Effective School Management

EXERCISE 2: Assessing the Motivation of Others
The exercise that follows should be carried out with at least three (preferably
five) friends or colleagues. The friends need not be connected with work –
indeed, the exercise can provide a semi-serious hour’s entertainment for you,
your spouse and a few dinner guests. While it is essential that all the people
involved in the activity should have met several times previously and spent
some time together, they do not need to have a particularly close social or
working relationship.

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MOTIVATING PEOPLE
4 1
Before conducting the exercise, you are advised to familiarize yourself
thoroughly with the two forms (pp. 42–43) and with the exercise instructions,
but you should not read the ‘Interpretation’.
When you have completed the exercise, develop a personal strategy to
remedy any problems you may have either in assessing the needs and wants
of others or in ensuring that others know your own needs and wants. Put it
into practice.
Instructions
Form 1, column 1. Each of the participants in the exercise should be given a
copy of Form 1. On this form are listed a number of ‘needs’ or ‘wants’ which
are felt to a greater or lesser extent by most people.
In the first column of the form each participant should rank the needs in
order of importance to him or her by writing the figure ‘1’ against the most
important, ‘2’ against the next most important, and so on.
Usually people will find it relatively easy to rank the most important and
the least important but may have some hesitation in the middle rankings. If
this happens, the order probably does not matter and a choice should be
made fairly quickly either way. Others may feel that two needs ‘overlap’ for
them. If so, they should ask which is the really driving purpose for them and
which is the means to the end.
The golden rule is not to spend too long in contemplation – first instincts
are often the most accurate.
Form 1, column 2, etc.
Having ranked the needs in order of importance for
themselves, each participant should write at the head of column 2 the name
of the first person to his or her right, at the head of column 3 the name of the
second person to his or her right and so on.
The next step is for each participant to fill in, outside the brackets, under the
appropriate column what he or she thinks the person concerned will have
written in column 1 of his or her own table, i.e. participant A tries to assess
how important each need is to participants B, C, D, etc. This must obviously
be done without reference to any of the other participants.
We now have the raw data to be processed.
Form 2. At this stage Form 2 should be given to each participant. Each person
heads the columns with the same names as on Form 1. The purpose of Form
2 is to enable each participant to find out how each other participant
perceived his or her needs.
The most efficient way of transferring the information is to
(1) ensure that each participant has written his or her name clearly at the top
right-hand corner of Form 1; and
(2) circulate the Form 1s and let each person enter on his or her Form 2, under
the column bearing the name which is in the top right-hand corner of the

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42
EFFECTIVE
SCHOOL
MANAGEMENT