Harnessing the MVPI to align people, performance and culture

How can organizations harness the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory to boost performance and foster a culture where teams thrive? In a Hogan Assessments podcast, three experts explored this question, sharing their insights and real-world experiences of using the tool to align individual drivers with organizational goals.

The Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) is a survey that identifies the core goals and values that drive a person’s desires and ambitions. By understanding a candidate’s values, organizations can determine what motivates their success and the kind of role and environment where they will be most productive.

But the MVPI is more than just a survey; it is a tool that measures the core values, goals, and interests that determine what people desire and strive to achieve. It gets to the heart of what makes people tick.

Aligning values with company culture

In the podcast, Seniora El-Hage (Phoenix Consulting International), Victoria Zapata (HRTools), and Rene Kusch (Relevant Managementberatung) gave their perspectives on how the MVPI offers critical insights into the workplace. For business leaders, it is a powerful tool to match talent to roles based on their intrinsic motivations, ensuring their values align with the job’s demands.

“I always start in a simplified manner by saying that the MVPI unveil what drives you to get up in the morning, to go to work, to live your life, and so on,” says El-Hage.

“In terms of organization, the MVPI could be considered the architecture of the organization. It’s kind of the foundation of the organization. If people share those same values and those same drivers as the organization, they would definitely increase the performance of the whole organization.”

In team dynamics, the MVPI helps managers build cohesive teams and resolve conflicts rooted in value differences. In succession planning, the MVPI is crucial for promoting individuals whose values align with the company’s culture, preventing misalignment and preserving the organization’s identity.

The discussion made clear that understanding these fundamental motivators is essential for building effective leaders, fostering strong teams, and maintaining a healthy company culture. The MVPI provides the language to discuss these often-unseen drivers, turning abstract ideas into actionable insights.

“When it comes to defining or explaining the MVPI perspective, the values perspective, my values help me understand what I find good or bad,” says Kusch. “And the MVPI really helps understand the ‘frame’ which I bring to the table in order to make decisions about who’s going to join the company or the team and who’s not going to join. Or how we are going to invest resources.”

Available in over 40 languages, the MVPI can help uncover what employees really want. It can be completed in about 15 to 20 minutes. The survey can help improve diversity with unbiased assessment data, which can be used to gain deeper insight on an organization’s talent.

“Using the MVPI on team data provides a clear picture of a team’s collective self-awareness, including what motivates them and how well they align with organizational values and leadership. It reveals the core of a team’s personality, showing that internal drivers and values are just as crucial for performance and efficiency as observable behaviors,” notes El-Hage.

Being aware of pitfalls

However, using the MVPI isn’t without its challenges. For instance, when business leaders are selecting future successors, their own biases can influence the decision-making process. Leaders who score highly on certain leadership qualities may naturally favour others who exhibit similar traits. This can unintentionally overlook individuals with different, yet equally valuable, strengths – potentially limiting diversity of thought and skill within the organization.

“It’s a double-edged sword that heavily influences which individuals a leader selects for promotion – beyond their KPIs, competencies, and skills,” notes El-Hage.

Insights from this sort of evaluation tend to really highlight the differences between different leaders and among talent. Besides individual differences, there are also regional differences, especially in leadership styles.

“Since everything flows from the top, leaders tend to reward those who mirror their own high MVPI scores. For instance, in our region, leaders are often high on Recognition and Power, which sometimes backfires on people who don’t score highly on those two scales,” El-Hage notes.

Zapata added: “In leadership, especially in countries where hierarchy is more prevalent, there is a trend toward a high-power role where a leader unconsciously pushes a team to follow their own vision, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. This illustrates how our MVPI values help define what we personally find good or bad.”

Conclusion

The main takeaway from the three leaders is that the MVPI is a highly valuable tool for uncovering the core values that drive individuals and organizations. It provides the architectural foundation for culture, ensuring people are matched to roles based on their intrinsic motivation to boost performance and build cohesive teams. It is a tool that can give organizations the language to understand and align the fundamental, unseen drivers of success.