We recently connected with Kelly Mackin and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Motives Met is built from our mission to create a human work world with true well-being. It was my mom and my journey through ill-being at work that led us to our determination for a future work world where well-being was treated as a right and not a privilege.

Growing up I saw extremes in my mom’s work experience. Early on work lit my mom up. She was a badass woman trailblazer, SVP of research at one of the largest global advertising agencies. Her work gave her such purpose, joy, and confidence. Once her company was bought out everything changed and it started to destroy her.

Work has the potential to be a great source of well-being in people’s lives, even if it’s simply yet profoundly that it supports the kind of life they want to live outside of their job. We spend 1/3rd of our lives at work, work life is life. If we want a life that’s well-lived we must have a work life that is well-lived too.

My mom’s experience was devastating to witness and I sadly ended up following right in the same footsteps. Saying I was in a toxic workplace for years would be putting it lightly. My health started to deteriorate mentally, emotionally, and physically. It took me hitting some real lows before I woke up and got clarity.

My mom and I are not the exception in having work wounds from our past, ill-being at work has skyrocketed even with all the attention on mental health and happiness at work. The pandemic however really lit fire to the work well-being movement that was already underway. We still have a long way to go but we are at a profound point in history where we can decide what we want the future of work to be and every day more people fight for well-being at work, they demand it.

We built our platform with actionable insights and tools to empower people to create their best work lives and workplaces.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, could you briefly share more about your work with our readers?

Motives Met started with the question, “What is work-wellbeing?” As a quantitative researcher of human behavior, my team and I followed our research curiosities to dive deep into data to get to the truth because it turns out the world had no idea what it really was. Goal clarity equals goal achievement. If we don’t have a shared meaning and mindset around what thriving at work means, achieving that goal will be much more difficult.

We discovered that how we have approached health and happiness at work is wrong. Yep it’s wrong. There is a lot of overwhelming and conflicting noise out there to navigate through. One social media influencer will tell you it’s about the hustle and reaching your potential, but a different one? Will tell you forget about the hustle, and prioritize your work-life balance. Not to mention the research or CEO’s who claim appreciation, purpose, or belongings is the golden ticket to a fulfilled work life or a happily engaged team.

Our data uncovered 28 psychological, emotional, and social needs, what we call motives, that are the foundation to thriving at work. When these human needs are met, when they are healthy, everyone wins at work. Things like connection, positive emotions, retention, and psychological safety are amplified while stress, burnout, and disengagement go down.

What the insights also showed is that what matters most to me at work is going to be different than what matters most to you. We all have a different hierarchy of needs, a few motives that are the main drivers of our well-being at work today. That’s why we created the Motives Met Human Needs Assessment™ to help people to identify their top 5 motives, to be mindful of, communicate, and ultimately meet them.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

This story always seems to resonate with others as an example of profound resilience. 6 weeks before my wedding, my fiancé called it quits. Instead of drowning my sorrows on a beach with too many margaritas, I made a bold decision: I would conquer Mount Kilimanjaro, standing at 19,341 ft. on New Year’s Day in Africa.

So how did that come to be? Once I had the wake-up call that I needed to care for my well-being both in and outside of work, I left my life in Chicago behind and moved to California, first San Francisco then San Diego. I was still stumbling through my new path of unlearning so many beliefs and changing habits that no longer fit the future I wanted but it was difficult. My life in Chicago both in and outside of work had taken a toll. I was dealing with a sleep disorder, debilitating anxiety, and depression. Then a few weeks before my wedding, the unthinkable happened. I could have crumbled, I could have chosen a path of self-sabotage, but instead, I decided I was going to use this to make me better, to grow and heal myself on a very deep level.

I had always wanted to do an epic hike so that’s exactly what I did. I signed up for Kili. Had three months to get off the anxiety and sleeping pills I was dependent on and train to be able to make the climb. Any big summit you want to reach in life, whether literal or figurative, is going to be a mental game. The main culprit that stops people from making it to the top of Kili is altitude sickness. Two days before the summit I got a bad case of it, and I would never wish it on my worst enemy. The guides wanted to bring me down,I almost turned around but I was determined. I had put a quote in my pack to carry with me up the mountain from Napolean Hill, “The only limitations are the ones we create in the mind.” I had blurry vision, couldn’t keep food down, and was extremely dizzy but with one slow step in front of the other, I eventually made it to the next camp and collapsed. It was mental fortitude that ultimately got me through, I had to believe I could do it first. Anything you want to do, change, or become starts in your brain first. Growing my capacity for discomfort has been vital to persevering through the 2.5-year journey to write my book and to ride the waves of the entrepreneurial experience to build Motives Met.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I have SO much advice, this is my sweet spot! I’ll summarize four of the most impactful tips for managers and leaders.

1. Take an Individualized NOT a One-Size-Fits-All Approach

Each person on your team is motivated differently, they need different things to be well and perform well at work. One employee may be focused on growth and thrive when they have strong connections in their work relationships. Someone else may not be in a season of growth, they could be driven by needing meaning in their work and freedom and autonomy over their work. One employee may be driven by security and another one by taking risks for the sake of innovation. Well-being is personal, you get much better results if manage each person based on their unique motives.

2. Have Meaningful One-On-One Conversations About What Matters Most

Motives are a missing conversation at work, but that silence will cost you. Our research found only 33% of employees said their boss had a conversation with them in the last year to talk about their job satisfaction, and 31% said only once. Unmet needs lead to employees walking about the door, it’s not just about their financial salary, but their emotional salary. If you take the time to know each person as a human being and discuss what matters most to them at work it leads to all sorts of benefits.

3. Co-Create a Culture of Well-Being

As a leader, you have a significant influence on the culture and team dynamic that others won’t have. You have a big responsibility but your power actually comes from sharing that emotional labor not drowning under the weight of it. The degree that any of the 28 needs can be strong at work, whether it’s work-life harmony, self-esteem, or fairness, is going to be dependant on everyone. Well-being at work happens when everyone shows up in positive ways to keep these needs healthy. It’s a joint effort. When you create this shared meaning and mindset with your team you pave the way to co-create your best collective workplace together.

4. Embrace Need Diversity, Welcome Motive Diversity

Certain motives can be very difficult to meet at the same time for any given person or on a given team. These needs will at times hold friction with one another, it is not about perfection it’s about optimization. At times there may need to be tough choices, compromise, and even acceptance. All of these needs are worthy at work, none are inherently better or more important than others but certain motive can be put on a pedestal and others judged or dismissed. Create a culture where motive diversity is celebrated, where the goal is to learn to live in the tension of these needs well and do it together.

Contact Info:

• Website: motivesmet.com
• Instagram: @kellymackin_motivesmet
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-mackin-52793110/