The assessment that changed the game for me and our team
My team and I are obsessed with assessments. You name it, we’ve probably taken it: Myers-Briggs, DISC, StrengthsFinder, Enneagram, BOSI, Appreciation Languages—I could go on and on.
We don’t use the results to try to put each other in boxes. Instead, we take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, and see how it can help us gain greater self-awareness. Sharing what we learn with each other always sparks interesting conversations about who we are, how we move through the world, and how all of that affects the way we work as a team.
One of the most game-changing assessments for us is one you’ve probably never heard of (unless you’ve been a loyal reader of this blog for a long time!). It’s shocking to me it’s not well-known in the leadership space because it’s been so huge for us. It's called the Motivation Code, or MCODE for short. We learned about it from Monique, our Chief of Growth, after her husband took the assessment at his company.
When we first decided to take the MCODE, we thought it was just another exercise in self-discovery. But it turned out to be the puzzle piece we’d been missing.
Let me explain:
If you’ve been here a while or seen me speak onstage, you've probably heard me talk about the “sweet spot.”
The sweet spot is the place where you do your most impactful work and feel the most fulfilled while doing it. In order to be in your sweet spot, two things have to be true: Your work has to align with your strengths, and you have to feel motivated to do that work.
Even if you didn’t have the words to describe it, you’ve probably felt what it’s like to work in your sweet spot: It’s those times when you’re so focused on what you’re doing that the hours just slip by, or when your work feels almost effortless, or when you feel energized by what you’re doing and it fills your cup. Assessments can help pinpoint why certain kinds of work makes you feel that way—and why other work doesn’t. That’s what they’ve done for us.
Before we took MCODE, Gallup's CliftonStrengths was by far our most defining assessment because it helped us identify one half of the sweet spot equation: our natural strengths. We found it to be so useful that we adjusted our roles around what we learned, and we even started assigning tasks and projects based largely on strengths. The idea was to give everyone a chance to shine by doing what they’re great at. Many people have taken this assessment—it’s one of the more popular ones out there—and I highly recommend it if you haven’t taken it.
But there was always this missing piece that I just couldn’t figure out. Two people could have the exact same strengths but completely different reactions to working on the same project: One would light up, and the other would just go through the motions. But then, if I put those same two people on a different project that aligned with those same strengths, the person who was excited before would now feel indifferent, and vice versa.
Why? Because there’s another element at play: motivation. It’s not enough to have strengths in something; when you are excited about the work and naturally drawn to it, that’s what puts you in sweet spot territory.
MCODE helped us find that missing piece. Just like CliftonStrengths, it gave us language to describe our motivations, and it allowed us to take our collaboration to an even deeper level. Now that we know what we’re good at and what drives us to do our best work, we can more easily identify where our sweet spots are, and we work within them as much as possible.
The assessment is unique not just because of what it measures but because of how it’s set up. Almost all of the other assessments we’ve taken have involved multiple-choice questions or yes/no answers. MCODE asks you to think of four times when you felt like you were really motivated (in any part of your life, not just work), and then answer questions with those experiences in mind. Your answers reveal the common thread in your motivations.
Assessment results can change over time, so we’ve now taken MCODE twice as a team. This most recent time we took it, these are the four experiences I chose to focus on that were the most motivating to me personally: 1) the time I went on a “friend tour” (I took a week off and visited each of my closest friends who live in all different places); 2) a huge creative project I’ve been working on (that I can’t share the details of just yet!); 3) running my first half-marathon; 4) and finally, a session I led recently where I had to adapt in the moment and decided to follow my gut instead of the agreed-upon agenda.
Looking at these four experiences at face value, it’s hard for me to see what ties them together aside from the fact that I felt completely lit up while doing all of them. The MCODE helped me understand the common thread. Here are what it chose as my top five motivations across those experiences:
Be unique: Be distinctive by displaying a talent, quality, or aspect that is extraordinary and different from others
Evoke recognition: Capture the attention and interest of others
Identify potential: Uncover, discover, and harness realized or unrealized potential
Overcome: Focus on persevering through difficulties, oppositions, or disadvantages
Design: Take a vision or big-picture plan and give it a creative design
I don’t know that I would have ever been able to point to these things on my own, but once I saw them written out, I could feel that they were true.
To show you how we use these results on our team, I want to focus on my top one, which is Be Unique. It was my top result the last time I took MCODE, too, so I know this is a really big driver for me. It’s been so helpful to know this about myself because I’ve realized that I've always been driven this way. I love to go against the grain and do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. The more I can do that, the more fun I have.
Knowing that this is my top motivation tells me that I am going to do my best work when I can put my own personal touch on it. And at the same time, I need to be aware that it can come with a cost: Not every piece of work needs to be unique. Sometimes, when I’ve leaned in a little too hard and tried to take my uniqueness too far, it’s led to tension on the team. They’ve told me before that it can be frustrating that everything that I want to do is against the grain. There are times when we don't need to be unique; we need to follow what we know works. Because my team knows that this is my number one motivation, they have been able to help me better walk that line.
That’s the power of these assessments. They help you learn about yourself, give you language to express what drives you, and when you share what you learn with others, you create more understanding and a better environment for collaboration.
I want to know: Are you into self-assessments? What’s your favorite one you’ve ever taken and why? Maybe we can add it to our list to take as a team! Hit “reply” and tell us all about it.
Before I go, I’ve got an exciting announcement if you are intrigued by MCODE. We believe in this assessment so much that we’ve partnered with MCODE to offer an exclusive discount to our community. Click this link and use the code KRISTEN for $30 off the premium assessment (making it $49 instead of the usual $79). In full transparency, we will make a commission if you decide to take the assessment, but I would not recommend something I do not wholeheartedly believe in. (And if you decide to take it, write to us and let us know what you think!)
No matter how you go on the journey of learning more about yourself, cheers to self-discovery and finding ways to work in your sweet spot.
Big hugs,
