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CHAMPFROGS Moving Motivators

CHAMPFROGS Moving Motivators

The Complexity of Motivation

Motivating staff is probably one of the most difficult tasks any manager has to deal with. What really motivates someone? One of the main issues here is that what is motivational for one may be a complete turn-off for another. Also, the drive of someone at managerial levels isn’t necessarily the same as that what entices people on the workfloor.

Basically, as a manager you simply won’t be able to motivate everybody in the same way. However, you can definitely create the conditions which will maximise the likelihood of your staff being motivated in their work. Key here is to keep in mind that you should always aim to manage the system, not the people.

A major first step in managing the system is to shift your focus from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. There was a time when most of us used to work primarily for the paycheck (extrinsic), which allowed us to pay for the lifestyle we’d prefer, but this isn’t the case anymore. Money alone just isn’t good enough, we want our work to be meaningful (intrinsic); to really make a difference. But how do we know who cares about what?

To dive a bit deeper into the abyss of staff motivation, management  thinker Jurgen Appelo created the tool of CHAMPFROGS Moving Motivators, for which he studied the work of Daniel Pink, Steven Reiss and others, and identified 10 factors of motivation that might positively or negatively influence people at work. (See slide deck below) The word CHAMPFROGS doesn’t actually mean anything, it’s just a silly acronym to help us remember the ten motivators, but the tool itself is great to help identify what truly motivates and engages your staff.

CHAMPFROGS Moving Motivators

Visualizing Your Own Intrinsic Motivations

In his book Managing for Happiness, Appelo (2016) outlines an exercise you can play with your staff to visualize what makes them tick. Playing the game is very straightforward. First, every ‘player’ receives a deck of cards in which each card represents one of the ten factors of motivation. After reading through the cards, everyone then individually arranges them to rank from least to most important.

CHAMPFROGS Moving Motivators

There’s no right or wrong order in this exercise, everyone will have their own priorities. Experience has taught us that, despite its simplicity, this game can be a really eye-opening experience for people to learn about each other and especially about themselves. If I run workshops with groups of diversified attendees from the same organisation, the main take-away is always to never assume others are like yourself. Everybody is wired differently, a valuable lesson for both managers and their staff.

A Managerial Perspective

As a follow-up to this I divide the group in small teams and ask each team to create the order of motivation for a fictional employee (by means of an Ishikawa fishbone diagram). Then the teams swap employees and are given a case brief about the employee’s role in an equally fictional company. In the brief the teams also learn that his/her manager has noticed that the employee has lost motivation. Using the employee’s CHAMPFROGS order, the teams then need to identify why the employee might feel unmotivated and prepare a recommendation for the manager to re-engage him/her.

CHAMPFROGS Moving Motivators

The often animated discussions that follow usually turn this exercise  into a mind-blowing experience which clearly shows how complex our motivations really are. With his CHAMPFROGS Moving Motivators game, Appelo has succeeded in giving us a tool to express what intrinsically motivates us and also the ability to visualize what is important to whom.

[T]here you are.


Resources:

Appelo, J. (2016). Moving Motivators in Managing for happiness (pp. 193-216). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Appelo, J. (2011). How to Energize People in Management 3.0 (pp. 69-98). Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, Pearson Education.

Appelo, J. (2017). Management 3.0 Employee Engagement Exercises. Retrieved 16 April 2017, from https://management30.com/

Tarnowski, M. (2015). Moving Motivators – card game to reflect on employee’s motivation. Plays-In-Business. Retrieved 15 April 2017, from http://www.plays-in-business.com/moving-motivators/

Philosopher-in-Residence | Executive Coach | Workshop Facilitator
Reading great thinkers, thinking deep thoughts, and whiling away the days surrounded by books, a hot mug of coffee, and some inspiring jazz in the background.

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