“Why do your people work?”

The Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values Profile (PIAV) shows why a person works. It describes the traits that drive a person to work; that motivate action or create resistance.

The PIAV Profile ranks a person’s attitudes based on the following six core motivators, which reflect a person’s primary interests:

Theoretical--Truth, knowledge, objectivity.
Utilitarian--What is useful, what will work, what will make money.
Aesthetic--Expression, experience, harmony, beauty.
Social--People, relationships, nurturing.
Individualistic--Advancement, getting to the top, assertion of self.
Traditional--Finding the highest values in life, living according to an unquestioned set of rules.

A person’s attitudes play a major role in motivation. The PIAV profile describes the major categories of motivation in terms of interests, attitudes and values. Most people will take action chiefly to fulfill their important motivators—whether on or off the job. Getting people to understand their own motivational attributes—and those of others—creates the possibility of adaptation and improvement. The insights gained through the PIAV profile show us why people are moved to work hard, or not, on the job. Understanding these motivators helps managers handle employees in a more productive manner in order to get the best possible work out of them.

Different people are motivated in different ways. And different motivations produce different actions. The key is to understand the relationship between the two. Organizations that do understand—and act on this information—are three steps ahead of the game.