Here’s a question most leaders never think to ask: what if the way you motivate people is actually working against them?

Here’s a question most leaders never think to ask: what if the way you motivate people is actually working against them?

Not because your intentions are wrong. Not because you don’t care. But because the motivational frame that works for your brain doesn’t work the same way in someone else’s.

This is one of the most well-researched and least understood dynamics in leadership. And once you see it, it changes how you read almost every interaction you have.

TWO WAYS BRAINS APPROACH MOTIVATION

Psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson and motivation scientist E. Tory Higgins have spent decades researching what drives people to act. Their work identifies two core motivational orientations that shape how people lead, respond to change, take on feedback, and make decisions.

Some people are promotion-focused. They play to win. They lean toward opportunity, growth, and what’s possible. Others are prevention-focused. They play to not lose. They lean toward accuracy, thoroughness, and getting things right.

Neither is better. Both are essential. Most of us sit somewhere along a spectrum between the two.

The problem is that most leaders default to motivating others the way they themselves are motivated. And when the frame doesn’t match, the message doesn’t just miss. Research shows it can actively increase anxiety in the person you’re trying to reach.

WHAT THIS ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

Think about the last time you communicated a change and half the room was energised while the other half went quiet. The promotion-focused people heard opportunity. The prevention-focused people heard uncertainty. Same message. Different brains. Different responses.

Or think about feedback. When you frame feedback around potential and growth, that lands well for a promotion-focused person. But for someone who is prevention-focused, that framing can feel vague and unanchored. They want to know specifically what needs to be right, not what could be possible. The feedback that feels motivating to one person feels destabilising to another.

This plays out in how teams collaborate, how programs and initiatives land, how people respond when things aren’t working, and why some people engage while others quietly disengage. It shows up in psychosocial safety conversations and culture work. It shows up in how you coach the people around you. It even shows up at home.

The pattern is always the same: someone is using their own motivational frame and assuming it’s universal. It isn’t.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Once you understand motivational orientation, things that used to look like resistance start to look like information.

The person who resists your change initiative may not be resistant. Their brain may be processing for risk you haven’t addressed. The team member who seems disengaged may not lack motivation. They may be motivated by something you haven’t spoken to. The colleague who moves at a different pace to you isn’t a problem to manage. They’re an orientation to understand.

And the patterns you notice in yourself, the way you respond to risk, to ambiguity, to feedback, those aren’t random. They’re your motivational orientation at work. Understanding it doesn’t change who you are. It gives you language for why you do what you do, and how to work with people who are wired differently.