The carrot or the stick - what motivates me?

As part of my 2004 goals series I'm looking at ways to improve software construction and delivery and one of the main themes that I'll be trying to answer is: how to motivate yourself and others.

It's often said that, to be a good leader you have to understand how to motivate the members of your team and, I guess that it follows that, before you can motivate someone, you probably need to know the kinds of things that they are motivated by. Sounds easy eh? Think about it for a bit longer... I did, and, it turns out that, I'm not even really sure what motivates me; I thought that I did, but, as it turns out - everything that I thought was a motivator was really just an outcome. Some of the things that I thought motivated me initially were: achievements and perfection but, as you can see they are outcomes and it is therefore likely that there is an underlying motivation other than those and that they are merely metrics that I use as drivers.

Mind you, I'm not saying for a moment that the only indicator that you need to watch is motivation - people are much more complicated than that; in fact, in a presentation, Jim McCarthy talked at length about how Napolean measured people by saying that there are 4 kinds of people:

• Dumb-Lazy
• Dumb-Energetic
• Smart-Lazy
• Smart-Energetic

... and went on to describe how Napolean would put different kinds of people into different areas. The "Dumb-Lazy" guys were used as fodder on the front lines, the "Smart-Lazy" people were made Generals because they were good at finding the path of least resistance, the "Smart-Energetic" ones were the top leaders because they had the brains and the energy to drive people in the right direction. The "Dumb-Energetic" people were shot! I'm not sure if that is because dumb energetic people make so many mistakes or whether it's because, in that quadrant you are only one quadrant away from the "Smart-Energetic" people; and you wouldn't want to mistakenly allow a "Dumb-Energetic" to ascend to leadership - would you :-)

Anyway, as I stated - before I got into ramble mode - I believe that this is both an important and interesting area so, I shall pursue it much more throughout the course of the year. Next time I blog on this topic I'm hoping to have some lists of the different types of motivational stimulus that different people have and then drive on to discover: A) how can you find this information out, and B) how can you use the various motivators to gain the most from people within your team.