! But if you have nothing in your own (team) drive or energies or motivations that identifies with that ‘feeling’, then it is more likely that you are going to be creating functional websites, but not ‘starring’ ones. You may have the technology and the templates through which to create something for your clients, but you do not have the feeling, the desire, for how this might look in a way that might more deeply satisfy them.

Now this point needs qualifying. For there will be clients whose own Star motivator is low and whose expectations are purely functional, and so the kind of work that BoL does is likely to be sufficient or some might say, ‘good enough’. However, for the more ambitious, more demanding, more market-savvy kind of client, there will be a real problem emerging somewhere down the line. And indeed, this is exactly what occurred and was reflected in the high churn-rate of clients; conversely, this also meant that what the company/team motivators actually were – that is, very sales-orientated – was constantly in play and being exercised. The company was quite brilliant at bringing large numbers of new clients on board, but then far less good at retaining them.

A final, and advanced point, here is that the Star is a relationship driven motivator: it requires other people for it to be fully realised. It also requires a certain level of quality interaction with one’s ‘self’ (‘self’ here understood as referring to an individual or a team or an organisation). So, for example, on an individual level, the Star motivated person may spend a lot of time seeking to impress others, and the most immediate and obvious way of doing this is via how one appears – clothes, accoutrements, knick-knacks, make-up, grooming and so on and so forth. But Star motivated teams do the same: they forge a specific look and identity, and this differentiates them. This ‘identity’ becomes attractive to others, since it is invariably (when successful and well-thought through) successful. There is, then, in the Star motivator a self-concern that can be positively beneficial not only to clients but to employees as well: it’s a sense in which employees and clients alike get lots of specific ‘strokes’ (this is a metaphor, but think cats) that turns them on!¹⁴

To have such a low Star motivator for the team profile is, then, to run a triple risk: that no-one is interested in allowing others within the team to shine; and also to appear as a somewhat (to use the word as a metaphor) ‘dowdy’ group who take little interest in how they present themselves. And additionally, if the purpose of websites be to make one’s clients appear sensational, fabulous, or some other strong ‘star’ word, then it is highly likely that this component of the remit will fall far short. Phew! These are all serious issues for the longevity of the company.

More briefly, we have two other ‘low’ motivators in this team mix: The Friend and the Expert. Picking up on the theme of Relationship motivators (of which Star is one), Friend too is Relationship driven. If we look at the RAG score¹⁵ for the team we find: 29–34–37.

In other words (see Figure 1.7) Relationship forming and sustaining is the least important set of motivators for this group. Indeed, Friend being low is a polarity reinforcement of Spirit being high: there is tension between wanting to belong and wanting to be autonomous. Clearly, here – aside from the work – there is little connecting the team members. Because this is low, the leader and senior team need to make a special effort to prevent team fragmentation and disintegration, which in this case will manifest itself as high staff turnover. Coming back to our model, this means that interdependence is unlikely, and independence will be far more to the fore.

Finally, it is slightly concerning that Expert is not in the top four. Virtually every other IT company we have mapped has Expert somewhere in the top three; the fact is that computer programmers tend to be by their very nature somewhat ‘geeky’ and into coding and their specialisms, classic signs of the expert. Expert is fifth in the rankings, but this is only because one member, Max, has it as a spike¹⁶ at 30/40. If his score were only 20 or even 10, then the whole ranking of fifth would quite dramatically change. The good thing is that he is 7/10 satisfied with his current expertise and learning, but how is learning disseminated and promoted within a company like this? The key point that arises from this deliberation is simply this: how can the remit of the company – to create effective websites for their clients – really be serviced if the learning levels, the expertise, is low? And indeed, down the line, this did have important consequences for the company.

Activity 1.8

I discussed earlier about addressing issues and we now come to that point. What would you recommend as activities that this team/company might do to strengthen its teamwork (given it is a group) and to become more successful? Also, what do you think actually happened in this case study?

What is vital now is to establish a core part of the Motivational Mapping process; the part that is called Reward Strategies. We have covered some of this in earlier books,¹⁷ but since we are now talking about top performing teams, it is vital that we cover this in even more detail. It is important to stress, too, that Reward Strategies, as a process, cannot be applied mechanically: no one ‘reward’ will work in all situations at all times. Furthermore, keep in mind that there are rewards for individuals, for teams, and for whole organisations, and these are quite distinct. Our book, Mapping Motivation for Coaching, clearly had a focus on individuals; here we consider rewards which are more appropriate for the team (noting, of course, this particular team is the whole company).

The Motivational Team Map itself provides automated ideas in its output. Five suggestions are made for the top motivator, and then three each for the second and third motivators in the team’s profile. This looks like the information in Figure 1.8 where we have the recommendations for BoL’s top motivator.

Clearly, these recommendations – along with the ones for Builder and Defender in the case of BoL – need to be considered as a starting point for further examination. They are particularly geared around immediate and practical advice to the leader of this team, but they are also brief headlines that will need some expansion if they are to be implemented. Finally, because this team is the whole company, it is highly probable, as in fact happened, that the Reward Strategies needed also to include organisational level rewards.

Finally, the effective consultant here will bring in the hygiene factor of the Star motivator. This will not be something anybody within the team is motivated to want to do. But the entrée is by way of connecting it to a motivator they do want: namely, the Builder. What if, one might say, this company stood out – developed one or two unique aspects that differentiated it from others – what would that do to sales? Using some example of a competitor type company that seems to be extremely successful financially, and is not too close to home, might well spur the owners to want to up their game.¹⁸ Also, check the Resources Section for team ideas for the Star motivator to see if any of these appear applicable in the circumstance of your low Star team!