Moving Motivators: The Complete Guide to Understanding What Truly Drives Your Team

What Are Moving Motivators?

Moving Motivators is a card-based exercise created by Jurgen Appelo, the founder of Management 3.0, designed to help individuals and teams uncover what truly drives their motivation at work. Rather than guessing what keeps employees engaged, this practice gives people a structured yet enjoyable way to reflect on their personal values and priorities.

The exercise uses ten motivator cards, each representing a core human desire drawn from the research of Daniel Pink, Steven Reiss, and Edward Deci. Participants rank these cards in order of personal importance, then evaluate how a specific change (like a new role, restructuring, or policy shift) might positively or negatively affect each motivator.

Originally developed for one-on-one conversations between managers and their direct reports, the tool has since expanded into team retrospectives, startup co-founder alignment sessions, onboarding workshops, and even personal relationship discussions.

Why Does Workplace Motivation Matter So Much?

Understanding what drives people at work is no longer optional for leaders who want sustainable results.

According to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, only 23% of employees worldwide feel actively engaged at their jobs. In the United States alone, engagement dropped from 36% in 2020 to 31% in 2024, as reported by High5 Test’s employee motivation statistics compilation. That steady decline signals a growing disconnect between what organizations offer and what employees actually need.

A meta-analysis published in the journal Sustainability (Van den Broeck et al., 2021) found that intrinsic motivation accounts for over 45% of the variance in positive work outcomes such as engagement, job satisfaction, and reduced burnout. External rewards like bonuses and promotions contributed less than 10%.

These numbers make one thing clear: leaders who invest time in understanding intrinsic motivation gain a measurable competitive advantage in retention, productivity, and team morale.

The CHAMPFROGS Model: 10 Motivators Explained

CHAMPFROGS is a mnemonic acronym that represents the ten motivators used in the exercise. Each motivator captures a specific psychological need that influences how people feel about their work. Here is a breakdown of all ten:

Curiosity means having plenty of things to investigate and think about. People driven by curiosity thrive when they can explore new ideas, learn unfamiliar skills, or solve complex problems.

Honor reflects the desire to feel proud that personal values align with how one works. When someone’s ethical standards match their organization’s culture, they feel a deep sense of integrity.

Acceptance relates to feeling approved of by the people around you. This motivator focuses on social belonging and the reassurance that colleagues respect who you are and what you contribute.

Mastery is about being challenged at the right level. Work that stretches competence without overwhelming someone creates a satisfying state of growth, closely related to what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as “flow.”

Power involves having enough room to influence what happens in your environment. This is not about authority over others but rather the ability to shape decisions, processes, and outcomes.

Freedom centers on independence. People motivated by freedom want autonomy over their tasks, schedules, and responsibilities without excessive oversight.

Relatedness addresses the need for meaningful social connections at work. Strong relationships with colleagues create trust, collaboration, and emotional safety.

Order represents the desire for stability, clear rules, and predictable structures. Some individuals perform best when they know exactly what is expected and how systems operate.

Goal captures purpose. When someone’s life purpose is reflected in their daily work, they experience a powerful sense of meaning that fuels long-term commitment.

Status involves recognition. People driven by status want their position and contributions to be acknowledged and respected by those around them.

It is worth noting that these ten motivators are not purely intrinsic or purely extrinsic. Appelo designed the model so that each card falls somewhere on a spectrum between the two, making the framework more realistic than binary models.

How to Facilitate the Exercise

Running this activity is straightforward and requires minimal preparation. Here is a step-by-step walkthrough:

Step 1: Prepare the Cards. You can purchase physical card sets from the Management 3.0 shop or download free printable versions from management30.com in multiple languages. Digital versions are also available as templates on Miro and Figma for remote teams.

Step 2: Individual Ranking. Each participant receives a set of ten cards. Without discussing with others, everyone arranges their cards from left to right, placing the least important motivator on the far left and the most important on the far right. This step typically takes 5 to 10 minutes and often proves more difficult than participants expect.

Step 3: Evaluate a Change. Introduce a specific change scenario, whether it is a real upcoming restructuring, a hypothetical job switch, or a new project assignment. Each person then moves their cards up (if the change strengthens that motivator) or down (if the change weakens it). Cards that remain unaffected stay in place.

Step 4: Reflect and Discuss. This is where the real value emerges. In pairs or small groups, participants share their rankings and discuss which motivators moved up or down. The facilitator encourages questions like “What surprised you?” and “Where do your priorities differ from your partner’s?”

Step 5: Identify Patterns. As a team, look for common themes. Are most people driven by freedom and curiosity? Or does the team lean toward order and status? These patterns inform how leaders can design work environments, assign tasks, and communicate changes more effectively.

Allow approximately 45 to 60 minutes for the full exercise, including setup and group discussion.

Where Can You Use This Practice?

This tool adapts to a wide range of contexts far beyond its original one-on-one management setting:

Agile Retrospectives. Many Scrum Masters use the exercise as a variation in sprint retrospectives to explore how recent changes affected team morale. It opens conversations that standard retrospective formats sometimes miss.

Onboarding and Hiring. Human resources teams have adopted the cards to better understand new hires during their first weeks. Some organizations even use the activity during interviews to assess cultural fit without invasive questioning.

Change Management. When a reorganization, merger, or leadership transition is approaching, facilitating a group session helps leaders anticipate resistance and identify which motivators are most at risk.

Team Building Workshops. Pairing people who don’t regularly work together and having them compare motivator rankings creates rapid empathy and understanding across departments.

Personal Development. Individuals can use the cards on their own to reflect on career decisions, evaluate job offers, or simply gain clarity on what matters most at a given point in life.

The Science Behind Why This Exercise Works

The effectiveness of this practice is rooted in well-established psychological frameworks.

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory identifies three core psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. All three are represented within the CHAMPFROGS model (Freedom, Mastery, and Relatedness respectively), but the model adds seven more dimensions for a richer, more nuanced picture.

Daniel Pink’s book Drive popularized the idea that autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the true engines of motivation for knowledge workers. Again, the CHAMPFROGS model incorporates all three (Freedom, Mastery, Goal) while expanding the framework with elements Pink did not emphasize, such as Curiosity, Honor, and Order.

A 2025 report from the Society for Human Resource Management found that 75% of employees consider a positive, psychologically safe environment crucial for their motivation. The card-based exercise directly supports this by creating a structured, non-threatening space where people can share what matters to them without judgment.

Research from Culture Amp’s 2025 benchmarks further reveals that 94% of employees believe their work matters, signaling strong latent intrinsic motivation. The challenge for leaders is not creating motivation from scratch but rather uncovering and supporting what already exists. That is precisely what this practice is designed to do.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Facilitating

Even a well-designed exercise can fall flat if the facilitator overlooks certain pitfalls:

Skipping the discussion phase. The card ranking alone provides limited value. The real insight comes from the conversation that follows. Never rush through or eliminate the reflection step.

Forcing public sharing. Not everyone is comfortable revealing their deepest motivators in a large group. Offer the option to discuss in pairs first, especially in teams with low psychological safety.

Using the results to judge people. The exercise is a reflection tool, not a performance evaluation. If team members feel their answers will be held against them, honesty disappears immediately.

Running it once and never returning. Motivators shift over time as people’s circumstances, roles, and personal lives evolve. The “moving” in the name refers to this very fluidity. Schedule the exercise at regular intervals, perhaps quarterly or during major transitions.

Having the manager share first. When a leader reveals their ranking before the team, it can unintentionally anchor others’ responses. Let team members share first, and have the manager go last.

How This Exercise Strengthens E.E.A.T. Signals in Your Organization

For leaders who think in terms of organizational credibility and trust, the practice directly supports what Google’s content quality framework calls E.E.A.T. (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), but applied internally:

Experience. Team members draw from personal, lived experience when ranking their cards. No theoretical knowledge is required.

Expertise. Facilitators who run the exercise consistently develop a nuanced understanding of motivation dynamics that improves their leadership practice.

Authoritativeness. The CHAMPFROGS model is backed by the work of multiple respected researchers, giving it academic credibility that reinforces trust in the process.

Trustworthiness. When leaders genuinely act on what they learn (adjusting workloads, recognizing contributions, offering more autonomy), trust between manager and team deepens over time.

Conclusion

Understanding what drives the people around you is one of the most impactful skills any leader, coach, or team member can develop. Moving Motivators offers a simple, research-backed, and genuinely enjoyable way to surface those hidden drivers and translate them into practical improvements.

The ten CHAMPFROGS motivators provide a shared vocabulary for discussing something deeply personal without it feeling uncomfortable. Whether you use the exercise in a retrospective, a one-on-one, or a personal reflection session, the insights it generates can reshape how teams collaborate, how leaders communicate change, and how individuals make career decisions.

If you have not tried the exercise yet, start with yourself. Rank the ten cards, reflect honestly, and notice what surprises you. Then bring it to your team. The conversations that follow might be the most valuable meeting time you invest all year.

Topical Range: This article covers intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, the CHAMPFROGS model, Management 3.0, Self-Determination Theory, Daniel Pink’s Drive framework, employee engagement statistics, agile retrospectives, change management, team building exercises, facilitation best practices, psychological safety, onboarding tools, remote team collaboration, and E.E.A.T. signals for organizational trust.