EQ @ WORK: SCARF
use neuroscience to hack team members' motivations
Grab your favorite tattoo artist and ink this on the back of your eyelids - SCARF.
The SCARF Model by David Rock at the NeuroLeadership Institute is your key to decoding fear responses among your team (or family, friends, and literally anyone else). Fear responses boil down to one of five possible threat perceptions:
1. Status 2. Certainty 3. Autonomy 4. Relatedness 5. Fairness
HERE COMES THE HACK. GET READY.
It stands to reason that reverse engineering the SCARF model will reveal their motivations.
We never really know someone until we know what they fear, what they want, and what they need - and understand the interdependencies among all three.
This "need state," such that it is, is the birthplace of motivation. When you understand their fears and need states, you know where to calibrate the environment to shore up security and embolden their internal activation.