The Good Tech Companies - From 1-on-1s to Insight: How Moving Motivators Fueled My Team´s Drive

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/from-1-on-1s-to-insight-how-moving-motivators-fueled-my-teams-drive. Discover how Moving Motivators transformed team management through 1-on-1s. Learn to identify what drives your team and turn insights into actionable results. Check more stories related to management at: https://hackernoon.com/c/management. You can also check exclusive content about #management-and-leadership, #team-management, #motivating-and-leading-teams, #moving-motivators, #1-on-1, #startups, #social-discovery-group, #good-company, and more. This story was written by: @socialdiscoverygroup. Learn more about this writer by checking @socialdiscoverygroup's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. New project manager used Moving Motivators to assess team motivation. The tool is a modern leadership approach that views management as a collaborative and agile responsibility.

This audio is presented by Hacker Noon, where anyone can learn anything about any technology. From one-on-ones to insight, how moving motivators fueled my team's drive, by Social Discovery Group. From one-on-one-s to insight, how moving motivators fueled my team's drive The checklist of a new project manager role is familiar. Learn the ropes, map out the processes, meet the team, and nail the probation period goals. One of my key goals? To build strong relationships with my new team. After kicking things off with initial one-on-one meetings, I wanted to understand what intrinsically motivates each of my new team members. What energizes them? What do they value most in their day-to-day

work? In this article, I'll dive into how I used a tool called Moving Motivators to assess team motivation and how it changed the way I manage. The Heart of Motivation. Where do you start? First on the agenda. One on one s. These conversations are essential, and they create space for openness and genuine listening. I paid close attention not just to what my teammates said, but how they worked, how they responded to challenges, and what inspired them. I also asked colleagues who had worked with the team longer than I had for their opinion. This was valuable, but I wanted more. I wanted something structured and human-centered. I turned to moving motivators, awesome pull but powerful exercise from management

3.0, a modern leadership approach that views management as a collaborative and agile responsibility to improve workflow and build motivated teams. Gear up. How to prep for the exercise I found a suitable Miro template that already included the motivator cards and a scale to rank them for each one on one session. Greater than to make the experience as smooth as possible, I. Greater than wrote a short introduction to explain the goal and what each motivator meant greater than included the overview and optional reading material in the Google Calendar greater than invite greater than created neutral card descriptions for more open interpretation greater than completed the exercise myself beforehand so I could later share my own greater

than results. Tip. Some motivators, like mastery, usually have a standard interpretation. Others, like honor or power, mean different things to different people. Keep T-H-E-D-E-F-I-N-I-T-I-O-N-S flexible point 1 on 1 OR a group session. Most resources suggest doing moving motivators as a group exercise to boost transparency and team morale. As a new manager, I opted for 1 onone sessions to reduce the risk of anyone holding back, build individual trust, and give each person space for honest reflection. Running the sessions each session began with reassurance. There are no right or wrong answers, and motivators can and will change over time. We walked through each motivator's meaning until they felt confident with their interpretation.

One colleague had a unique take and interpreted honor in two ways. Pride in personal achievements and pride in the company's mission. Wes split the card to reflect both meanings. Once the motivators were ranked from most important to least important, I added a second part. Raise the motivators they felt were being met. Lower the ones they felt were lacking. I could see immediately where each colleague was succeeding and where there were gaps. What I leer Ned Key findings revealed diverse motivation profiles. For some, mastery was crucial, while others prioritized status, curiosity, or relatedness. The variety emphasized the need for a personalized approach and how understanding what drives each individual improves your ability to manage them effectively. At the end of each meeting, I shared my own

motivation results to foster collaboration. I chose to do this at the end rather than the beginning to avoid unintentionally influencing the team's responses. Turning insights into action the insights were immediately beneficial. A QA engineer highly valued curiosity and mastery, but wasn't feeling challenged. After our discussion, we enrolled him in an automation QA course. A win for him and the team, I identified potential future leaders who could back me up during vacations. I built stronger connections with those I initially misperceived and enhanced overall team collaboration. Final T Hots doing moving motivators one on one was the right call for a first time exercise.

It built trust, encouraged reflection, and gave me a motivational map of the entire team. With the success of the first run, next time, I plan to explore the group exercise version. Now that they're familiar with the exercise, I believe a group session could spark even more open dialogue and enhance team collaboration. Written by Eugene Bondarenka, delivery manager at Social Discovery Group. Thank you for listening to this Hacker Noon story, read by Artificial Intelligence. Visit HackerNoon.com to read, write, learn and publish.