A person’s behavior can be influenced without the person knowing it.
Take, for example, a thoroughfare that narrows into a single lane shortly after a stop light. Once the thoroughfare becomes a single lane, commuters are at the mercy of the cars in front for the speed at which they may travel. As such, there is a constant race to be at the head of, and thereby lead, the line of cars shortly after the stoplight.
Even if you cannot be the first car to enter the single lane, you can manipulate drivers into travelling faster by making them fight to be ahead of you. Generally, once pushed to a certain speed, most drivers are inclined to maintain that speed – often as a result of hubris or inertia.
To make the other drivers fight to be ahead, accelerate to your desired speed. Either they will drive faster than you and maintain that speed, or you will pass them and not be hindered by their speed.
By identifying what motivates a person, you gain a tool to affect desired behaviors or responses from the person.
For example, by identifying what motivates members of your team to excel, you can adapt your approach to each member to facilitate a more efficient and successful process. Employees that are motivated by constant affirmations will respond best to engaged managers, whereas employees motivated by competition generally tend to respond best to independence and unique assignments, even within group projects.
Likewise, by identifying a supervisor’s motivation, you can adapt your approach to achieve the response you seek. For example, supervisors driven by the esteem of upper management will respond best to proposals that are tied into rewards for or positive responses from upper management.
Similarly, identifying a colleague’s motivation provides the means to gain support from or defuse conflict with that colleague. For example, competitive colleagues are more cooperative with peers who appear to be favored by or chummy with supervisors or upper management.
