What are Motivational Maps®?

Motivational Maps® were created in 2006 by James Sale and have been used by thousands of people all over the world to allow them to accurately diagnose what they actually value at the precise moment in time when they complete the map. Technically speaking, Motivational Maps®  is a self-perception inventory which means that the person completing the map is answering questions based on their own preferences and ideas about what they value and how motivated they currently are with regard to nine motivators. This means that there are no ‘right and wrong’ answers when it comes to completing a Motivational Map®. 

James Sale created the Motivational Maps® tool based on a fascinating and unique combination of the ideas found within the Enneagram, Edgar Schein’s Career Anchors and Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. His Motivational Map® is thus based on the idea that all of us are, at heart, motivated by the same nine things. Sale’s names for the motivators, and our own brief summary of the essence of each of them, are: 

Defender: The need for clarity. and long-term safety and security.

Star: The need for social recognition and an established place within the social hierarchy.

Friend: The need for deep social connection and friendship with those around you. 

Director: The need for control over resources and / or to lead other people. 

Builder: The need for financial reward and / or material wealth and possessions. 

Expert: The need for knowledge and expertise and a chance to learn more and share your knowledge. 

Creator: The need to creatively solve problems and come up with new ideas, products or things. 

Spirit: The need for freedom and to be in charge of your own time and workload.

Searcher: The need for meaning and purpose and to make a difference in the lives of other people and / or in the world around us. 

Fascinatingly, whilst Sale’s maps are based on the idea that we all ‘need’ all nine motivators in our lives the way in which we experience each of the nine motivators and how intensely we feel as though we ‘want’ them to be a part of our lives at this exact point in time is intensely personal and is based on a combination of our personality and our current situation. In other words, the order and the exact intensity of each of these motivators is unique to you and it is only by completing a Motivational Map® that you will discover your current motivators. 

When you complete a Motivational Map® you fill out a simple online questionnaire (technically it is a self-perception inventory) where you are asked a number of questions which make you choose on a scale which of the two statements in the question you feel more aligned to. Your answers to these questions are then analysed and give you a score out of 40 for each of the motivators listed above where 40/40 indicates that you are utterly obsessed with that motivator and where 0/40 means you have no interest in that motivator whatsoever (even though you still technically ‘need’ it as we all ‘need’ all nine in our lives). Fascinatingly, some people will have a huge spread of scores (with a couple in the thirties and a couple under ten) whereas others will find that all of their scores are clustered in the teens and low twenties. Your answers are all about personal preferences so there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ motivational profile but the differences between different people in terms of the order of the motivators and the intensity to which they are felt never ceases to amaze us as practitioners. Finally, having completed these initial questions you go on to give yourself a score out of 10 to indicate how well you feel that each of these motivators is being met for you at the present time. All of this data will be instantly used to create a ‘motivational profile’ which will be emailed to you and which we will analyse at your debrief to help you fully understand, and make the most of, your motivational profile. 

Here at Coaching and Motivation it is our profound belief that Motivational Maps® are a truly phenomenal way to help us to achieve our mission with you which is to help you to create a fulfilling and meaningful life that is deeply aligned with your own personal values and measured by your own unique definition of success. This is because Motivational Maps® give you instant clarity on what you actually value right now in your life and tell you how well those needs are being met at this point in time. This means we can instantly help you to see what you genuinely value (which will be unique to you) and can begin to help you crystalise your own definition of success from this and help you take practical steps to building a life where you get more of the things you do want and less of the things you don’t want. In most cases, with a few tweaks and a bit of reframing that will all become instantly evident as a result of the map you will be able to experience huge increases in motivation in the aftermath of completing a map. This is hugely rewarding and quickly becomes a positive feedback loop where you experience more and more motivation and satisfaction as you begin to make progress towards being the sort of person you actually want to be and become. 

Jonny is a licensed Motivational Maps® practitioner who is genuinely obsessed with the value of this tool in helping people create highly motivated and deeply meaningful lives lived in accordance with your true values.

Motivational Map® are also phenomenal for use with Teams where they can spark fascinating and fruitful discussions about how the different motivators show up for different people and how different motivational profiles can sometimes cause unnecessary conflict which can be incorrectly labelled as ‘personality clashes’ when they are actually motivational clashes. If you are a manager you will know how vital it is to have a highly motivated team and there is, in our view, no better way of discovering how to motivate your team than allowing them to complete a Motivational Map® and then helping to action the quick wins for your team members that are nearly always immediately obvious in the wake of it.

If you are interested in finding out more about doing a Motivational Map® and having a debrief with Jonny then please email me at jonny@coachingandmotivation.co.uk. I look forward to hearing from you!