#77: Meeting Our Motives at Work with Kelly Mackin

Lead the People

Kelly Mackin is the author of Work Life Well-Lived: The Motives Met Pathway to No-B.S. Well-Being at Work and cofounder and CEO of the Motives Met Platform and Human Needs Assessment which empowers people to create their best work life and workplace. Kellys journey from ill-being to well-being at work ignited her passion and dedication for helping people create health and happiness in their lives through a unique blend of skills. Kelly’s mission is to create a work world where we are human first and well-being is a right, not a privilege. She built Motives Met to achieve the attainable dream of a work life well-lived for all.

Top 3 Takeaways

1. Motives matter. Each of us experiences a variety of workplace needs to different degrees and at different times over the course of our careers. Understanding these at an individual level is critical.
2. Get real. Wishing alone won’t create more human and effective workplaces. We need to give managers the tools, training, and resources they need to drive the business and people outcomes we most want.
3. Team up. When we’re transparent about our motives and our collective need to help one another satisfy them, we’re all a part of the co-creation process. Heightened compassion, understanding, and accountability are the inevitable result.

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From the Source

“A human work world is one in which our human needs are healthy and ideally thriving at work.”

“I grew up really being taught that professionalism equals dehumanization, that we have to shut off those emotions, shut down our needs, put on that workplace armor, as Brené Brown loves to call it, and try to hit the off button on our humanity. When we go to work, that's just not possible. We cannot do that.”

“What research has found is that people actually want to show up and be human at work and treat others as human and have those values and virtues that we seem to hold so dear outside of work. That they actually want to bring those to work, but that we feel we can't do that.”

“We tend to take a more passive and reactive approach to well-being at work than a proactive or preventative one.”

“It is tough because leaders aren't given the time, tools, and resources, as I put it to, to do this well. So you can't expect well-being at work. You can't expect, ‘Oh, go have a people first culture, but we're not going to put any time, resources, dollars, or tools to do it.’ That's just completely unrealistic for everybody.”

“These 28 needs really give us a great framework and a picture to understand the building blocks of thriving at work, but we're going to have to focus if we want to optimize our work life and our teams.”

“Well-being is messy. It's hard. It's personal. It's multifaceted. It's evolving. We call it the ugly truth because it is. It's not as simple as wrapping it in a little bow and, ‘Oh, you just get to this destination and then you're well at work and then your team is well and performs well at work.’ It's constantly something that's going to evolve.” “Well-being is personal. So you cannot take this one size fits all approach.”

“Needs do hold friction with one another like we just talked about. So it's really learning to live in the tension of these needs.”

“A really beneficial thing that happens when you do that—when you start to put more of that ownership and accountability and that idea of co-creation with everybody—is that employees and team members have more compassion for you.”

Connect with Kelly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-mackin-52793110/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellymackin_motivesmet/

Website: http://www.motivesmet.com

Work Life Well-Lived (Book): https://amzn.to/3RkZxsW