Implicit Motives

Human behavior is driven by implicit motives. These are largely unconscious and relatively stable. They are deeply rooted in our behavior and often difficult to assess. The Big 3 of the implicit motives are the need for power, the need for affiliation, and the need for achievement. 

Cognitive Bias

We are wired for bias. As Kahneman points out, our thinking is flawed because we usually want to think (too) fast. Biases like the endowment bias, the selection bias, the optimism bias etc. govern our thinking and our decisions. There are many biases. Leaders need to know how people think and why they think in mysterious ways.

Personality

Personality is a set of robust traits that describe and predict behavior. People can be more or less open, conscientious, extraverted, agreeable or neurotic. There are no types. Our personality is rich with nuances. To understand someone’s behavior we need to study personality. What are people’s strengths? What are the risks of derailment? And finally, what are preferences and values that drive one’s behavior. It is clear that personality is related to the set of implicit motives that are driving behavior.

Engagement

Engagement, and especially work engagement, is both the fuel and the compass of behavior. Without engagement, there is no behavior. Work engagement is about more than motivation. It’s also about vigor. Being willing to perform is not enough. It’s also about being able.

Channeling Behavior

We need to understand that organizations do not behave. People do. Organizations are complex human systems that gather people around a common purpose. The reasons why people are willing and able to contribute to the purpose of the organization are plenty. We could hope that it is all about purpose. We could hope that people are willing to set their personal ambitions aside and throw themselves in the game, but that is not always true. Some people work in your organization because it quenches their thirst for power, affiliation and achievement. These have nothing to do with the organization and its purpose.

So the challenge is to create a context where those needs are met and to manage the balance between personal needs and collective needs. Power motives can be helpful because they are linked to leadership-like behaviors. But they can also lead to abusive leadership, risky behavior, fraud etc. The need for affiliation might lead to prosocial behaviors like organizational citizen behavior but when exaggerated difficult decisions might be cumbersome. The need for achievement looks like it is a perfect fit with organizational needs as it makes people learn, experiment, accept hardship but when the achievement is not linked to the organizational needs or when the need for achievement is too strong, it might lead to obsessive behaviors, a deteriorated sense of wellbeing etc.

Channeling behavior is one of the biggest challenges in organizational design.