Identify what genuinely motivates you.
Individual reflection exercise where participants identify their genuine motivators, examine where those needs are currently being met, and surface where they feel least motivated.
What Drives You moves from the conceptual to the personal. Using the framework introduced in The Motivation Myth as a lens, participants reflect on their own experience: where they feel most engaged in their work, and where motivation tends to drain away. The exercise is structured to produce specific, honest answers rather than comfortable generalisations.
Participants leave with a clearer and more specific picture of what drives them at work and where their motivation is most fragile right now.
This helps each person build a specific, honest picture of their own motivators and where those are being met or frustrated right now. Give them time to reflect individually against a set of prompts, then invite sharing.
Give participants twelve minutes of individual reflection, writing their answers down. When do you feel most energised and engaged in your work, and what is specifically happening in those moments? When does your motivation tend to drain away, and what is it about those situations? Using the three drivers, where are autonomy, mastery, and purpose each strongest in your current work, and where is each weakest? And if you could change one thing about your current situation to improve your motivation, what would it be? The third prompt, applying the three drivers directly, is the most diagnostic, because some people find one driver dominates, such as high purpose with low autonomy, or high mastery with little sense of why the work matters, and those specific gaps are more useful than a general sense of being motivated or not.
Invite participants to share one thing they noticed, either something that surprised them or something they recognised but had not previously named. Encourage specificity: can you describe an actual situation where you noticed that?
Use What Drives You when people talk about motivation in general terms and you want each person to get specific and honest about their own. Structured prompts surface where they feel most engaged and where their motivation is most fragile right now.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
