Are You a Climber, a Hiker, or a Runner? A Founder Explains the 3 Motivation Types
Whatever you may think of trendy buzzwords like 'Quiet Quitting' and 'the Great Resignation,' one thing is clear: A lot of people are struggling with their motivation at work right now. A recent Gallup poll found half of employees are not engaged at work and another 16 percent are actively disengaged, which basically means trying to slack off as much as possible to stick it to the boss.
The majority of employees no longer seem willing to trade accolades, fancy titles, or their boss's approval for long hours and lots of stress. That's a problem if you're an entrepreneur who needs your team to go all in for your business to succeed. How do you motivate your team to go above and beyond if they're uninterested in many traditional motivators?
Creating a supportive, inclusive environment and offering fair compensation are table stakes in this game. Study after study shows employees are not willing to put up with being bullied or underappreciated at the moment (which shouldn't surprise anyone). But if your goals go beyond not having people quit to actually getting them to buy into your mission, then you're going to need to figure out what makes your people tick on a deeper level.
One experienced entrepreneur recently used Medium to share a simple, helpful framework to help leaders do just that. Nir Zicherman founded podcast hosting platform Anchor, which was acquired by Spotify in 2019. Now he's an executive at the streaming behemoth. In the course of his startup journey, Zicherman explains, he's learned to bucket employees into three broad motivation baskets.
Climbers
Calling someone a climber doesn't have the best associations, but Zicherman is clear he doesn't mean anything negative by the term.
"Climbers, people are driven by what their actions unlock. To the original question of what motivates them, the answer is opening doors," he writes. "For Climbers, forward progress is key. They believe that the more they accomplish, the more future opportunities will be available to them."
Hikers
Zicherman calls himself "a tried and true hiker" and explains this motivation tendency this way: "These are people whose motivation stems primarily from doing something new, different, exciting." These are the people who get easily bored doing the same thing every day and always want to feed their curiosity. "They hike unknown trails," Zicherman says.
Runners
It's a fact that a strangely high percentage of founders are literal runners, but that's not what Zicherman is talking about here. By Runner, he means "people who know what they're good at, and they want to keep doing it and improving." These are passionate, dedicated folks who feel called to push themselves in a particular area (even at the expense of some suffering).
"If a Climber gets an advanced degree to open doors and a Hiker gets an advanced degree to explore something new, a Runner gets an advanced degree because they studied the same thing in undergrad and they loved it," Zicherman explains.
Putting this framework to use
He is, of course, not the first to try to separate employees into types. Management consultancies have launched massive research projects dedicated to the same aim. But what sets Zicherman's framework apart is its intuitive simplicity. We've all met folks who feel like they slot right into these categories, and I would bet the majority of readers instantly identify with one or the other. (I'm a hiker, for instance.)
Which makes this three-part classification system a snap to use. "I have found it helpful--in conversations with people about their careers, their passions, their next steps--to ask which of the three types they fall into. In my experience, it helps them think about what they want to achieve," Zicherman suggests.
Everyone is messy and no label will fit any individual perfectly, but by having these conversations, Zicherman insists managers can get a better sense of what drives each employee so they can better support them in reaching their goals. The result should be a happier, more engaged, and more motivated workforce.