Finding Your Design Team’s Intrinsic Motivations
As a UX manager, understanding the motivations of your creative team is essential for fostering a win-win relationship. Introducing Moving Motivators.
Designing Success: Harnessing the Power of Moving Motivators 🚀
The world of UX design thrives on change and innovation. However, understanding how these changes impact the intrinsic motivations of your design team can be a game-changer.
Enter Moving Motivators, a powerful tool designed to help UX designers visualize how change affects their core desires and motivations.
Developed by Jurgen Appelo, the founder of Management 3.0, Moving Motivators offers a unique perspective on motivation and its influence on organizational change.
Today, we’ll delve into the process and benefits of this fascinating exercise for design managers.
The process
1. Unlocking Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation, the inner drive that pushes us to excel, contrasts with extrinsic motivation, which involves seeking external rewards like bonuses or promotions.
Understanding this fundamental difference is the first step to unlocking the potential of Moving Motivators.
2. The 10 Intrinsic Motivations
Let’s explore the ten intrinsic motivations, each with its unique significance:
- Honour: Finding pride in aligning personal values with work.
- Mastery: Challenging competence within one’s abilities.
- Freedom: Independence in work and responsibilities.
- Relatedness: Building social connections at work.
- Power: Influencing the surrounding environment.
- Curiosity: The desire to explore and ponder.
- Status: Acknowledgment from colleagues.
- Acceptance: Gaining approval from peers.
- Order: Maintaining stability through rules.
- Goal: Reflecting on life’s purpose in work.
3. Organising the importance of motivators
Determine which motivators hold the most significance for your team members. Arrange the cards in order of importance, from least to most crucial.
This exercise fosters a deeper understanding of individual motivations within your team.
4. Navigating change with Moving Motivators
Discuss various topics of change, such as embracing new challenges, setting goals, leading projects, or taking on new responsibilities.
As changes occur, move the motivator cards up or down based on their impact.
Observe whether there’s an overall increase or decrease in motivators.
5. Reflect and discuss
Engage in meaningful conversations with your team about their most and least important motivators.
This dialogue not only strengthens relationships but also enhances collaboration and teamwork.
Moreover, it serves as a valuable tool for personal reflection and decision-making.
Key takeaways
In the dynamic world of UX design, change is constant, and its effects can be profound.
Moving Motivators forces us to pause and reflect on what truly drives us.
As a UX manager, understanding the motivations of your creative team is essential for fostering a win-win relationship.
This exercise unveils the keys to meaningful motivation, enabling you to guide your team toward success in their professional journey.
So, take a moment to ask yourself, “What truly matters to me?” “What fuels my drive?”
Moving Motivators can help you find the answers and empower your team for success.
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Hey 👋 I’m Chris, the Founder of UX Playbook.
Here’s more about me:
👨🏫 I’m a Ex-Head of Design, with 10 years of experience in tech, building products & teams
🦄 I worked with Fortune 100s like Google, Nike, Coca Cola, 21st Century Fox, and startup unicorns
👨👩👧👦 I’ve built a community of over 62,000 designers
🤝 I’ve supported over 11,000 designers with my free UX resources, blog posts, and mentorship
🚀 I’ve been the founding designer for 8 startups
💸 I previously grew my own freelance one-person UX consultancy to $26,000/month then burnt out
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