Motivation OQuestions

Asking questions is key to understanding motivation, both for yourself and for others. Questions about what motivates someone, what they want to do more of, what they love about their current work, and what they dislike can help uncover their motivations. When coaching someone, knowing their motivation can lead to more powerful conversations. A story is shared about a team supervisor who seemed disinterested in their job. Through questioning, it was discovered that the supervisor loved working on race cars and being a mechanic. A new role was created for them, combining their mechanical skills with their supervisory position, and they became much more engaged in their work. The lesson is that asking open-ended questions and being curious about someone's motivation can make everything else easier. When it comes to motivation, questions are absolutely the key, not only for you, yet also for the person that you're coaching. Now, we're going to start with the first set of questions around what motivates them. The first question is, what motivates you? What's your endgame? What do you want to be doing more of that maybe you're not doing enough of now? What do you love about what you're currently doing and what would you love to be doing down the road? What do you like about what you're doing and you'd like to be doing that as well down the road? What's something you currently dislike that you'd love to have taken off your plate? And we call that the love-like, dislike set of questions. You can ask it as it relates to their present state and where they ideally want to go, their ideal state. When you ask people questions like that, it triggers them. And a lot of times people will immediately gravitate to this, well, I don't know, I don't know, because it does take some thinking. So when you coach to someone's motivation, you can actually have conversations later on that are much more powerful knowing what that motivation is. Let me share with you a quick story. We had an HR manager ask us to coach somebody on a shop floor line, a team lead, a team supervisor. And the HR manager said, really good team leader, yet he looks like he's just not into the job as much as he used to. And she said, I might be making assumptions. Would you sit down and talk to him? I said, sure. So I sat down and I asked him some questions. And I'd say about 25 minutes went by, and I wasn't doing a great job. I wasn't reaching him. I couldn't really get him to answer the questions and explore. And I asked him a question. I said, when you think about your current job, what's the first word or two that comes to your mind? He goes, eh, it's a job. So his current state, he wasn't thrilled with where he was. He wasn't negative. And I said, okay. And after about 30 minutes, I had to change things up. And I said, well, I'm going to ask you a wild question. When you're not at work, what do you love to do? A completely different person emerged. He said, oh, work on race cars. I said, excuse me? He said, I'm in a crew pit for a professional race car driver on the weekends. I said, really? I said, do a lot of people know that? He said, probably not. I don't share it with a lot of people. And I said, oh, that's interesting. Talk about it. And this is where we as coaches have to really listen, present company included. He said, I love to work with my hands. And it hit me. The team supervisors don't do that. They walk the floor. And I said, oh, I said, where does that come from, working with your hands? He said, well, I'm a licensed mechanic. I said, oh, that's interesting. I said, can I ask you an off-the-wall question again? How do we bring that person back to work? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, we have all these job openings in the maintenance department. There's a shortage. And they work on the equipment on the floor all the time. He said, I'd love to, but I can't. I said, why? And he said, I'm a single dad with three kids. I can't afford the pay decrease. I said, look, we don't know each other. Can I share that with the HR manager and see if there's something we can do? He said, absolutely. I met with the HR manager. A cool part of the story is we constructed a half-time maintenance supervisor position, and half the time he was working on the machines. And he was a different person. And I went back up to him and I said, how's the change been? He said, oh, it's great. Thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it. And I said, can I ask you a question? He said, yeah. And I said, how long did you feel like that? Eh, it's a job. He said, I don't know, about three, four years. Shared it with the HR manager, and she said, geez, there's got to be a lesson in there somewhere. I said, well, of course. Nobody asked him. So sometimes just being inquisitive and exploring and asking open-ended questions, especially what questions, will position you to understand someone's motivation, which makes everything else much easier.