Do You Like to Be Challenged?

Frequently, small business owners are excited to build their business, but often have lulls in their motivation. What most people don’t realize is that you derive your motivation from your natural hardwiring. When you create awareness about your natural hardwiring, you will be able to tell when it is working for you and when it is getting in the way.

Your hardwiring affects how you communicate, create relationships, react in stressful situations, stay motivated, and even how you will tend to market your business. While each individual has their unique blend of hardwiring, this article will cover the story of Adam from Me, Myself, and Why? The Secrets to Navigating Change to demonstrate how you can leverage one of the many hardwiring traits.

Adam is described as an independent-minded person who needs freedom to express himself. He is motivated in environments where he is able to be innovative, venturesome, and achieve tangible results. He is described as an independent expeditor; that is, he likes to create and execute his own ideas.

Leveraging Strengths

By no surprise, Adam thrived as a Director for his company negotiating (and winning) many new contracts. However, when he was laid off, he didn’t agree with that decision (largely because it wasn’t his.) After some self-reflection, Adam realized that he wasn’t entirely motivated at his job and this was an opportunity for him to start a brand new business and career.

As a resourceful problem solver, he responds favorably to challenges or unfamiliar situations. Starting a new business, filled with opportunities to blaze new trails, is in line with his hardwiring. Adam will also need to look at how he structures his business to support his blend of natural hardwiring so that he remains consistently motivated. Typically, he will be involved in the overall strategy and want to see tangible results. It will be important that he gets assistance in the routine but necessary work so that he focuses on the critical things that will bring those tangible results.

Managing the Hardwiring

While Adam’s natural hardwiring has its strengths, there are parts where, if left unmanaged, could prevent him from getting results and must be taken into consideration when structuring his business. Since Adam is naturally self-assured receiving his self-confidence internally, he is motivated by internal things – his way of doing work, his ideas, and his results. He is willing to debate his ideas with you and this individualistic behavior to dominate people or situations can come across as edgy, unapproachable or intensive.

While Adam is an independent innovator of ideas, he may ignore the advice of others in favor of his own way of doing things and this is an area he will need to manage. If he isn’t getting out of a conversation what is most important to him, people may feel dismissed by him as he will quickly shut down a conversation.

While Adam is excited about new ventures, he may not fully execute a single idea before going on to the next, causing delayed results or limited outcomes because the infrastructure is not there to support another new project. This puts more pressure on him and the more pressure or stress, the more his particular hardwiring will be amplified; that is, the more directive or competitive he will become, putting pressure on himself and others. He may need coaching or learn to manage his social interactions with others.

If you’re wired like Adam, how do you manage this hardwiring and stay motivated?

1. Create an Environment That Allows You To Independently Perform Functions Your Own Way. Since independence over your decisions is important you’ll need a daily dose of challenging decision making in your work environment. With an environment rich in challenge and independent execution, you’ll stay motivated depending on the mix of your other hardwiring, which will be discussed in other articles.
2. Create Opportunities with Freedom of Decision-Making Built In. People wired like Adam need freedom to make decisions that correspond to their results, ideas, and their way. Identify the end result and give them the opportunity to carve the path to get there. If you’re a business owner and want to leverage this hardwiring, remember to use resources that will help execute the remainder of your plans so you focus on what’s most important. You will typically gravitate toward getting new business and developing new ideas which you are naturally wired to do.
3. Implement Active Listening Techniques. People hardwired like Adam may not fully consider other people’s contributions. Active listening helps. It is a structured way of listening and responding to others, focusing attention on the person speaking. Suspending one’s own judgment and frame of reference are important to fully consider the speaker. Since you naturally listen through the lens of your own ideas, this technique helps you focus through another lens allowing you to open up to other people’s contributions.

Interacting With Adam

If you’re interacting with a client like Adam, remember these tips when interacting with them:

• There are degrees of just how much people need their independence and how they like to be challenged. Informing someone wired like Adam that something is difficult or they cannot do it creates the “I’ll-show-you” attitude and they will perform until the desired results are achieved.

• If X is what you need them to do and Y is what they want – (i.e., more freedom or autonomy from supervision) then let them know that achieving X will get them Y and not achieving X will give them less of their own autonomy.

• When communicating with someone hardwired like Adam, communicate in bullet points and factual or tangible-based examples.

• They will choose marketing vehicles that are innovative and give them their biggest return on investment, quickly dismissing options that don’t perform well the first time as they have high expectations for the best in anything.

Denying this hardwiring actually suppresses performance, productivity and motivation. When you get your natural hardwiring met with a bit of self-management, it helps you to keep motivated, creates more results, and improves outcomes. When you understand how your natural hardwiring works, you learn how to stay motivated and communicate with your prospects in the way they want to receive their information, enhance your prospect-to-client conversion rates and create more effective marketing messages.