In his book Your Brain at Work, David Rock introduces the SCARF model, a useful paradigm for understanding what motivates all of us, at work and beyond:

• Status: how important are you to others?
• Certainty: how well can you predict what’s going to happen to you?
• Autonomy: how much control do you have over events?
• Relatedness: how safe do you feel with others?
• Fairness: how equitably are you being treated?

Each of these attributes is closely linked to your sense of well-being. The more you experience an abundance of these things, the safer, healthier and more productive you can be. When you experience their scarcity, the opposite is true: you feel stress and anxiety and their negative impact on your health and ability to function well.

Forces beyond your control, within and outside your organization, have a huge impact on how your team experiences the SCARF attributes. But you can do a lot to supply these nutrients to each other, regardless of external circumstances.

• You can increase the sense of Status on your team by giving each other genuine positive feedback and recognition.
• You can increase the sense of Certainty on your team by helping each other build structure and planning frameworks.
• You can increase the sense of Autonomy on your team by helping each other find empowerment to take initiative and ownership.
• You can increase the sense of Relatedness on your team by working together to build team cohesion.
• You can increase the sense of Fairness on your team by being transparent with each other and advocating together for fairness-related values in your organization.

Try It: Have a conversation with your team about your SCARF attributes, individually and as a group. Identify areas where you can work together to make one or more attributes better. Make a commitment to help each other in specific, concrete ways. If you spot organizational issues that negatively impact the attributes, take action together to advocate for improvements.

Image: By Luctor [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons