Free for now The full report is free while we build the comparison sample. Take the test and keep it. See what it will cost later
Skip to main content
Emotiscale Take the test

Motivation

Goleman’s original list had five parts. When the map was redrawn with four, this is the one that got folded in.

The domain that moved

The model Goleman popularised originally listed five components, with motivation as its own entry: the use of emotion to get yourself moving and keep yourself moving. Later versions redrew the map as four domains, folding motivation into the handling-yourself cell. The redraw simplified the map; what the entry described did not stop mattering.

The territory has two halves. Using emotion as fuel: harnessing interest, pride and even irritation to start and to persist, especially through the flat middle stretch of long work where novelty is gone and the finish is not visible. And keeping emotion out of the driving seat where it does not belong: recognising when a decision is about to be made by a mood rather than by the situation, and waiting the mood out.

Why we score it separately

Folded into a composite, this territory disappears into an average, and it is precisely the kind of thing a profile should surface: plenty of people read themselves and others well and still cannot get themselves moving, or decide everything on the mood of the hour. A separate figure makes that visible instead of blending it away.

Where this is scored

On this site the scored version of this territory is the Drive facet: 8 items, a margin printed on the figure, and the honest caveat at each end of the scale.

The rest of this family

Each page here covers one part of the territory: the map starts at what emotional intelligence is.

Find out how you read a room, and how you handle one.

54 questions, about 12 minutes. Free to take, and your band is free to see.

Take the EQ test