Relationship-Shaping: Match Your Style to What Makes People Tick

12 models for highly productive relationships with your workmates

What does leadership have in common with athletic footwear? When it comes to helping people to realize their full potential, there’s no one-size fits all. People have different internal motivations for why they work and the types of outcomes that are most rewarding to them. The alignment of these outcomes with these internal motivations helps determine the engagement, focus and productivity a leader can expect from each member of their team.

MIT’s Dr. Edgar Schein, one of the pillars of organizational psychology, identified eight “career anchors” that both fuel and limit a person’s career path. They act as fuel because any of these anchors can be the strongest internal motivation for a person to give their best efforts. And, they can be limiting because people who are expected to do work that doesn’t align with their strongest internal motivations, will be much less engaged in the work. Here is Schein’s list, plus one I added based on my own observations over four decades of leading people. You might be reminded of people in your own workplace as you review these career anchors:

Schein’s Career Anchor	Person’s Internal Motivation (What makes them tick!)
Technical/Functional	Apply and develop their technical or functional expertise in their area of specialization
General Managerial	Direct and integrate the work of others across functions, taking responsibility for the total results of an organizational whole
Autonomy/Independence	Freedom from organizational constraints to work in their own way, prioritizing self-reliance and personal freedom in their work choices
Security/Stability	Predictable, steady work with assurance of financial security and long-term stability
Entrepreneurial Creativity	Opportunities to create something new that they can identify as their own: whether a product, service, or organization
Service/Dedication to a Cause	Align their work with their personal values, and the ability to impact their organization and society
Pure Challenge	Overcoming obstacles, solving hard problems, or “winning” against capable opponents
Lifestyle	Flexibility to balance personal and family priorities with income and career requirements
Human Connection *	A sense of belonging to a group or tribe, and connection/shared purpose with the people outside of ones’ own family

* My addition to Dr. Schein’s original list. I have seen this operate as a strong workplace motivator in some people for years; and believe it has become an even more important career anchor recently as virtual workplaces present some challenges to group cohesiveness.

Some or all of these may influence a person, but not to the same degree. For instance, someone may be strongly drawn to solving hard problems at work, but Security/Stability is their strongest overall motivator.

And we can expect the importance of these anchors to change over time as people grow and as their circumstances change. For instance, “Security/Stability” may suddenly rise to the fore for a risk-taking entrepreneurial spirit who finds herself suddenly responsible for the long-term medical expenses of a child. Stay ‘plugged in’ with each member of your team to keep abreast of their changing circumstances so you can adapt those relationships in ways that tend to secure their best efforts as they experience life.

The implication for those of us interested in sharpening our leadership skills: Getting to know what makes each person on our team tick, and showing a genuine interest in them as they experience life, goes a long way in knowing how to best lead them.

Good news! There are many ways that Leader/managers can intentionally shape their relationship with each person they lead, to maximize each person’s engagement – that is, to encourage each person’s best efforts. Here’s a list of twelve different models that can help us think through how to tailor our relationships to best match the internal motivators of each of our workmates:

1. Teacher/Student: You provide structured instruction and evaluation while your workmate absorbs knowledge and demonstrates understanding through progressive assignments.

2. Mentor/Mentee: You share wisdom from your experience and provide developmental guidance while your workmate seeks advice and actively applies your insights to their professional growth.

3. Partnership: You collaborate as equals despite your positions on the org chart, sharing complementary strengths and making decisions jointly while maintaining mutual respect for your distinct roles.

4. Supervisor/Employee: You assign and oversee your team member’s work while monitoring performance and ensuring compliance. Most effective for work that must be performed according to established standards and expectations.

5. Coach/Player: You help your workmates develop specific skills and capabilities through structured guidance and feedback, giving them "plays" to run while helping improve performance. This paradigm is often successful on Sales teams.

6. Sponsor/Protégé: You actively champion your team member’s career advancement, making introductions and advocating for opportunities on their behalf.

7. Guardian/Apprentice: You gradually transfer knowledge and responsibility to your team member while protecting them from major mistakes, challenging them to learn in managable chunks.

8. Strategist/Tactician: You set direction and context while your team member determines how to execute effectively within the parameters you set.

9. Facilitator/Doer: You remove obstacles and provide resources while your workmate drives the actual work forward.

10. Architect/Builder: You provide the vision and framework for your team member; they bring it to life through hands-on execution.

11. Guide/Explorer: You provide navigational advice and guardrails while your workmate ventures into new territory and brings back insights that can drive improved strategy and tactics.

12. Director/Specialist: You manage the bigger picture while relying on your team member’s deep expertise in a particular domain that makes up part of that picture.
    

Relationship-Shaping: Leadership Artistry

You can intentionally shape each workplace relationship using combinations of these twelve models. You may discern, for example, that the most effective relationship with a brand new employee who is two years out of college, demonstrates a tremendous ability to learn new technical skills, and has a tendency to experiment and take risks in their attempts to innovate is 33% Teacher/Student, 20% Guardian/Apprentice, 20% Mentor/Mentee, 20% Supervisor/Employee, and then some combination of the other relationship models.

Sometimes the appropriateness of these twelve styles can depend to some degree on the type of work your team member does. Software developers who have achieved a certain level of technical skill may thrive when led according to an “Architect/Builder” model. Researchers in a science lab may be best served under a “Guide/Explorer” framework. In politics and public policy, “Sponsor/Protégé” might be the most encouraging approach.

I liken this Relationship-Shaping approach to an artist's pallete of twelve colors. As leaders, we are the artists. We get to assess what mixtures will best serve each person within the context of our organization's needs. We choose which "colors" to blend together in just the right proportion as we create the the best approach for each person we are leading.

Some Practical Advice 

Though I’ve just offered some possible matches between Schein’s career anchors and the twelve relationship models I’ve proposed, I’m not suggesting a formulaic approach to choosing how each team member or workmate relationship should be modeled based solely on their career anchors and the nature of the work. A number of other factors should be considered including the person’s strengths and weaknesses, the needs of the organization, and the type of risks associated with a team member’s potential missteps and growing pains. Reporting relationships among staff in a hospital's emergency room, where lives are regularly at stake, should probably look different from reporting relationships in a department store, where such risks are typically absent.

But knowing the many different models available to guide us in leading individual people helps us into being more intentional and specific about crafting our relationship with each person on our teams to encourage every individual to a high level of engagement.  

You might even make determining a person’s career anchors as part of your recruiting efforts. Include an open-ended question that’s designed to uncover a person’s internal motivators in the mix of questions you’ll ask candidates. Recruiting for a cause-focused non-profit? You’ll likely want people who convince you that “Service/Dedication to a Cause” is a strong anchor for them. Or a sales team? Depending on what you sell, you might be most interested in people with a strong “Entrepreneurial Creativity,” “Pure Challenge” or “Lifestyle” anchor.

And now, once you’ve opened up those conversations that help you get a better understanding of what makes each person on your team tick, you have twelve different approaches for tailoring your working relationship with each of them that you can mix and match as you lead each to higher levels of engagement and success.