female hands on steering wheel of car

Shaping a Culture of High Performance on the Job: The Science of Total Motivation

How do top companies like Apple, Starbucks and others build high performing cultures by focusing on Total Motivation? Is culture something you can measure and prove is worth the investment? It turns out that why you work determines how well you work.

This Integrity Solutions podcast features an interview with Lindsay McGregor, co-author of the best-selling book Primed to Perform, who details a new framework for understanding and building employee motivation.

Key Total Motivation Podcast Takeaways:

  • Is culture something you can measure and change? Can you prove it’s worth the investment? The answer is yes…
  • Why you work determines how well you work.
  • There are 6 points on a spectrum that explain why we do anything: Play, Purpose, and Potential (direct) and Emotional Pressure, Economic and Inertia (indirect).
  • TOMO (Total Motivation) can predict both individual and organizational performance.
  • Helping someone to learn to see the purpose and impact of their work can really make a difference for them.
  • The companies that are famous for their cultures all have higher TOMO than their competitors.
  • Leaders deep-seeded assumptions about their people can influence their approach to how they motivate individuals (or not).
  • When you measure the TOMO of people who are led by hands-off leaders it’s very mediocre; you get a huge leap up when the leader is actively increasing play, purpose and potential and actively reducing emotional pressure, economic pressure and inertia.

Podcast Quotes from Lindsay McGregor:

“If you have high TMO (Total Motivation), you have lots of the good motives- play, purpose and potential- and very few of the bad motives- emotional pressure, economic pressure and inertia.”

“You can actually measure somebody’s TOMO, and it will predict the performance of an individual. And also, if you measure the TOMO of an organization, it will predict the performance of the entire company.”

“We’re all wired to believe that motivation is a part of who you are as a person. We very much underestimate the power of the situation to influence how motivated we are and how we behave.”

“The first step in anybody thinking about how they become a highly motivating leader is to realize how much your own personal leadership style flexes or changes based on who you’re working with.”

Related Links:

Follow Lindsay McGregor on Twitter

Vega Factor website

Get a Copy of Primed to Perform

Integrity Solutions’ research on the most overlooked component of salesperson development and coaching— increasing salesperson Motivation Drive.