E130 | How Understanding Drives Helps Build Buy-In

Why do we do the things we do? What influences the way we act, the method through which we communicate, the people we surround ourselves with…? 

We are complex creatures, and to better understand our behavior, we need to better understand what drives us. 

Through this enhanced understanding, we become more effective as communicators, and ultimately as leaders. We all do the things we do for a reason; some of these reasons may be subconscious, but they are not by accident.

Getting to the root of what drives your behavior can be difficult, so we created a resource that can help you take that first step toward understanding. 

Click here to take our BRAND NEW QUIZ and find out what makes you tick!

As I said before, we are complex creatures. So yes, use this quiz to understand your primary drive. But then take it again. Take it when you’re stressed, when you’re excited… After all, drives are fluid and context dependent. 

And don’t stop there! Once you’ve had enough fun, give it to your colleagues so you can better understand how to motivate them and generate buy-in. Heck, even use it on your kids and your loved ones to gain insight on how to be a better parent / partner. 

Remember, the quiz is just a starting point. No one fits neatly into one category. Life and social nature cannot be forced into a vacuum and this is just one piece of the puzzle. If you’re still struggling with becoming a better communicator, we can help you. Head to artofocaching/communication for more. 

Join Our Coalition Mentoring Program here

Follow me on social media:

Via Instagram: @coach_BrettB

Via Twitter: @coach_BrettB

Subscribe to my YouTube channel here

Learn More About My Courses, Clinics, and Live Events At: www.ArtofCoaching.com

Brett Bartholomew  0:00  

Remember, you don’t get better at communicating just by watching another great communicator, or just by passively going through life or work. You have to assess these things, you have to analyze. It’s very much like a medication and a prescription. If you think that you’re just gonna go out there and educate people to death, if you want them to change behavior, you’re wrong. At the same point, if you think that you can just yell or talk softly and you can be one way and motivate people, you’re wrong. Drives and understanding those drives hold the key to helping us build more engagement, more trust, more cohesiveness. If you want to lead people effectively, you need to understand how to leverage them.

 

Welcome to the Art Of Coaching podcast, a show aimed at getting to the core of what it takes to change attitudes, behaviors and outcomes in the weight room, boardroom classroom, and everywhere in between. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew, I’m a performance coach, keynote speaker and the author of the book Conscious Coaching. But most importantly, I’m a lifelong student interested in all aspects of human behavior and communication. I want to thank you for joining me and now let’s dive into today’s episode.

 

Hey, so glad you guys are joining me this episode is gonna be packed with stuff that I am sharing for the first time ever, literally, we are unveiling something new and we are so glad that you can be a part of it. But you will get the most out of it. If you go to artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou, yes drives like driving a car or an automobile artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou. Now, if you’ve read my book Conscious Coaching, or you’ve taken my online course Bought In the term drives is already familiar to you. But what you might not know is that a lot of the stuff I’ve been researching since then and working on since then has evolved my understanding of drives. So even if you’ve taken the course, you’ve read the book, this is all new. On the other hand, if you guys have not taken the course Bought In, or you have not read my book, you may benefit from these new categories. But there’s going to be background and science on drives and different things and how they align with archetypes and other things that we’re not going to be able to discuss on this episode. So don’t think one way or another, whether you’ve read the book done the course or vice versa, that you’re just going to be able to skip the other. Remember, all of our stuff at Art Of Coaching fits into an ecosystem. The podcast never replaces a book which never replaces the podcasts or the courses, we try to make things universally work together, there’s not a one size fits all thing. So please keep that in mind as we go through this, we’re going to try to shrink the context and get very specific today on drives. Now, if you have no idea what drives are or why we’re talking about it, let’s start there. Bottom line, guys, we all do things, the things that we do in life for a reason. It doesn’t matter what you’re thinking of, or what example pops in your head, you do it for a reason, and a host of reasons and complex reasons. Now many of you have probably taken some kind of psychometric assessment or a quote unquote, personality assessment in the past. And this could have been things like Myers-Briggs, or the DISC assessment. And you know, any of these kinds of things. I know Enneagram is a really popular one right now, these are commonly used by businesses worldwide. Psychology Today reports and this was a while back, so it’s probably even greater. Now, around 80% of fortune 500 companies use personality tests, such as the Myers-Briggs yet despite that, and despite the fact that the American Society for Training and Development reports that US companies alone, spend $110 billion per year on training programs, which 60% of that comes from interpersonal skills assessments. The research is clear on a lot of these things that they are not very good. Now, fair, I want to be fair, nothing in this space can be perfect, because you’re never going to be able to isolate a variable or one part of somebody’s personality and how they behave all the time. But many of these assessments do those things. You know, many of these assessments have certain drawbacks, they have many of the prompts or questions can be very general or they apply to a large range of people. Something that’s known as the Barnum effect where they’re almost so vague. In the context of the questions they ask that anything you answer is going to give you some form of truism, right? Other tests only search for your strengths, not weaknesses. And that’s a problem. Because that’s where you know, when you learn where you’re weak, that’s far more important many times than learning where you’re strong. Now I’m not saying you want to work on your weaknesses and not your strengths? There’s literature that debates that back and forth as well. I’m just saying, guys, you don’t want to just know the bright side without knowing the dark side. That would be silly. You know, if you look at the DISC assessment, which is the brainchild of Dr. William Marston, right, he was the one that was responsible for actual DISC theory itself. And he originally constructed that in the late 1920s, then essentially, and I’m going to be brief here, right? So if you guys have your like textbooks open, and you’re like fact checking, you know, his theory is essentially focused on what was called the psychosocial trifecta of really one, how an individual tends to perceive themselves in a situation. Two, the resulting emotions, with their perceptions of that situation. And three, really the subsequent behaviors or responses of those emotions. And interestingly enough, Marston never intended that the DISC theory was really used as an assessment. There really wasn’t until his friend and a gentleman that was an industrial psychologist named Walter Vernon Clark, published a body of work known as the activity vector analysis, holy Lord, that sounds nerdy, right. And that’s when the DISC took more of itself descriptive form. And after a lot of different permutations, the actual assessment as we know it today, was introduced in the 1970s. Now, those letters stand for Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. And they kind of serve as these Cornerstone descriptive traits behind the behavior profile. Now, I remember taking the desk for the first time in sixth grade, and clearly for thinking teacher, because just imagine the comedy behind the notion that, you know, some 12 year old scrawny toward barely knowing how to dress or talk to girls, you know, as now having a computer spit out results and all these kinds of things and telling me, you know, what this means. And, you know, we’ve talked about this, so many of these things, lead people, they’re great in some ways, they forced discussion, but they lead people into forced choice questioning, I mean, my wife the other day, had to take a DISC assessment for something she was doing. And one of the questions was basically akin to, you know, are you more popular or practical? I mean, guys, that obviously, that is not only an odd kind of question, which I’m sure they have their reasoning, but there’s no context there, right, there’s times where we’re going to value just being, you know, more practical. And there’s times where, of course, you know, everybody, to a degree wants to be liked, no matter what they say. And so asking somebody, if they’re popular or practical is tough, and forced choice, questioning doesn’t really lead to great insight, because it makes people really choose some kind of definitive opinion or descriptor, even if it really doesn’t match what they feel describes them at all. And that is the definition of false precision. You know, I could go on, when you talk about the MBTI, that, you know, that’s another really popular one. And it kind of just aims at helping people better understand, you know, how they are predisposed, or a certain view how they interact with the world around them. The current North American English version features 93 forced choice questions, the European version is 88. Keep those numbers in mind, because a lot of what we’re going to talk about today is again, you know, when you’re trying to get to understand what motivates people, whether it’s yourself or others around you, we need things that are, you know, in depth enough, but also quick, right, and that’s tough. I mean, you’re never gonna get anything in life, that is fast, you know, cheap, a 100% accurate or valid, and easy, but They at least need to be practical. Not everybody’s always going to have 30 to 60 minutes to complete these things. And, you know, that can kind of get tricky as well. Now, there’s a lot of permutations of the MBTI. And, you know, they’re based on Jungian philosophies, and they kind of give people color systems. And again, they’re great, these were all inspired by the four humors, of Hippocrates, which kind of exists within this gold, helping you better understand again, why you behave and others may behave differently in certain situations. So, you know, when we talk about these things, and despite the fact that many of them, including the MBTI talks about, you know, they undergo rigorous testing of validity and reliability. You have people like Adam Grant, who has studied aspects of organizational psychology for a long time, that basically says, hey, these things have the accuracy of somewhere between, you know, a horoscope and a heart rate monitor. And so, it leaves us with a conundrum, right? Like, inevitably, there’s never going to be anything perfect. I’m certainly not going to pretend like I’ve reinvented the wheel. We haven’t but I’ve taken a lot of these and I’ve taken a lot of these for a long time, through different periods of my life. You heard me mentioned that I took one at 12. You know, that was when I first was exposed to it. I had to take someone I was hospitalized. It led to a lot of introspection and more of the research I do now. Well, you know, at some point then I stumbled across the work of Paul Lawrence and Nathan Noria, and these were two Harvard business professors that just talked about the rule that drives this concept that again, we’ll define in a moment, they have played in human nature. And specifically, they had said that there were four drives to learn, right, which is to comprehend oneself and the environment, and so on and so forth and inquire beyond to bond, right, we all know we want to form long term mutually caring relationships. That’s why we, you know, humans have evolved, like in packs, right, we got together in tribes, literally, that helps us survive, to acquire. And that just means, you know, whether you’re competing for control status, money, experiences, whatever those kinds of things, it doesn’t have to be competitive. People just like to collect those things like there, I have a friend that he wants to travel all over the world. Money’s not important to him, it’s just a means to an end, he wants to travel, he wants to hike in Patagonia, he wants to go eat weird food in the Middle East. And I’m not saying at all food is where the Middle East, I’m just saying that’s his descriptor. He wants to do things in Australia, and what have you, there are plenty of people that want to acquire material well. So whatever you want to acquire, there’s some people that just want to acquire knowledge. So you see, there’s overlap there between the drives, and there should be. And then there’s the drive to defend. You can think of these as loss aversion types, you know, people that want to protect their turf, their stuff, their status. You know, a big breakthrough that I had, when I was learning about Paul Lawrence and Nathan Noria’s work is I was seeing what they were doing in corporations. And I wanted to apply this to how I coach my athletes. So I created these really simplistic Google forms that athletes could fill out on their phones, that basically helped me, you know, bucket them, so to speak, you know, and again, buyer beware, I knew that no matter what their answers were, and I’ll give you some of the questions here in a moment, that they were never going to fit into one category. And I would never try to do that. And I’ve been over this ad nauseam when it comes to the 16 archetypes I described in my book, conscious coaching or anything else. There were people in the beginning that very much like to say, you’re, you’re putting people into buckets, and yada, yada, yada. These were also the same people that either read that chapter in isolation, or never got past page three, and they just made stuff up. Nothing in any of our work in Art Of Coaching ever, anywhere has ever said that people are going to fit into one category devoid of context, we have said the opposite. The whole goal of Art Of Coaching guys, is to be at war with this one size all permeated approach to leadership, their leadership that has permeated all aspects of you know what we do in society in general, I almost literally lost my life, because of one size fits all medical treatment. So again, if anything, you know, I don’t want to go through this over and over today, whenever we discuss a topic, whenever we discuss or drive whenever we discuss any of these things, we are never saying a person is just one thing, it will always depend, right? So the point being, I would send them a really easy Google form. And it might say something like, hey, which aspect of this session did you enjoy most today, and I would take those categories, learn, acquire, bond and defend. And I’d aligned something that I had coached in that session with that. So for example, drive to learn might have been indicated by some really technical drills we are doing that day non competitive technical drills, and I’m just going to make it up for the sake of discussion. So let’s say they had a choice. We were doing acceleration that day. And they could say, oh, you know, I really loved the technical acceleration work we did with the bungees and the leashes ,great. Another one would have been the competitive piece the races, right. And that would have been both indicative of acquire and defend, saying, hey, I really loved the competitive aspect, the chance to show you know that I’m one of the fastest out there, or hey, I love the competitive thing. I gotta, you know, I want to be able to maintain, you know, my position as one of the strongest guys on the team, you know, what have you. And then there was bonds. So I’d say, hey, I really liked the team competition at the end, because we did a lot of these things a session might be some technical drills, some more competitive drills, individually, six competitive drills as a group and what have you just to engage higher level effort. We did this in a number of ways that I don’t want to bore those of you who are not strength coaches with the bottom line is I asked them questions like that I ask them different questions about hobbies in life, you know, their interests and what have you. And it would give me an idea of the effective DNA of the room. You know, how many people there were really into the nitty gritty and analytical stuff, how many people were really more into the global metaphor, you know, stuff that they just needed kind of an idea of what to do, and then they wanted to get after it. How many people didn’t really care about any of those details, and all they want to do is just compete with somebody else in that room. And it made me look at myself and it made me want to dive into this further. And that is when I found you know more about Antonio Damasio’s work and now we’re going to define what a drive is and it is not motivation they are different. Motivation is temporary which is powerful. We need people to be motivated. But just as you could watch a YouTube video or anything like that right now that motivation isn’t always going to last. A drive, last. And according to Dr. Antonio Damasio, a drive originates in what you know, he defined as the brain’s core or in it permeates other levels of our nervous system, and essentially emerges as either feelings or nonconscious biases that guide our decision making. And what he means by the brain core is a lot of this stuff took place in the limbic system, you know, the area that a lot of times really, and people, you know, get this confused. They think the limbic system, which a lot of that is like the amygdala, right, which attaches a lot of emotional significance to sensory input. I’m recording this in October 2020. It’s going to be Halloween soon, right? The limbic system in the amygdala in general is very active during this time of year, cheap flights, cheap thrills, all these kinds of things. But you know, when we’re talking about the limbic system, we’re also looking at things like the hippocampus, memory processing, we’re looking at the subiculum distinguishes danger versus reward situations, the Raphe nucleus produces and disperses serotonin. And these things do have many other functions, right? This is an anatomy class, I’m just giving you an overview. Well, people for a long time thought that was separate from, you know, the neocortex, or what a lot of people just refer to as the prefrontal cortex. And that regulates emotion processes, rewards motivation, it’s really known as this quote unquote, seat of consciousness. Now, in terms of the anatomy stuff, I’m going to stop there because like I said, my online course Bought In dives more deeply. No, that’s not a cheap upsell. That’s just me wanted to keep this episode, what this episode is about and be responsible with your time. So if you want more, and all that, go to artofcoaching.com/courses, Bought In, it’s all there. All right. So getting into where we’re at today. One limitation I saw with all this stuff on drives, is the more and more I presented on it, the more I just didn’t feel like Paul Lawrence and Ethan Norio stuff really resonated all the way, I just felt like there was some more stuff there that it seemed to be missing a category, especially for me, and I started paying attention to, you know, ways that people would describe themselves. And I said, alright, you know, I always value the work others do. But it’s time for me to really figure out what I believe in within this framework and put it out there, right, wrong or indifferent. And that’s what we’ve done. That’s what we’ve done at artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou is we have put together our own assessment that helps you figure out what makes people tick. Why? Because like I said, through enhanced understanding, we become more effective as communicators. And ultimately, as leaders. Remember, you don’t get better at communicating just by watching another great communicator or just by passively going through life or work, you have to assess these things, you have to analyze, it’s very much like a medication and a prescription. If you think that you’re just gonna go out there and educate people to death, if you want them to change behavior, you’re wrong. And I talked about this all the time. At the same point, if you think that you can just yell or talk softly, and you can be one way and motivate people, you’re wrong. Drives and understanding those drives hold the key to helping us build more engagement, more trust, more cohesiveness. If you want to lead people effectively, you need to understand how to leverage them. Okay, so let’s get to what the six drives are. And again, I’m gonna go through this disclaimer only one more time, right? Because again, I know that there’s people that like with a deep fake kind of stuff, and you know, like, whatever else goes on, people will take sound bites, and they’ll try to make them say whatever the hell they want them to say. And so only one more time guys. All right. Remember, there is an abundance of scientific literature that debates the accuracy and validity of a lot of different tests and quizzes, right? You can learn about those on the book. Despite those debates, we forget that people benefit from just taking the first step. So from an accuracy standpoint, nothing will ever be perfect. Perfection is not necessary for progress. Humans are not predictable, right? Like, there’s a lot of unique things in here. So for more accuracy when you guys do take our quiz, something that we have made very easy, very contextual. You can send it to your friends, family, staff, colleagues, network, with spouse, whatever and get an answer literally in just minutes. But for more accuracy, we recommend that you engage with the quiz multiple times. Whether that’s varying emotional states, when you’re mad, when you’re calm, when you feel like you’ve succeeded at something, when you’re really confident. It’s also helpful if you do that in various physiological states. Take it when you’re tired. Take it when you’re really alert, happy, stress, whatever, take it when you’re in different physical locations, you’ll be surprised at how your results may change when you’re on vacation on the beach or during times of year and went around friends. That’s the thing that the Myers-Briggs and the DISC and so many of these things miss, is people will take these things once, and then they’ll think, oh, I get it. Yeah, I’m, I’m a number seven, or no, I’m a number eight, or, yeah, I’m an INFJ. And I’m this well, good lord. You know, like, we know, in the performance world, you couldn’t do that. I can’t take one of my friends. You know, I know a longtime listener of the show is my friend Jess Ells who works in the NBA. You know, Jess, do you think that we could just strength tests and do some kind of performance test with somebody one day, and then use that data the rest of the year? No, we do this multiple times of the year. And that’s for any of you listening? So why are we not doing this with communication and personality based assessments? Right? That is a huge, huge thing. Also, remember, within our, within our quiz, you know, we’re gonna give you one, like, you’re gonna get one main result, but you are never gonna be just one, right? You can be like, well, holy, I kind of thought I was this other. There’s always going to be, you know, those kinds of instances. That’s why you should take it more than once. All right. I think we’ve done enough disclaimers. So really straightforward here, really straightforward. We do not try to get fancy with the names. We’re not trying to speak in in esoteric terms, we don’t feel like we need to make up some kind of cosmic level of psychology. It’s straightforward. One of the drives is achievement. And we’ll go back and describe these in a minute. Another one is unity. In case you guys are writing these down, service, adversity, significance, security, pretty straightforward.

 

I’ll say it again. Okay, I’ll say it again, achievement, unity, service, adversity, significance, and security. And as we, you know, before we define them, you guys will notice, when we give you questions, we try to give you that context. So look at these things, right, think about, like, it’ll say, hey, if something is dependent on getting it done right away without complete information, this is how I feel we’ve also tried to take great care in terms of the answers. So instead of just you know, this or that are really rigid, neutral, or sorry, a little religious like rigid dichotomy, ask answers. We tried to give you a dimensional scale of strongly agree, or yes, or I strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. Why? Because guys are trying to fit you into a bucket not only of a category, but some vague question, and then better yet make you choose a vague answer is unrealistic, right? We need dimensional scales, we need scenarios. So when you take this quiz, all of you are going to get a main result, right, you’ll get one of those driving forces. And then you’ll also get a bespoke breakdown of you know, not only what that means, and an overview of that, but also the strengths, right, we’re gonna give you three strengths for each that you can really leverage. And then you’re gonna get three snares, right, a snare is like a trap, right? Something that you generally don’t see. And then all of a sudden, you’re caught up in it. And you’re in an exposed vulnerable situation, we really think of these as blind spots. But we wanted to keep this,  the alliteration thing because it just as easy to remember, but you can think of it in terms of strengths and blind spots. So you’ll get that full printout, you’ll get the descriptions of everything, you know, when you take the exam. So think of it this way. And, you know, if you’re achievement oriented, this is generally somebody where you know, inertia is your enemy, right? This idea of standing still not being able to move forward growth is an energy source for you. This is someone who enjoys learning new skills, you like relentlessly sharpening the skills you already possess. There are so many things here, you know, but it’s, it’s essentially this idea that leaders are lifelong learners, right? And this resonates with a lot of you where there’s small details that others miss, you know, you don’t because you will do anything it takes to succeed at a super high level. And again, I’m not gonna go through all this shrinks and snares here. That’s part of the quiz. I just want to give you an overview and give you an idea of what these things look like. And the questions that go along with them are going to be challenging for some of you, you’re not going to like to admit it, but we tried telling you, you know, don’t answer the questions, because this is another issue with DISC and MBTI. And a lot of these assessments is people engaged with a lot of self monitoring, right? Like, if this was, you know, some podcast where I had 30 or 30 engineers and what have you this is where I would, you know, have them do some sound effects, as if you hear the voices in your head, right? So I might get asked a question. And I’ll just  make it up here of saying, Hey, I prefer group projects over individual assignments. Because of the opportunity for current camaraderie and collaboration in my peers. I’d be silent. And this is where the sound effects of like, well, I don’t know, sometimes I have partners that are lazy. Well, yeah, I love working alone. But sometimes I feel overwhelmed. And I want to do this, right? Like, try not to overthink and self monitor, just put the raw real response, because otherwise, you’re not going to get results that are worth a crap. And then you’re going to sit there and you’re going to complain about the quiz and all these other quizzes. And you’re complaining really, because you thought you were this category. And something said you were in another category. And that cognitive dissonance upsets you. And that happens all the time. Hey, it happened with me. You know, one of the more accurate ones for me was Strength Finders, you know, and then there were some that I took, and I’m like, What the hell? And it was because I looked at these questions, and half the questions didn’t even make sense. But many times, it’s just because people edit themselves. And it can’t, right. So moving on to unity. And again, I’m giving you a brief above the fold headline here. This is somebody that really finds solace in solidarity, you love the shared mission, relationship building is a huge priority to you that I mean that you love that that’s it’s so meaningful. And as we go into the holidays, you love that time of year, it’s a time to reconnect, recenter yourself, be around other people, you’re very inclusive, you’re friendly, for the most part, you’re unselfish, you’re very dedicated. You know, you’re somebody that can handle things on your own. But the act of engaging with others really inspires you. And there’s great things about this. You’re such, people that are great at Unity and really typecasted by aspects of that are great at networking elements of inclusiveness, they’re really good at developing others for a variety of reasons. But they have their own issues, right, there’s a naivete. Sometimes there’s a dependence on being around other people, there’s an avoidance of conflict. And you know, so these are some of the things that you guys are going to want to know when you take the test, you want to get these descriptions, because you know, you’re not going to get fortune cookie stuff in this exam. That’s one thing that we really want to make sure with this quiz, right? It’s straightforward. It’s very easy and quick to take. And you’re not just getting fortune cookie stuff, you can print out your results page, you can put it on your desk, you can put it on your fridge, any of those things. And it’s just a reminder, that when you find yourself having miscommunications, when you find yourself having issues, go back to that and be like, Oh my god, yeah, that I keep falling into that snare category, or I keep falling. Yeah, I need to leverage this strength more. It’s another exercise in those self awareness, especially if you’re familiar with those archetypes I wrote about Conscious Coaching, you know, some of the things that that you’re driven by guys have, have your athletes or the colleagues or coworkers take the same things and see where they land. And again, understand that they couldn’t self monitor, they could kind of lie and tell you what they think. I mean, you’re never going to be able to protect from that. That’s just, that’s life, people are always going to find a way to cheat the test or what have you. But it still kind of benefits you to see where that aligns. And then it’s like, oh, well, no wonder I’m not really connecting there. Right. It’s one aspect of it. Now. When you say, Well, hey, Brett, you keep saying it’s not the only thing. What are the other things and I’m not trying to hide something from you guys. Again, I’m just trying to keep this specific to this episode. Many things influence behavior, yes, drives, right or emotions, desires, beliefs, but also the environment. We’re in the physical environment, the cultural environment, perceived environment, social factors, what other people are doing what other people think of us, our judgments of ourselves, all these pieces. And again, if that’s stuff that you’re interested in, go to our course, dive into this stuff, it’s there, don’t be intimidated, or feel like it’s not for you, because I use the term athlete and coach, you replace that with whatever your field as these things are universal with people, right, people are influenced by a lot of different things. So getting back onto it, we talked about achievement, we talked about unity, all of these pieces. Now, again, just giving you a brief preview of some others, there’s service, man, how many of you relate to that? This idea of hey, helping others is primary in my life and work and as long as I’m there for the people that I love and being able to those that are seeking guidance or those who are less fortunate I don’t really care about being noticed recognize I don’t care about being the authority right that’s what people who are service oriented really think about. And I know a lot of you may hear that and be like, Well, hey man, like I feel bad like that should be me. And it’s not. No like there are down, there are snares that are aligned with people that are 100% service oriented, as their as just, as many as there are any other one right? They’re susceptible to burnout. Sometimes and I know this is true for me. They don’t recognize boundaries. They think they want to help everybody and they jump in. But not everybody wants their help. Right. So while they may be loyal, while they may be great listeners, while they may be many things, they’re not always good there either, right. And that’s the beauty of this stuff, guys. That’s why you need to not worry about what category you are. Because there’s not one category you should strive to be other than the one that you most kind of closely identify with. And you’re not trying to fake and you’re not trying to cheat. Like, again, the world needs more people that are just them. Not some idealized version of BS perfection, at some book written by some TED speaker told you to be, you know, because it’s going to start a movement, like shut up with all that just like, own your category, right? And understand that decade by decade, year, by year, month by month, these things will change, but you’re gonna fall into some patterns. So if you’re someone who is very steady, and conscientious and responsible, that really might, you know, be you, you might be in that service category, but you’re gonna need to take the quiz to see what’s what, because it’s not as easy as Oh, yeah, I’m this or I’m now like I said, You’re we’re gonna put you in context in situations, just like we talked about in the coaching is improv podcast episode, you know, you think you might be service oriented in one situation, but another situation, you’re really not. And that’s the beauty of answering and interacting with some of these questions, right? Now, adversity. If you are somebody who loves a good challenge, you willingly embrace change, and you refuse to be stifled by traditions or trapped by routines. You believe the ultimate sense of adventure really comes from testing yourself. Right? If you communicate with others, you have a low tolerance for cliches and people that say things can’t be done, or we’ve always done it this way. Or this is how it’s always been done here. If that stuff just like, uhh, it gives you that feeling that you get when you have you know, freshly clipped fingernails and you touch this like weird towel or cotton ball, you know what that like feeling that makes you just like kind of shudder some of you already clench your teeth. Right now just thinking about it. That is you, you know, like, if you hate hearing that this is how we’ve always done it and all these kinds of things. Chances are, you’re somebody that’s also pretty competitive, especially with yourself and whether you’re experiencing fear or anger, anxiety, what have you. Yeah, they’ll get to you. But you eventually find a way to channel these emotions into a focus that really elevates you and that’s your gift. You understand why these seemingly, you know, described by society is like a dark emotion. While that may distract others who don’t have your abilities like for you, that turns into a way for you to focus guys, listen, I grown up as a little brother, my brother is four years older, right? So when I’m 11, and he’s 15. That’s a big age difference. And I used to get walloped. And, you know, my superpower became I could basically go into Hulk rage mode, or like Wolverine mode. And, you know, while my brother was physically larger than I was being a 15 year old than me only being 11, I would get so pissed that I would just go at him with some kind of indomitable rage, and eventually he gets so wigged out, he’d bounce. So yeah, I might have the black eye or the bloody nose, but he’d be like, my brother’s crazy. And you know, I’m glad I could say I don’t do that now. I mean, don’t get it wrong. If somebody came after my family, or what have you, I would do what I need to do to protect myself and then, but now I channel any kind of anger I get or frustration into my work, like, the worst thing you could do to me, is try to like make me angry. And I’m not even going to do it to like, prove you wrong. For some reason, it just helps me focus. So it’s like, alright, if I’m mad, I’m not the guy that’s gonna go out and have a bunch of beers and do this and do something self destructive, like I’m going to sit down and be like, whoa, I am in laser laser laser focus mode. You know. So another thing that I was surprised to know as I dove into the literature is people that are really driven by adversity change, right? People that have to improvise a lot of people that are really good under certain types of pressure. The literature talks about how there’s a lot of innate connection between that and curiosity. People that do well under adversity also tend to be very curious people, which I thought was fascinating. And this especially looked at you know, astronauts and things like that and high risk type of situations. But if you’re somebody like that you and you tend to go down rabbit holes where you’ll get on a subject and maybe it’s confusing or difficult to you. So you dive deeper and you dive deeper. Not so you can use that information again to show how smart you are or anything like that. But just because it’s like a new challenge, right? You engulf it. That is a hallmark trait of adversity right. And that makes sense because after I’ve read about it curiosity itself has been described in the research as the predisposition to search for new knowledge and experiences. Even if it brings about internal and external conflict, I thought that was fascinating. Curiosity and I’m paraphrasing has been described in the research as the predisposition to search for new knowledge and experiences, even if they bring about internal and external conflict. That means if stuff’s hard, and keep going. And I love that, don’t get it twisted, like with everything else, their strengths and weaknesses. And it is really easy to set somebody up, who is you know, driven by adversity really easy. And I encourage you to read more on the website about that. Damn right, read on the website. Now getting into significance, you are somebody who doesn’t want to waste time, talents, opportunities, any of those kinds of things, you have a strong sense of purpose and conviction right? Now, a lot of times people think those who are driven by significance, they think that their desire to accomplish these goals, or their willingness to change the status quo is a lot of impatience or greed, or they’re in it for themselves are a term that I learned this year, that makes no sense to me this idea of like line lighting. You know, there’s a lot of people that think if somebody has a brand or sell promotes that they’re in it for the wrong reasons. And a lot of times, and I’d really encourage you guys, if you haven’t, one of my favorite books, and for those of you that are in strength and conditioning or performance, when I get asked what book should I read, oh, man, it makes people angry, because I think they think that I’m going to tell them the the books that I would have told them 10 years ago on certain aspects of the X’s and O’s. And that’s that, you know, those are there, if you guys want those, by the way, for those of you listening in the performance profession, just go to artofcoaching.com, I have a full reading list that you can download. But one of the books I tell them that relates to significance is the fountainhead, it is really a tremendous piece of work that talks about this individualist versus the collective mindset. And in the performance realm, it is very much that if you stand out for any reason, all of a sudden, you are labeled with the appellation of Guru, or you know, what have you and we’ve talked about this ad nauseam. But not everybody that is an individualist is doing that to try to, you know, make themselves look good or be some, you know, martyr or some symbol. I mean, these are people that again, just genuinely believe we are all unique. And yeah, serving others is critical, no doubt. But the individualists knows that you can’t serve others at the highest level without maximizing your abilities. And the value you can provide. You know, that’s a huge piece. And it’s true guys, like, you know, for as much as we talk about, oh, you have to be selfless and what have you. You can’t to be selfless, you first have to have a self like you understand that, you know, and that was something that one of the characters in the fountainhead Howard Roark said, you know, rules is like, here’s a rule, and he’s talking about architecture. And I love this quote, If you’ll allow me a moment is and he’s talking about buildings, he says, you know, what can be done with one substance should never be done with another, no two materials are alike. And he’s talking in the context, because he’s basically getting outcasts in his profession, because he’s not honoring the classics. A lot of people wanted him to use certain materials where he liked edgy minimalism, steel, buildings, things like that. So he goes on to say, no two sites on Earth are alike. No two buildings should have the same purpose, again, in the mind of an architect, the purpose, the site, the material determines the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful, unless it’s made by one central idea. And the idea should set every detail. A building is alive, like a man, its integrity is to follow its own truth. It’s one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man does not borrow pieces of his body, a building doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul, its maker gives it its soul, and every wall window and stairway to express it. And I thought that was great. You know, he doesn’t want to be. He wants to build in that book. He doesn’t want to be thought of as a builder. But there are people that do that, right? There are, people who will look at the individual lives, and they think they’re awful. But as he says, you know, you can divide a meal amongst many men, but you can’t digest it through a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for an other man, right? We all inherit products of thoughts of other people. We inherit the wheel, the wheel becomes a cart, a cart becomes an automobile, the automobile becomes an airplane, but through that we only receive the end product of it. And he says it takes an individual who takes action to advance that outcome. So I just think that that’s important. And I’m telling you guys this because again, I’ve seen this a million times. People will hear what they think is a good description of something they want to be they want to be thought of as a servant. So they willingly go out of their way to not answer questions truthfully, because they think seeking or being driven by significance is a bad thing. It’s not if you know your why you are driven to some level for significance. Yeah. And that ties into being a servant. Remember, it’s not one or the other. You can have people who their top two themes are significance and servitude. That’s context dependent. Right? So remember, nobody is labeling you with one thing as you go through this exam. You are many things, just enjoy it and go through it and actually answer it, honestly. All right. The final one, the final one, security. Now if you are somebody who you take great pride in your patience, your pragmatism, you’re very deliberate. You’re organized, maybe even OCD, you’re always thinking steps ahead, you’re super prepared and all situations, right, and you don’t like to be caught off guard. And if you aren’t caught off guard, you have a backup plan in place, right? You’re Batman. And for many of you, a lot of times you’re thought of as conservative, when in reality, a lot of security orientation is really about, you know, you’re just somebody that wants to maximize potential positive outcomes, or the inherent risks, right? Yeah, there’s some risk aversion there. Right, there’s some aspects of Prospect Theory and what have you. But you know, you just want to have the data, essentially. And I mean, that literally and figuratively, you know, data may be something you value, given your specific appreciation for looking at patterns and, and wanting to know how they affect each other. But you also just like to peel back the layers to gain a better understanding. You’re very introspective, right. And so some of your strengths, of course, attention to detail. You’re knowledgeable, because you’re super vigilant and inquisitive in nature, in terms of going more thorough, going more into certain topics in a more thorough manner. You are somebody that appreciates theories, but ultimately, right like it’s vetted information, that is really the thing that drives you. But at the same time that can cause missed opportunities, because you can be too pensive. For those of you that are my 90s Kids, right that Indiana Jones What is it

 

Last Crusade only the penitent man will pass, right. But like sometimes people are a little bit too nervous, or it’s not even nervous, a cautious, right, there’s all these things I’m trying to really beat around the bush to a degree because I don’t want to give you the specific ones, I want you guys to dive into it, and challenge it. But the bottom line is, that’s a huge thing that you want to look at. So listen, you know, when we look at this thing, and we span out, and and we really think about what we’re talking about here is remember, you know, this behavior is complex, take a moment, literally, there’s going to be silence for a moment. Take a moment and think of all the people you interacted with in the last 24 to 48 hours, take a moment. And consider

 

these things. Consider you know, what drives might they have been? What approach did you take when you were interacting with him? Did you come at him with just one tool? Did you speak to their drives? Did you even have an awareness of trying to speak to those things? When is the time that that screwed you up? When are these things tripping you up in life? What are the issues? You know? So again, you can continue your journey and learning more about this in a lot of different ways. Guys, again, artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou. Nobody’s trying to be a world beater here. We’re not saying that, you know, this is this, and it’s the one oh my god, it’s the best ever. What we are saying is listen, I’ve taken a lot of these, I see the weaknesses of them. And mine is going to have weaknesses as well. But we wanted something that was pragmatic. We wanted something that was contextual, like humans are, right, like their behavior is contextual. We wanted something that didn’t fit you into like this answer that answer that you really didn’t understand, you really have a choice now to answer on a dimensional scale. And you know, this is something that at the end of the day is going to make you reflect more deeply on your tendencies, your behavior, your state of mind, your perception, all of these things are going to vary depending on cultural values, your motivation to even engage with the different activities. Some of you might just breeze through this thing. And then you don’t like you know your result. But so far, we’ve had a lot of people that have beta tested this over 300 At this point, guys, and most of them say it’s pretty spot on, even if it was uncomfortable. The quiz is a starting point. Nobody fits neatly into one category. Life and social nature cannot be forced into a vacuum. And the final thing I’ll say is this. If you are listening to this and you’ve taken the quiz, and this is your first interaction or whether you’ve read the book, what have you. This is one piece of the puzzle the next step guys, if you’re still struggling with becoming a better communicator, look into the other things we do it is okay. The entire world struggles with communication look at where we are at right now as a society. People don’t trust each other, they don’t say what they mean. They don’t mean what they say. They don’t know how to get their point across, you know, they’re always trying to come off as something they’re not. We can help you. artofcoaching.com/communication, I’ll say it again. And it’s spelled just like it sounds, artofcoaching.com/communication. We have a wide variety of services. We want to get to know you. And you need to take pride in the fact that like we serve everybody, it doesn’t matter if you’re 13, it doesn’t matter. You know, what, in any of these kinds of things that you do, right, I guess doesn’t matter. We work with military, medical, coaches, educators, we work with just people that stay at home and are trying to figure out more about what the right path is to take. Maybe they’re between jobs because of COVID, or what have you. There’s all these aspects, artofcoaching.com/communication, we hope to talk to you soon and we hope this helped. Alright guys, enjoy. Until next time. Oh, and one more thing, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note, and thank Ali Kershner and Cory for their contributions to our online quiz. It takes a lot of people coming together to make these things work. And I have biases, just like all of you do, right? We all have our unconscious and subconscious biases, a lot of what we talked about with drives today. And because of that, I reached out to them and said, hey, you know, when we’re coming up with some of these questions, I would like you guys, to come up with some of your own, I’d like you to be able to look at these and think about how we should score these, because we try to open that, you know, and I just want you guys to know that while none of our work at Art Of Coaching is perfect. We really do try to work and seek a wide variety of angles and perspectives. So again, thank you, Ali and Cory for your efforts. And of course, our good friend Brad ball for helping us with some of the technology putting it together. It’s a team wide effort. We’re all doing our best. We hope you enjoy it. And please support the show by sharing it with those you know, those you love and let us know what categories they got. Let us know what you think of the category you got. We’re open to all feedback, check out our podcast page on Facebook. It’s the Art Of Poaching podcast, Facebook community or podcast community. And you can check it out and share your beliefs, your feedback and give suggestions for future episodes. Thank you.