Why Most Leaders Get Motivation Wrong

What actually motivates people at work? 

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel Lolacher talks with leadership advisor, researcher, and The Motivation Mix co-author James Root about why motivation isn’t one-size-fits-all. James shares how outdated workplace assumptions continue to shape leadership, talent, and team dynamics — and why understanding what truly drives people is essential to building healthier cultures and better results. A practical conversation on motivation, individuality, and leading people more effectively.

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Transcript

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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have James Root, and here is why he is awesome. He's a senior partner at Bain and Chairman at Bain Futures. He's an adjunct professor on the faculty of the Kellogg H-K-U-S-T executive, MBA program, and a fellow of Hughes Hall College, Cambridge. And you may have seen some of his insights shared in Harvard Business View or the Wall Street Journal, or seen him on CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg.

He's getting around. And I should mention, he also has himself a book that I think we're gonna be talking a little bit about and you may certainly check out. It's called Archtype Effect, Unlocking the Six Types of Motivation. And he is here. Hi James.

James Root: Hi Russel. Good to see you.

Russel Lolacher: You as well, sir. Before we get into motivation, 'cause I know you have six types of motivation. I'm, you know what, I'm gonna shut up 'cause that's way too much Spoily stuff I want to get, we'll get into that in a minute. I have to start the conversation like I always like to start, which is sort of understanding a bit about you and your background.

So James, what is your best or worst employee experience?

James Root: Yes. I'll warn you, this is a difficult story to tell, but I do want to tell it. I had been a, a what we call a summer associate at Bain and Company in 1988, and then I was back at business school for my second year pondering the offer to return full-time to join Bain. And on December the 21st, 1988, PanAm, flight 1 0 3 was blown up by Libby and terrorists over Lockee, Scotland.

All 259 passengers and crew were murdered as were 11 people on the ground in Lockerby as well. Two of the victims were Bain managers flying from London to New York for a pre-Christmas meeting. And I had gotten to know one of them very, I very much admire him over the course of my summer internship.

So what has this tragedy to do with employee satisfaction? Well, here I was not a main employee a student. Getting ready for Christmas as Nicholas and Peter should have been with their families and in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. Bain wanted me to know that two of their own had been killed and they wanted me to hear from them that one of them was Peter.

And to this day, I do not know how they did this because I was not even staying at my own flat in London at the time. I was house sitting for a relative, a couple of miles away. On at the time of the bombing, but somehow someone at Bain worked out where I was and hand delivered a letter carrying this awful news.

Russel Lolacher: Wow.

James Root: I don't think I will ever again experience such a powerful expression of what it means to be part of a team particularly this team of how we treat each other, even at times of unspeakable tragedy and of how leaders think and behave. So I, I signed my offer letter the next day.

Russel Lolacher: To reach out to someone that wasn't even on the payroll. You weren't, you were not a member of Bain, you were not part of the quote unquote Bain family or any

James Root: not at that time. No.

Russel Lolacher: And the amount of effort, to your point, you weren't where you were supposed to be. You weren't an easy Google search. You weren't an easy, where is he or how, how did they even know about you?

James Root: Well,

Russel Lolacher: to, to, to that

James Root: yeah, I mean, I've been, I've been there

Russel Lolacher: knowing your

James Root: I've been there for the summer, right? I had 10, whatever we did, I can't remember, two months or something in, in the London office as was then. So we were, I was very familiar and I think that they were sort of hoping that I'd come back and it made me an offer.

So I was familiar with them. But I, you know, I was technically, as you said, I was not an employee. And how they found out where I was physically staying. I still don't know, and I've, I've, I've never had the heart to kind of find out because the people have probably left and we're a much bigger firm today, so it's not so relevant, but just, it, it really, it meant so much to me because I had become friendly with one of these amazing guys who, who was murdered by these terrorists.

Russel Lolacher: And not to, not to boil it down to be too specific. 'cause I certainly, that's a horrific story showing amazing leadership, humanity. I'm curious for yourself going forward as a leader, possibly having your own staff. You talked about how influential that was, how inspiration it was, what does it do to you when tragedy strikes and, and certainly not to that level, but even just bad news.

How does that influence your decision and your way of operating?

James Root: Well, it's, it's been enormously influential. The, the role modeling that, that set for me as a way that this firm was going to behave in the worst of times. I had already seen how it behaved in the best of times because the summer internship has a sort of celebratory element to it as well as a getting the work done element to it.

I'd already seen that. It gives us permission to set aside hierarchy, set aside formality, just to be human beings. And over the course of a long career at Bain and outside, numerous examples, I'm sure we all have this people dying. The nine 11 tragedy when many of us were in New York City and multiple other situations which have called upon us to just to kind of declare ourselves to be.

You know, in pain and in sympathy with each other about difficult times and difficult personal situations and to support. So I was, I, I feel like it had, I didn't know it at the time, I was too young, but I feel like later coming back to Bain and building a career here, it's had an enormous influence on what I think of as the right way to behave as a leader in difficult situations.

Russel Lolacher: You've got me on pause here a little bit with this story. Understandably so. And you, I appreciate the warning ahead of time. This is gonna be a bit emotional. I, I love how much this is for a new employee. 'cause that's where new leadership, where that early influences have such impact. 'cause I can't tell you how many times I've asked this question before and people are like, oh, when I was 20 I had the worst experience and it's been with me for 30 years. Right. That happens all the time. But for you as well, that's so formative because you're being, you're seeing what leadership looks like at a time when you don't know or have ever defined leadership for yourself. So why not have that sort of set into your DNA in the early days because somebody 20, 30, 40 years into their career might look at that quite differently than somebody that's just budding and starting and sort of being molded still.

James Root: Very much so. Very much I think all of us who. Because I think they went to all of the summer associates with the same news, and I think all of us were just staggered maybe is the word, but also embraced and and, and heartened by it as well.

Russel Lolacher: Well, this is gonna be a horrible segue, James right into our conversation.

James Root: sure Russel, whether that, but I, you, you asked the question direct. It always is the thing that's a front of mind for me. Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: And, and I'll be honest, it's not, it's not unrelated to what we're talking about, which is motivation because a lot of people are motivated to work harder for organizations that have visions and ways of working that they believe in. So I mean, it's not too far removed from what we're gonna be talking about because I'll be honest, that's inspiring.

And why wouldn't you wanna put in your best effort? Why wouldn't you want to try your hardest for an organization that's gonna treat you like that? So see, segue wasn't horrible. It wasn't a horrible segue.

James Root: I got it.

Russel Lolacher: So kicking off with our first question, I do like to start all my conversations with a bit of clarity, bit of definition, and you've defined six different motivations, but I want to go even deeper than that and just focus on what motivation even is to, to your mind when it comes to the workplace.

Can you define it for me?

James Root: Yes. And I'm gonna, if, if it's okay, I'm gonna back up a little bit to get to that. My, and I love the topics that you, that you treat on your, on your pod here, Russel. I've studied them. I, I wanna start by saying I think work is pretty, pretty messy at the moment. I think we're sort of messy phase, I think gig work and remote work and.

Cross-functional teams and self-managing teams and all these skill mismatches and aging workforce working with ecosystem partner firms, just as close as you work with their own. And then of course, this avalanche of AI coming, which may change everything. It may change something. I don't, we don't know yet, but I, I think it's pretty stressful.

I think there's a lot of stress at work for a lot of people, including people who manage talent as well. It's quite complicated for them, and I think part of the problem. Is that we spend so much time thinking about tasks, skills, jobs that we don't spend any time thinking about what motivates the individual who has the skills or will do the tasks or, or owns the jobs.

And I think that's a gap. As soon as we stop to think about motivation, the thing that jumps out for me is that our talent systems. Most of, most firms, most organizations, nonprofits, governments private sector firms, public sector, public listed firms use are very, very poorly suited to first of all just acknowledge and accommodate the differences and then embrace them and use them as some positive aspect to kinda making more good jobs.

Because to me, ultimately motivation means I'm in a job that I feel is good for me and is absolutely demonstrably good for the firm as well. So why do I think we have such a gap in these, in these systems? I, I think it's because we are lazy in our assumptions, and the assumptions are predicated on things that were true 50 years ago.

That people, everybody's trying to kind of, you know, struggle up the corporate ladder and take the next step and have more spans and have more layers and get closer to the leadership team. That's the assumption upon which these systems are built. And both from an organization point of view and from a personal point of view, I think it is very clear that that's just not true.

Many organizations today, I would say maybe not all, but certainly more than most would say I have roles for individual contributors. I have roles for experts, I have roles for coaches, and that kind of old fashioned professional manager idea where I'm. Carving up work and allocating it out and then reviewing people and, and performance managing them.

It hasn't disappeared completely. I, I'm not suggesting it's gone, but it is certainly being nudged aside by this idea that many different types of roles are super valuable in our firm. I can give you dozens of examples. A recent one for me was Andy Jassy being interviewed by Bloomberg a couple of months ago.

Quote, I'm trying to remember the exact quote. He said, we are, we're taking work away from we're, we're reducing the number of middle managers, which I think everybody knows. Many firms are doing that. And we're giving more power, not work, but we're giving more power to individual contributors.

There are many, many firms today where, you know, definitions of success and progress and results are not about taking the next step up the ladder. They can be something very different. And there are firms today, by the way, and Amazon, again is one of 'em where you have to apply to be a manager. You know, you actually have to write a memo.

Can I please be a manager? This is why I think I would be good at it, as opposed to that just being the inevitable consequence of time at task. So that's on the organization side. On the people side being time, we did this wonderful thing maybe 10 years ago. We started really doing it maybe longer. Some cases.

We said, who are you? Who do you wanna be at work? Tell me. You wanna take some time off to do your side hustle. You wanna change to another country, you want to go climb a mountain, you wanna support your spouses having a what? Who do you want will try to be who you, you know, try to meet you where you want to be.

And guess what? Turns out when we ask people what they want, they did not all say, can I just climb the climb? Climb the ladder, please. That'll some of them. That's great. By the way, I'm a little bit like that. That's what my career, I'm, I'm what we're gonna, I'll go on to explain it later, but I'm a striver.

I'm, I'm, I'm evolving as I age, but that's kind of a striver approach. But lots and lots of people don't want that. So I think this concept of what is motivation is that it's individual and it's fortunately not so individual that we can't talk about patterns. 'cause that will be problematic. I mean, if I.

There was a period in this research program that we've been on, Russel, where I was very worried that it was so individual that I wouldn't have anything to say about it. So why are you motivated in the way that you are? Why am I, is it because you sat around as a kid at the dinner table and listened to your parents talk about money and jobs or something?

Was it your, was it your school? Did your schools say This is why you're going to go to work and what it's gonna feel like? Was it, was it your first job? You had some crappy boss, or you had some amazing boss? Is it your current role that's sort of changing the way you get rewards and satisfaction and engagement and relationships and fun and all that?

Is it or. Is it the fact that, you know, you are a, you are a Capricorn, you dragon or whatever you are in China, you know, hear me? I'm a Capricorn in the Western Zodiac and I'm an ox in the Chinese Zodiac. Am I destined just to be a striker? 'cause those, those are kind of the characteristics of those two. Is it internal?

Is it nature? Is it nurture? I don't know. So we went after this open-minded and talked to. 50,000 people in the world in great detail about what motivates them at work. All sorts of people, all sorts of jobs. High income, low income, middle, you know, highly educated, not pre-educated men, women, urban, rural, 19 countries.

And it, and it turns out you can come up with these patterns. So I'll pause, we'll probably get to those six archetypes in a while. But I, but I think that that's sort of what, where I'm at, so important. Even in the world of ai, which I'm sure we'll get to, that people are still the most valuable resources.

We treat them all the same, whereas in fact their motivations are quite different.

Russel Lolacher: And that was your next logical step, I'm guessing, I mean, you've mentioned you've teased like hell about your six different motivations, so I'm, I'm guessing No, no. It's, I, I think. Right now is where we should get into them, because I think motivation's a great baseline. But then to your point, diversity is not what we're taking into account when it comes to motivation, because most organizations will talk about inspiring, Hey, look at our vision and mission.

Don't you not believe in what we do? That should be enough to make you want to dot, dot, dot or incentivize. We'll pay you more money, we'll give you more responsibility. That should be your motivation. But to your point. That is not the cookie cutter approach, especially generationally. Certainly new generations are going, I dress for the job I want, I'll show up in, you know, board shorts and you know, look like I'm going surfing.

They have much different perspectives at

James Root: they do.

Russel Lolacher: So I think, I'm curious, how do you break up motivation?

James Root: So we, we came at this, as I said, very open-minded, but hoping that there'll be patterns across the world, across genders, across countries, across age cohorts, et cetera. And thank heavens there were by the time after we tortured the data long enough we ended up with six, I'm gonna describe them briefly, not five, not seven.

So six means we could see d definable. Boundaries at the edges of these, of these motivation profiles. That meant that that really is different. Of course, there's overlap, of course, and when we, when people take the, the quiz or do the research instrument, you know, they might often come back and say, I'm sort of very, I'm very high on this, but I mean, I'm reasonably high on that as well.

So people can, can draw on the energy of multiple of these motivational profiles, which is very different than some of the older. Systems like an NBTI, where you're just one thing permanently and for always and forever Cradle to Great, which just has never struck me as being particularly likely. So let me run through the six.

I'm curious what you are. I've already told you what I am, but I'll tell you what I'm becoming. So the first we would call a giver and a giver is a person that finds their motivation to work by helping others thrive. It's not that they don't care about themselves. They, they do care about themselves.

They like to learn. They're, they're least motivated by money. Actually. Their thing is, I want to create environments or teams or situations or firms where other people can shine. That's the first one. Think I, I'm a big movie person. There's a lot of movie stuff in the book. Think Aaron Brockovich. Okay.

Russel Lolacher: You're, you're talking to the right audience for the movie thing. Keep going.

James Root: Am I good? Good. Okay.

Russel Lolacher: going. Keep.

James Root: Operators and operators is important because they're, operators are the biggest cohort in the global working population. I'll tell you about that in a minute. What this profile does is they have no interest in finding meaning and purpose at work. They, if they have a search for meaning and purpose in their lives, which many do, they'll find it outside.

Maybe it's their family, maybe it's their church. Maybe it's something else that they're very, very committed to. But they want to do a good job. They want to keep their head down and work, take no risk, get home so they can pick up Johnny from football at five o'clock or whatever it is that their, that their thing is, and they're very teamy.

They really like the camaraderie. So they'll often be, they'll expect to have friendships at work and they'll be the backbone of the teams. I don't know if you know, there's an old movie called Office Space Classic 1999 movie. Peter Gibbons in Office Space is the ultimate operator. Where he is, you know, there's a, I won't pull you with it, but there's a great scene where he's being interviewed by the consultants who come.

Trying to figure out what's going on at the firm. So it's, it's, I'm not lazy, I'm just not motivated, is what he says. I'm not, I couldn't be a better spokesman for the operator. So the third, the artisan is a person who seeks out work that just fascinates them very high quality standards. They want to do great work, they want to be left alone to do great work.

Don't send me any forms from HR to fill in or, you know, I just keep that away from me. Autonomy very high quality. I want my, my work product to be useful to the team. It's not that I'm just doing something for nothing, but I don't want to have to do all that camaraderie stuff. Don't get it. Don't, don't bother me with that.

And similarly, in a way, because of the learning connection, the fourth profile is the explorer. Oh, by the way, the Artisan, I don't know how deep you go in movies. The art, the best way I think about artisans is actually sushi chefs. I always think, because every day I go to work, I do the same thing, trying to get to perfection.

I'm never gonna get to perfection, but I'm trying to keep going there. So, there's a great documentary called JRO, dreams of Sushi, about Sushi. She Doesn't Matter, but that's the kind of model in my mind. Explorers. Explorers as the name suggests. They kind of value freedom to try new, new things.

They're gonna have multiple jobs in their career. They will trade off, they'll trade off money, they'll trade off status and title to keep the autonomy that allows 'em to keep trying new experiences and new things, new jobs, new countries and whatever it might be. And they're, in terms of professional development, they're very consistent.

They will only skill up enough to do the current job. They know probably I'm gonna be doing something else in three to five years. So, that's a very interesting profile. Water mii is my perfect example of that, right? The last two are both. They're linked by this passion for achievement at work.

So the striver I mentioned that I've been a striver most of my career, is somebody they really wanna make something of themselves at work professionally. They are not big risk takers actually. They plan ahead. They love the goals, they love the milestones, they love the achievements, and they love the recognitions that come with hitting those milestones.

Whether it's a title or it's money or whether it's just the recognition from somebody that said, you, you had a goal, you hit it. So this is. The modern one would be Jordan Belfort, I think in Wolf of Wall Street. But my favorite because I'm an older guy, is actually Tess McGill in which is played by Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, which is the great, she's the ultimate driver by coming across on the Staten Island theory every day to go to Wall Street Pioneers.

The last one, which is the smallest cohort, but we're gonna talk about them more 'cause they have an interesting role in leadership. Pioneers are on a mission to change the world. And they form these very strong views about how things should be in their organization and they, they sort of seek out the control necessary to get to that outcome.

Trying to bend, bend the will of other people to come with them. But even if they're not coming with them, the pioneers are going anyway. You know, they kind of move fast, break things type of thing. Right? Go through brick walls if you have to. Very risk tolerant. I would say even risk seeking. And the vision matters more than anything else to them.

And it doesn't have to be, when I say change the world, I don't mean that literally, although you could say this is a kind of muskie and, you know, turn us into a multi-planetary species type of feature. But it could be. Example I often use is I've got a friend who's a pioneer, who's a financial controller, and her thing is I want to change the way we do the month end close.

And that is kind of changing the world because month end close is a big thing. And her, for her as, as a CFO and. Her firm. So you can, you can have a sort of massive definition of change the world or sort of a micro in your situation. So those are the six. And just for the numbers, those, those of your listeners who are interested operate is 24%.

This is, there are pluses and minuses from country to country, but more or less 24% of the working population. So by gosh, you better, you better know how to manage operators if you're a leader. Strivers the next biggest 21%. Then we have artisans and givers who are about 17%. Then the, then the last two is the smallest explorer is 11 pioneers, 10.

So, if you are looking at this and identifying with one, you can sort of calibrate where that fits into the working population overall. Doesn't mean in your firm or in your government agencies, it's exactly that, but just on average, across, across the world.

Russel Lolacher: These all sound super personal though, James, like it sounds like individualized, but when we talk to motivation in the workplace, we talk personal, but we also talk team motivation and we talk organizational motivation. How does that connect across there?

James Root: Yeah, I mean I, so I have decided to define team motivation as a function of individual motivations, being well managed. Of course, teams can be motivated by object. No doubt, and particularly I see this with my clients, I'm sure you see the same thing. You know, more and more self-managing teams who have accountability to set at least some of their own objectives.

There may be some higher level corporate goals, but you are self-managing. You just, you know, you decide how you're gonna do it. And that's a very, very common, you know, Spotify's the great example with their squads eight person squads where they decide, you know, what they're gonna build, how they're gonna make it interoperable with everything else.

All the rest of it. And they can, yeah. Many other firms have systems like that these days. Corporate ambition and motivation, I think is a different animal. I, I mean, I'd like to come on later if we have time and talk about the role of mission and purpose at the corporate level. 'cause I think it's important, but so I, I think of these archetypes, they're not, they're not tests like some of these other systems.

These are kind of shorthand assistance for you to know. Why do I love my job? Why do I hate my job? Why do I hate that part of my job? Why do I have tension when I, when I'm in meetings with Russel? Whereas I have great meetings when I'm with James. Ah, it could be something to do with the fact that that's this profile, and I'll talk about this later maybe, and he's or she's the other profile, and naturally there are tensions between us.

The understanding of that tension at a team level. Is an unlock for productivity and ultimately business results, which is what we all care about most.

Russel Lolacher: You previously talked about that whole, you know, asking yourself, what's your motivation? Who are you on the inside? Which I think to the point we have to understand ourselves, the self-awareness piece is huge when it comes to these six. How can we identify what are we looking for ourselves? What are red green flags that we can pay attention to, to understand our own motivation?

Because from the outside looking in, others may not see what we know and feel in ourselves.

James Root: so good. Such a good thought because I think the, the way to make these kinds of things practical. Does require a certain bravery to say, this is who I am. You know, I, you know, I actually, I don't want to take that assignment, not because I'm lazy or, but it's because what I really care about is this type of work.

'cause that's what motivates me. So I'll give you an example. There's a firm I know that has, you know, traditionally always hired a certain type of profile. Maybe a business school graduate or, you know, something like that. And that's been the bulk of the workforce. And there, there are actually many firms going through a similar transition the last five, 10 years.

Five particularly this firm, like many others, is upskilling itself in, in terms of I, you know, information technology, digital, and now AI hiring thousands and thousands of people who come from very different backgrounds. Different sort of school backgrounds, different educ, you know, different pre prior job experiences.

And it turns out when you do the work and you go and talk to those people about what motivates them, you say the traditional employee in this firm, and it's very clear. A lot of them are, help me, you know, set me the milestone. I'm gonna go after, I'm gonna take that hill, promote me. Help me. I, I'd like to get promoted faster if I can, because that's the kind of person that I am.

And design, you know, the whole talent system has been designed around that model. 'cause that was the model that supported them for many years. The new talent is motivated by different things very often. Whether it is a data architects or data scientists, or DevOps or product managers, whatever it is, it's, oh, that's interesting.

I'd like to work on that. That's innovative. That's the kind of work I wanna do. 'cause that's new and exciting. Oh, but it's not. Gonna get me promoted super fast. Yeah, it's okay. I don't care. So when you have a talent system that's designed around one archetype, which almost all firms do, they don't know that they've got that.

But it, and it's not a criticism, it's just a fact that most of our talent systems are designed around that concept of a striver. 'cause all these ideas, as I said earlier, go back 50 years to when that was the model of employment. But today, you know, we have a lot of artisans in the workforce. Whether they're trading stocks on, on Robinhood or whether they are, you know, building AI models in Silicon Valley very different profiles are coming to the fore in business, but our talent systems are kind of lagging behind, trying to catch up, trying to be more flexible.

But we don't, we don't really have a good definition of flexibility yet in the way we manage talent. So I don't know if that answers.

Russel Lolacher: Well, I'm curious more from the flexibility standpoint. 'cause you even mentioned when you were going through the six arch types, for you personally, you've changed over time. Your motivation has certainly changed. How do you navigate that as an individual, as a leader to go, well, I needed money and now I don't need money as much because I am this, that and the other.

Does it, do you show up differently?

James Root: I think you do. I mean, so as I said, I've been a striver most of my career. How I wish I'd known that by the way, 30 years ago. And had that lens to understand all my kind of weird quirks of behavior. I would've been a lot kinder to myself. I think. What I know now from all our work, you know, because I've understood about what strivers are is that strivers and pioneers when young.

There's quite a common pattern that they become givers and artisans as they age. I'm not saying everybody does. Some people, I'm a striver. I'm just the whole way through my career, that's who I am. I'm a giver the whole way through my career. That's who I'm, but there is a pattern of evolution that's very clear in the data around the world that struck pioneers and, and strivers when young can become.

More focused on being givers. I either wanna mentor people, give back, create environments where others can succeed because they're kind of paying it back. Or artisans they wanna be left alone a bit more, be a bit more autonomous, then more focus, as you just said, on interesting work than they are on compensation.

Those kinds of criteria. You know, I, in the middle of my career, I I left Bain, I became part of a founding team of a startup in Asia doing business process outsourcing. And I couldn't have been more excited. Amazing. I mean, I was the found other founders were people I knew very well. I'd worked with a lot.

I trusted the business plan was great. We'd raised money in our seed ram. We raised a lot of money in our series a a was amazing. And so for the first year or so in the new firm, I was sort of behaving like a pioneer. I was taking risks and I was shaping the vision and, you know, leading from the front and client acquisitions and recruiting the team.

And, and looking back now, I can see it just really wasn't me. I mean, I was okay, but it really wasn't fundamentally me. But this archetype lens that we've developed in the last couple of years is given me an insight as to why I sort of felt uncomfortable almost all the time. That role, even though I was doing the role, it didn't just, it didn't, you know, somehow in here it didn't feel quite right.

Whereas in the, the pride firm back at Bain, where, where I then returned to now, there was a deep comfort in the way I was being. Leveraged and evaluated and performance managed and the kind of career path options that were open to me. So I, I, you know, I feel like I, I wish I'd had the archetype effect back then.

I've taken three or four risks in my career. That was the biggest one. And now it's, I feel very fortunate that I work at a place that's allowing me to be more of a giver and more of an artisan as I get older.

Russel Lolacher: How do you handle it if you feel like you're more than one motivation? Because I'm looking at these and I'm thinking, well, I, I'm a giver, but there are times when I'm a striver. But yeah, I'm a pioneer. Maybe I'm not as risk that way, but I do like change, like. It, it, even with motivation sort of being this box, even the six can feel like they're limiting or confining.

If somebody feels like they're more than, how do you handle

James Root: I mean, hopefully not confining because we, we designed this such that you could definitely be a couple of things. So if you take quiz Russel, when you do that, you'll get some scores. The numbers are whatever. They just reflect how you answer these questions on a spectrum, which will give you a sense of, I'm very strong on this and I may be strong or can a medium strong on something else.

So. Be interesting now, you can't go back in time and do it when you were 20 years younger, of course. Although you could try to guess at yourself. But I, I wouldn't, I, I don't see it as constraining. I feel most people are one thing primarily, but a lot of people that we've looked at and we've had, you know, besides the 50,000, like another 150,000 people have taken this quiz.

Most people are one thing, the next biggest group are people who are a couple of things. Where their scores on a couple of archetypes, and sometimes those are kind of completely intuitive. I'm pioneer and explorer. Okay. I could see how those two things sort of go together, or I'm striver and operator.

Those two things sort of go together. And then sometimes people are more, and so, you know, and I don't know whether it's just the weak at work or whether it's the, in some stage of their career where they're considering change. I know that if I'd taken the quiz at the moment I was leaving Bain back kind of years ago, I would've not.

I would've been a pioneer. And I'm not a pioneer. Fundamentally I'm not. But at that moment, those few years around the decision to leave and then leaving, that's what it would've said. So don't look at it as a constraint, okay? By design, unlike the MBTI kind of things of the world where you can only ever be one thing by design, this allows more flexibility.

And so you can be, again, you can be sort of kinder to yourself in terms of what you're experiencing and feeling about what's going well at work and what's not going so well.

Russel Lolacher: How do you recommend. Leaders introduce this in their teams. So I'll, I'll speak to my own experience. I remember doing a motivation exercise with my teams and I can't remember the exercise we did. This would have been super handy, but I will say the motivations were varied. So some were motivated by money, some were voted by achievement.

It, it's sort of, there was a bit of flavor for what you have here for the archetypes. What we found super interesting was we did the exercises in front of each other. Shared that information with each other so that Bob knew what motivated Sarah because it wasn't information we kept to ourselves, which I think is a big challenge for a lot.

'cause they'll do these exercises and they'll go, thanks, it's all for me. Now I know myself better. And then they go into their Heidi hole and they don't ever share that. Or they might just share it with their boss. So as the leader that, and that was really effective 'cause then they could feel like, what are the connective tissues between motivation and stuff?

Is that a good approach or do you have sort of an another way of introducing this into a team setting other than here's the test, have at her.

James Root: Yeah. No, I, so, so in short, what you said first is a great approach. Let me elaborate. And there's some stories in the book about, about people doing this. I think there are, there is. There is potentially. A group of people who would take input like this and just own it for themselves. Kinda self-help. I mean, but let's be clear.

I'm not a self-help person. I'm not, you know, I'm not a professional psychologist, so I wouldn't ever be so presumptuous just to say that that's what I'm trying to do here. I care about organizations and business and results can't help myself. So I think the way to do it is that you, so typically what we do.

You take a cohort in an organization, it could be a division or a unit or the whole, it's not too big, the whole team. And you run the survey and you get everybody to participate and you then can share those results back, say, this is what we look like as a firm. Wow. That's pretty, I never knew that. That's, we got all these people who are like this and very few people who are like this.

That's interesting. But then we got in the second phase is to get into focus groups and typically the focus groups are done by archetype. And these have been some of the most kind of emotional meetings I've ever been in. It's extraordinary. You go into these, so here's a room full of drivers. You're gonna talk to them about how do you, how do you experience the talent management system at your firm?

How are you really motivated at work? And then over here you've got a room full of pioneers and explorers and asking them the same questions. And I mean, I, I can't do it here, but I could show it's, it's like you're talking to two different species. They're not even using the same words to describe their experience at work or, or their aspirations at work.

And and I'll never forget the quotation from one woman who actually was here in China who said at the end of the focus group, I'm a pioneer living in a striver's world, and I've just gotta get used to that. It's like. And now I've understood what it is. I, I don't like about the talent system that I'm doing.

I'm being evaluated by, can I change that system? Probably not. Can I change myself? Maybe some, a little bit, but I now understand the dissonance. So at the team level you share it with the team, you have to, I think the obligation is as a team, and it could be a, you know, teams of, teams of teams.

Depending on how deep you go, you share your archetype. And the team leader's job is to bring everybody together and say, okay, this team has got this operator, two artisans, one giver, and I'm a driver. Now let's talk about that. And so I, I tell a story in the book about a woman in a consumer products company who does exactly this.

She understands that she can get very stressed out towards the big deadlines. 'cause she is a striver, she's very ambitious. She's looking for the next promotion. Maybe I can get it in six months as opposed to a year. 'cause that's what strive think. Meantime there's an artisan who doesn't want to go, you know, doesn't wanna go to the training, doesn't want to go to the team drinks meetings.

'cause it's like, I don't wanna do that. That's not my thing. The givers trying to do training sessions to get everybody to know how to welcome cross-functional teams. And so, and it's a real story. And. She did a brilliant job. Amy. Amy did a brilliant job of just sort of understanding, trying to adapt her own leadership style around the individual needs.

So I think that's where you go with it. I don't, I think the value there, maybe value in it as an individual is, oh, I understood more about myself. I think the true unlock is when you can share what's going on with you, with other teammates and just accommodate self-awareness. Other awareness equals accommodation.

Russel Lolacher: So I'm gonna put my black hat on here for a minute, James, and think, wouldn't it be easier if organizations just hired one motivation? Because truthfully, if you have a team that has all six different motivations, that's a lot more work for the leader that's now having to go, well, we have a giver and a striver, and their conflict is crazy.

That's I, I just want to produce a widget. I just want to provide a service. We're need to all pull in the same direction, maybe having the same type of carrot. Everybody likes the same type of carrots the way to go, or is there benefit to having diverse motivations?

James Root: I, it is such an interesting question, and of course, I, I really don't know the answer, but I'm gonna tell you what I think 'cause I thought about it so much. First of all, I think it's almost impossible to imagine any firm doing that. Just the nature of our recruiting processes. It makes it so statistically unlikely that you'd ever end up with, you know, 90%, one.

And unless you, unless you actually screened for it, which I think is maybe that, that's the thought experiment you're doing. One thing I can tell you is that across job types, so we use the highest level of 50,000 is not a big enough sample to tell you what's going on in financial services or telecoms or media, but it is enough to tell you what's going on in service jobs, manual jobs, knowledge jobs, admin jobs, care jobs, the big five kind of classification typically used by many governments.

Interestingly enough. When you look at the, the profile mix across all of those five job categories, all archetypes are in all types of jobs. So you might say knowledge workers, surely no operators, no Plenty of operators are in, are in knowledge worker jobs. You might say. Manual jobs, surely no. Pioneers are doing, yeah.

Plenty of pioneers are doing that. So I, I suspect that has led me to believe that the last thing you want to do, you know, you're, you wanna start the next SpaceX. Do you do just go out and hire a bunch of pioneers and explorers? I don't think so. I'm not sure anything's gonna get done at your firm. People are moving jobs all the time, or there's, oh, can we change all that?

Can we start again? And I might have a better way of doing it. So I strongly believe that most firms do need a mix. I don't think, however, that there's kind of a perfect mix. Again, this is what I've come to believe over three years of thinking about it. I want the challenge of other people's ideas as they get into this research.

But I don't think there's, I want to have 32.1% driver and 16.7% pioneer. 'cause that's gonna be the unlock for me. And you do see this with other systems. I mean, you could go onto Quora on Reddit or WeChat and there's these, what's the perfect mix of MBTI for my, you know, innovation team in laboratory instruments?

I don't. I think that's a real question, but there are yards and yards of dialogue about that. So I think what you do is you first of all understand what you have and you say, does that make sense given the kind of work that we do, the way we engage our clients, whatever our customers might look like. And then you say, I may want to correct for some things because I may be, I may be missing.

A bunch of people who look like this, they would bring something to the table or you say, no, actually I think I want more. I want more pioneers. I want more innovation in my firm. I want more, that type of energy. But by and large, I think I would not go down the path that you suggested. I like the thought experiment.

I tried that thought experiment, but I don't, I can't get myself to it. You mentioned something else. Can I jump on one other thing you said? In the book, I talk about the natural tensions between certain archetypes 'cause each archetype has a, has a sort of primary working style that they enjoy and like, and are good at.

And I'm not gonna go through all of those, but I think it's valuable. Just for an example I think I, I took about 10 in the book. 'cause again, not scientific, they're just the 10 that I've seen most. But, but I'll talk about a couple. So pioneers and strivers, for example, just. Give you a bit more flavor about how a leader would need to deal with this.

You know, the, what happens is that the ambitions and the focus on advancement of the striver can conflict with the pioneer sense of, oh, we've gotta do the big vision, right? Because that has uncertain, big vision has uncertainties in it. I don't exactly know what the goals are gonna be. I don't exactly know what the milestones will be.

So strivers see pioneers as impractical and pioneers see strivers as too individualistic. So, you know, I, I won't get into the solutions today, but another one, artisans and givers, I'll talk, I'll, I'll do, I'll do three. So we get all six

Russel Lolacher: Give one. Yeah,

James Root: artisans and givers. You know, artisans prioritize individual mastery, right?

We talked about that. That's what they love to do. Mastery of the craft and givers are all about collaboration. So artisans are the least team oriented archetype. Givers are the most team oriented. It's all about the team, the givers, right? So, to the givers, the a, you know, the, the architect, the artisans just look very uncooperative.

I had a great experience with her, a product manager at a B2B payments firm in Shanghai, who is new, new in the product manager role, China manage. You know, she's got the engineers, she's got the guys writing code, mostly guys. She's got the marketing people. Legal people and she was having terrible time with, with these, the guys writing code, and they won't come to any meetings and they're just very annoying.

And she did the quiz with everybody. She'd done the quiz on herself so she knew what she was and she, oh, they're just artisans. It's okay. It's perfectly fine that they should be being asked a, I just didn't get that before I thought they were being hy and, but now I said they just wanna be left alone, so I just need to find a different way.

Anyway, so, operators and explorers as a third and last example of attentions for people to think about. So the, the operators like stability. It's not a criticism, it's just they like routine, they like the process. 'cause then they can do a great job and still get home to pick up Johnny from football.

Right. But that kind of focus on, you know, the, the kind of the, the explorer who loves constant change. Looks very, very disruptive in the eyes of an operator. So you can see how those two, those two profiles, let's you know, I'm gonna change my new job and the pioneers coming in to say, oh, look, well, can we change the way we do this?

And even in, you know, as you asked about leaders earlier leaders conflict with the teams that they lead quite a bit. At Russel, it's one of the, it's one of the insights that I wasn't expecting, I thought, you know. We have all, we have, you know, leaders would have their archetype profiles, the workers, but it turns out you get almost twice as many pioneers in the leadership teams as you do in the front line.

And so when you walk in as a leader, 'cause you're a pioneer, let's imagine you say here, you know, agco, we're all about permanent transformation, right? That's how we're gonna stay competitive. The operators are going, oh no, don't, I don't, don't, don't do that. The other pioneers are going, okay, sure, permanent transformation sounds good to me, and the explorers are going, maybe that'll gimme the chance to get a new job, try something different.

And the drivers are going, no, no, no, no. That don't. I know where I'm going. I know that. I know the mountain you told me to take. I'm gonna take it. Just don't change that. Operators are going, my process works. What's wrong? Right? So leader communication is a very tense area that people with armed with this.

Approach, could, could, could really do some work on, I don't know. I went on a bit too long on that, but,

Russel Lolacher: No. All good. You talked a bit about needing these teams to have diverse motivations and how important it is to do that. 'cause I mean, obviously I was doing the whole, what if they were all the same? Wouldn't that be better? However you've seen it work. You've seen teams have multiple, where they have the strong leadership.

What reoccurring themes have you seen in organizational cultures that support. Diverse motivations. I, I bring this up as well because you talk about communication and how that's a bedrock, and I think great communication has to be part of leadership, but not only that part of a great culture. So from an organization standpoint, what are the healthy cultures that can sort of adopt this?

We can support in multiple types of motivation.

James Root: I, yes, I, I, I, I think it's. There. What I find is when I spend time with CHROs and other people, leaders, founders or owners or C-suite people, they all understand and want to be more flexible for their people. But the, you know, whether you've got SAP SuccessFactors or Meta Workplaces, or PeopleSoft, whatever you've got embedded, it's just really hard to fight that.

Today, hon. Honestly, I mean, I'm gonna exaggerate to make my point a bit, but the place, the only really real place that we have flexibility is in the C-Suite. Oh, he's gotta live in San Francisco. But the job's in Seattle, that's okay. We'll make an exception. Oh, we, we've gotta do something because the kids are gonna school and that way Oh, we, yeah, we'll be flexible about that.

For the rest of us, the systems are not that flexible. In fact, they've been designed. To be low cost. All good favor of that. They've been designed to be efficient, but in achieving low cost and efficiency, they've homogenized everybody. And I think the whole point of this work is to say, hang on a minute.

We're not homogeneous. We have different skills. You understand that, but we also have different motivations and that's as important as our skill differences. So I think a culture that says, I really want to take on this idea of flexibility is likely to be very open to this. And I, I've seen that many times.

So let's go. Let's dig deep on flexibility. I'm all in favor of flexibility. Fantastic. And there are some wonderful examples in the world of people, of firms trying to be flexible on compensation. Do you want more base or bonus? Do you want more even equity versus cash? You know, many good examples of that.

There are good examples of firms doing career path flexibility doing, you know, you can work on special projects of your own choice flexibility. There's all sorts of varis variance of this. But it's just not. Deeply embedded across the economy, right? It's like you notice one, you go, that's amazing.

Maybe some other people are doing something, but there's a lot of places that still do not think that that's that valuable because they're not worrying about the motivations of their people because they're assuming that we're all strivers. Just trying to plot up the ladder, and that'll be, that'll take care of us, right?

That's the assumption. Having said all that, no, go ahead. You were gonna ask the question.

Russel Lolacher: I was just gonna say, well you, you used examples where somebody is, the organization is getting about compensation, but then I look at a giver going, I don't want compensation. I'm building relationships. I'm about collaboration. How do you reward? How do you recognize when it comes to those people? And I'm singling one out because that's sort of how I'm thinking.

'cause we could go through all six, but we don't have time. So the giver, for example, how do you recognize someone in a culture that is based on recognition, rewards and

James Root: Yeah, I mean you, you do it by, first of all, knowing that that's what they care about. And then if you care enough about that, you create situations at the monthly town hall or at the Daily standup where you say, Russel, I just wanna recognize you this morning for that incredible training you put together for the rest of us, because that really helped us to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And thank you for creating that moment. So you do it by knowing that different people have different motivations. You know, duh is kind of what I'm, the whole thing. But then you have to be willing to say there are all these, all these elements of an employee value proposition. Around wellness programs, around money, around time off, about flexible hours, about passion projects, about this and that.

I can, I can, if I try, I can adapt the proposition around individual motivations. By the way, you don't even have to know what that person's motivation is. I use, I like the analogy of mobile wireless telephone programs, so I can create a program for. Road warrior, right? He or she wants lots of, you know, no roaming charger.

I can create a program for families who've got teenage kids and they wanna have a certain type of, you know, monthly payment. I can create a program for people who just care about streaming sports or entertainment, and I can just put those programs out there. I don't even need to know that you, Russel, are this type of buyer or that I and that type you'll find it. You'll see that and that'll be the dog whistle. Say, oh, that's the program for me. We can do that at our firms around people propositions as well. So although I prefer to know what your profile is in a mar in a vast firm with tens and tens of thousands of people, I can simply create combinations of features in my proposition that I know are gonna attract a giver I know are gonna attract a striver and do it that way.

But it's the, the culture I think it comes from. A recognition first and foremost at the top, that we are not all strivers drivers are great. 21% of the working population how at it, but we're not all strivers and we need to, and it's not difficult. It's really not that difficult. We need to just tweak our systems, our pay structures, our time off policies, things that really matter to people in a way that can, can have, you know, significant extra appeal.

Therefore, retention benefits, productivity benefits, business results, benefits not easy. You need a will, but when you have the will, that certainly is.

Russel Lolacher: I am trying to think of these traditional artifacts for a lot of organizations, like onboarding performance reviews how are we integrating, how, how do we integrate this understanding of motivations into these traditional ways of

James Root: Yeah, well, it's not, it's not really happening at all at the moment, very

Russel Lolacher: No, no, not at all.

James Root: So, I mean, you know, I, I would go back and say, if you, if you, if you buy my hypothesis that the, the reason that we are struggling a little bit particularly with the younger generation is that our assumptions are 50 years old.

It is not just that we didn't worry about motivation because we just, individual motivation 50 days ago didn't matter at all. Nobody cared about it 'cause it just assumed that you're gonna be a certain way. And it's not just, it's the entire people system. It is onboarding, it is recruiting, it is career pathing, it is performance evaluation.

They're all designed around that assumption that everybody's just trying to get more spans and more layers and go closer to leadership. So I think once you, if you, if this triggers you, you'll start to think about not just what I'm talking about on reward systems, but also all those other people systems too.

'cause you can't really change one without having an influence on the others.

Russel Lolacher: So I wanna wrap up. I like wrapping up our conversation with an idea of someone listening, someone going, I need to understand my motivation. They need to understand my team's motivation. I love understanding, you know, that there is not just one type. What would you recommend to somebody listening right now besides taking the, you know, the test and, and reading your book, which I highly recommend.

What's a first step? What's a baby step in the direction to get a better handle on

James Root: Yes. Well, first of all, I, I'm gonna be very humble and say that I know there's a certain amount of eye rolling when another one of these things comes along because, you know, there's a bunch of them. And what am I, oh, am I green Donkey this week or something? You know? And, and I, I know them. There is some cynicism.

I wanna reassure your listeners that there's deep, deep data integrity in this model. This is not, we didn't just make this up. There's an incredible amount of data that's gone into this. So have some confidence that it's likely to be predictive of you. If you take the quiz and read the description of that profile, if you walk away from that going, well, that has nothing to do with me.

I'm quite surprised, first of all. So, second of all, to answer your question, what do I do? I think be, be brave. Be brave. Take it. Show your colleagues on, maybe just start with your team. Could be the team that you report into, could be the routine that reporting to you. Could just be a team of peers put together.

So can we do this over a lunch break? 'cause it, the quiz takes one minute to do and then you have to sort of start thinking about yourself a little bit. Second. Do not guess other people's archetype. And the reason that you should not ever guess is because people conceal things about themselves at work.

Again, it's not a criticism, it's just a fact. And if, you know, even if we hadn't been through the DEI revolution, but already know that people do, they, they accommodate, they try to fit in more or, you know, suppress certain parts of their own perspective and because they think it might hinder their progress, so don't guess.

Just ask, offer, you know, this is me. I'd love you to take the test as well. 'cause I wanna understand, you know, what it is about our working relationship that we can improve. And then you evangelize if you like it, then you evangelize and you, and you go to your HR teams and say, we should do this across the entire unit or the, this entire office or this customer contact center, or this manufacturing plant.

The beauty of this, I think is. In our sample of, of workers in here, Russel, we've got, you know, I've got manicurists from Brazil and sanitation workers from China and car mechanics from India and all sorts, I mean, as well as white collar workers with senior leadership jobs. But. They always say about psychology.

Research is all psychology Research is done on first, second year. Psychology undergraduates know. We didn't do that. We consciously went very wide and very deep on types of workers. So I think there are many, many environments even for us who live in heavy service economies where, you know, you can, you can apply this and have comfort that it's got some.

Credibility behind it, but so bravery, try it. Don't guess. Ask your colleagues. Start with a small group, have a lunch meeting, discuss it. I think I'm like this, I think I'm a bit like this and like, like you're saying, I think I'm this and this, and that's what the data's telling me and say, you know what, when we work on our next project together, what would make it easier for you?

What would make it easier for me? So I, you know, it's, that's a baby step.

Russel Lolacher: That is James Root. He's the author of The Archetype Effect, Unlocking The Six Types of Motivation. Highly recommend you pick that up 'cause you'll understand a lot more about what we're talking about as well. Thank you so much for being here, James.

James Root: Thank you, Russel. Great to chat.