How to turn awareness of one's motivations into action

- How present are they in my daily life today?

- How much am I honouring them in my decisions, in my actions, in my behaviour?

- In which areas of my life do I feel a misalignment?

Give each driver a score from 1 to 10, where 10 indicates a full expression in your life and 1 a total absence. This will allow you to clearly visualise the areas in which you are aligned and those you need to work on.

For example, you might realise that a driver such as 'adventure' is very present in your career, but missing in your personal life. Or you might realise that the value of 'learning and self-development' has been neglected in recent months. This kind of awareness is crucial to avoid latent frustration and dissatisfaction. In making this shift, it is crucial to be completely honest with oneself: drivers must be evaluated on the basis of actual behaviour, not just intentions. It's a bit like when we claim to love cinema, but the last film we saw in the cinema was 'The Goonies'.

4. Commitment Plan: your action plan

At this point, it is crucial to transform awareness into action.

For each driver rated low, define at least one specific action you can take to strengthen it. For example:

- If your driver was 'continuous learning', you could sign up for a course, read a book or seek a mentor.

- If one of your values was 'work-life balance', you could start setting clearer limits on working hours.

- If 'creativity' is one of your drivers but you feel that you do not devote enough space to it, you could make an effort to carve out time for creative activities or to integrate creativity into your daily work.

One trap we must avoid is what I call the 'easy revolution', i.e. giving in to the temptation to change everything, to make drastic choices driven by emotion. To better honour certain motivational drivers, it is not necessary, in most cases, to change one's job or disrupt one's daily life.

To be effective, the engagement plan must represent the right mix of actions and goals for change, balancing the short and the long term. It is crucial to strike a balance between concrete actions to be taken now and more distant, inspiring goals.

Once you have defined your action plan, it is essential to review it regularly. A good method may be to make a monthly appointment with yourself to assess your progress, check whether you are meeting your commitments and whether your drivers have changed over time. As the months go by, you may realise that some drivers have changed or that you need to adjust your action plan.

The discomfort resulting from misalignment with one's drivers is not felt immediately; in some cases, it takes months, and not a few, to realise it. But the risk is that one only realises this misalignment when the pain becomes acute.

Self-awareness is not a goal, but an ongoing process of reflection and adjustment. Rediscovering one's values, one's drivers and gaining clarity about one's priorities is an act of generosity that we can do to ourselves. Directing our behaviour, our actions consistently with them, is a powerful expression of our personal leadership. Quoting Stepen Covey and his very famous model of proactivity, living aligned to one's drivers is a magnificent example of expanding one's sphere of influence.

*Consultant Newton Spa