Satisfaction may appear to be highly subjective, but new MRG data reveals patterns in the way highly satisfied individuals approach the world. By discovering where satisfied (and dissatisfied) individuals focus their energy, we can uncover and address the root causes of deep dissatisfaction – which, whether it’s personal, professional, or both, can be a barrier to growth.

1. The Science of Satisfaction
The Data Around Personal and Professional Fulfillment

2. Type a question here.
Click the red arrow to
expand the Control Panel.
Host
Staci Nisbett
Chief Sales & Solutions Officer, MRG

3. Management Research Group is a global leader in designing assessments that
foster a deep self-awareness and impact people in profound and meaningful ways
with solutions for Leadership and Personal Development, Sales and Service.
MRG assessments give you the tools to support unique leaders as they chart their
personal paths to success and fulfillment.

4. Maria Brown, PhD
Head of Research, MRG
Tricia Naddaff, MS
President, MRG
Our Presenters

5. Agenda
1. What do we know about the relationship between career,
work and life satisfaction?
2. Are there motivational, life architecture and quality of life
factors that predict individual satisfaction?
3. Are there motivational, life architecture and quality of life
factors that predict individual dissatisfaction?
4. How can we help individuals find satisfaction across the
different facets of their lives?

6. Poll: Satisfaction in Practice
My clients/the leaders I work with believe that their overall satisfaction is a
necessary ingredient to being successful
A. Almost all of the people I work with believe this
B. Most of the people I work with believe this
C. Some of the people I work with believe this
D. A few of the people I work with believe this
E. Almost none of the people I work with believe this

7. Let’s talk about satisfaction
Previous research

8. • Decreases stress
• Improves brain health (healthier cells and connections)
• Improves
 Amount of information we can process
 Complexity of information we can process
 Ability to think creatively
 Ability to solve problems
 Amount of insight accessed
What Neuroscience tells us about Satisfaction

9. Why isn’t it easier
to be satisfied?
What gets in the
way of satisfaction?

10. Threats vs. Rewards
“Minimize danger, maximize reward” is the organizing principle of the
brain
Some amount of choice moves you to a toward response
Your brain wants to “walk toward” and “run away”

11. The Root of Negativity Bias
Our ancestors could make 2 kinds of mistakes
Mistake #1:
Think there was a tiger in the
bushes when there was not
Mistake #2:
Think there was no tiger in
the bushes when there was
So our brains evolved to make mistake #1 a thousand times
so we would not make mistake #2 even once!
From Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson
= Needless Anxiety = Death

12. • Stimuli differ in their
salience
• Negative experiences stand
out (and stick around)
Hardwired to minimize risk  differential
response to stimuli

13. Work factors that predict
satisfaction
• Being employed
• Current salary
• Being younger at time of graduation (also
career satisfaction, and career success)
• Age/time on the job
• Choosing a career that matches vocational
interests
Work-related benefits of
satisfaction
• Greater productivity
• Low absenteeism
• Organizational citizenship
• Lower burnout
• Highly effective leaders report high satisfaction
and low dissatisfaction
Occupational and Personal outcomes of
Satisfaction
(Amdurer, Boyatzis, Saatcioglu, Smith & Taylor, 2014; Feldman, 2015; Kaplan, DeShon & Tetrick, 2017)

14. Are there motivational, life
architecture and quality of life factors
that predict individual satisfaction?
New MRG Research Findings

15. How much of your work involves helping leaders develop specific
techniques to increase satisfaction and/or decrease dissatisfaction?
A. This is a regular part of my work with clients
B. I do this with some clients, but not others
C. I’ve just begun to explore this work with clients
D. I haven’t built this into my practice in any significant way
Poll: Achieving Satisfaction

16. Demographics
Country
United States
Australia
Netherlands
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Germany
France
Canada
Other
Not reported
Gender
Male
Female
Not reported
Industry Count
Consulting Services 2,095
Accounting/Banking/Financial Services 945
Pharmaceutical/Medical Products 374
Education 371
General Manufacturing 296
Mining/Oil-Gas Production/Chemicals 253
Utilities 250
Health Care/Medical Services 232
Wholesale/Retail Trade 198
Other 3,422
Not reported 1,409
Total 9,845

17. Individual Directions
Inventory – what we want to
experience in our world
Appraise Your World –
where we are spending our
time and energy (internal and
external)
World Outcomes – how we
feel about the world we have
created
Elements of Personal Directions
Individual
Directions
Inventory
Appraise
Your World
PERSONAL
DIRECTIONS
World
Outcomes
Appraise
Your World
Satisfaction
• Fulfilled
• Happy
• Experiencing Pleasure
• Satisfied

18. [Footer text to come] Page No 18
Satisfaction

19. Is there evidence that certain motivational factors are related
to higher satisfaction?
30
25
9
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
0Enduring
Entertaining
Giving
Expressing
Gaining Stature
Interpreting
Creating
Structuring
Receiving
Irreproachability
Stability
Independence
Maneuvering
Winning
Controlling
Belonging
Excelling
0 10 20 30
Relative Importance Index
(Total variance explained = 6%)
Direction of
Relationship
positive
inverse
Relative Importance for Satisfaction: Individual Directions Inventory

20. 48
12
10
7
6
3
3
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
0Nature
Romance
Intellectual
Spiritual
Home
Practical Arts
Arts
Palate
Ideological
Community
Interpersonal
Physical
Economic
Travel
Emotional
Career
Recreation
Family
0 10 20 30 40
Relative Importance Index
(Total variance explained = 15%)
Direction of
Relationship
positive
inverse
Relative Importance for Satisfaction: Appraise Your World
Is there evidence that living life in certain ways relates to
higher satisfaction?

21. Is there evidence that certain quality of life outcomes relate
to higher satisfaction?
45
15
15
11
7
4
1
1
1
0Public Success
Internal Focus
Flexibility
Balance
Security
Support
Growth
External Focus
Insecurity
Dissatisfaction
0 10 20 30 40
Relative Importance Index
(Total variance explained = 45%)
Direction of
Relationship
positive
inverse
Relative Importance for Satisfaction: World Outcomes

22. Questions

23. [Footer text to come] Page No 23
Dissatisfaction

24. Satisfaction
• Fulfilled
• Happy
• Experiencing pleasure
• Satisfied
Dissatisfaction
• Unfulfilled
• Unhappy
• Frustrated
Our outcome measures

25. Is there evidence that certain motivational factors are related
to higher dissatisfaction?
28
11
11
9
6
6
5
5
3
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1Gaining Stature
Entertaining
Structuring
Receiving
Creating
Stability
Controlling
Independence
Giving
Interpreting
Irreproachability
Winning
Enduring
Expressing
Maneuvering
Excelling
Belonging
0 10 20
Relative Importance Index
(Total variance explained = 4%)
Direction of
Relationship
positive
inverse
Relative Importance for Dissatisfaction: Individual Directions Inventory

26. Is there evidence that living life in certain ways relates to
higher dissatisfaction?
23
23
17
7
4
4
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
0Palate
Nature
Arts
Spiritual
Practical Arts
Interpersonal
Intellectual
Home
Physical
Career
Ideological
Romance
Travel
Community
Recreation
Economic
Family
Emotional
0 5 10 15 20
Relative Importance Index
(Total variance explained = 9%)
Direction of
Relationship
positive
inverse
Relative Importance for Dissatisfaction: Appraise Your World

27. Is there evidence that certain quality of life outcomes relate
to higher dissatisfaction?
37
13
13
11
9
8
4
2
2
1Internal Focus
External Focus
Public Success
Flexibility
Balance
Security
Support
Growth
Insecurity
Satisfaction
0 10 20 30
Relative Importance Index
(Total variance explained = 52%)
Direction of
Relationship
positive
inverse
Relative Importance for Dissatisfaction: World Outcomes

28. Putting it all together
Helping clients reach the right balance

29. Implications for coaching
Have we found the right combination for increasing
satisfaction and reducing dissatisfaction?

30. Finding the balance for satisfaction
• Need to maintain balance between satisfaction and dissatisfaction
 Increase exposure to satisfying experiences
 Decrease the experience of dissatisfaction
• Change appraisal and response to negative stimuli
 Find new ways to interpret dissatisfaction
 Face difficult situations with a positive attitude
 Resilient individuals engage in behavioral responses to improve a situation
• Train your brain to respond to factors associated with satisfaction more efficiently
 Be more attentive to everyday positive experiences and holding onto them for 10-15 seconds to
grow new neural networks in our brains
 Synapses grow in efficiency with repeated stimulation
(Hanson, 2013; Lyubomirsky & Della Porta, 2010; Pinel, 2011)

31. Exercise more
Sleep more
Move closer to work
Spend time with family
and friends
Go outside
Help others
Plan a trip (but don’t
take one!)
Meditate
Practice Gratitude
Separate reaction from
experiences
10 Simple (Science-Backed)
Ways to be more Satisfied
Beth Belle Cooper; Fast Co. Magazine

32. Mindfulness
Paying close attention to the present in an open and accepting way
Mindfulness changes the structure of our brains.
Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What is difficult is remembering to be mindful.
Breathe.

33. • There is strong evidence, from both the Neuroscience and Leadership research, that satisfaction
increases cognitive and leadership effectiveness
• Satisfaction is both an outcome and a practice
• Our brain’s sensitivity to threat is often a block to satisfaction
• Keeping track of our energy helps us make decisions that will cultivate more satisfaction
• There is solid research about things we can do that increase our happiness (and the list doesn’t
include getting richer or thinner!)
• There are great brain-friendly ways to enhance the positive and balance our tendency to focus on the
negative
• Every individual is different and has his/her own path to satisfaction
Summing up the ideas

34. Questions | Comments | Recommendations

35. Resources
• Your Brain at Work; David Rock, 2009
• Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, 2005
• Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson, 2013
• The surprising science of happiness, Daniel Gilbert, TED Talk, 2009
• Mindfulness, Ellen J. Langer, 1990
• The Mindful Brain, Daniel J. Siegel, 2007
• Positivity; Barbara Frederickson, 2009
• www.getsomeheadspace.com
• http://zenhabits.net/
• http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/
• http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/12/a-simple-way-to-increase-your-joy/
• http://www.fastcompany.com/3015486/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/10-simple-science-
backed-ways-to-be-happier-today

36. Q & A from the webinar
Greg
Q: Is there a way of determining through an assessment, which part of a person's satisfaction / dissatisfaction come from experiences
in the workplace vs experiences outside of work?
A: This is not assessed directly in the World Outcomes questionnaire. However, the Appraise Your World questionnaire assesses
which areas of the world are using up most of a participant’s energy. This includes workplace and non-workplace areas. By looking at
an individual’s profiles from both assessments together, we can begin to address the issue of where satisfaction and dissatisfaction
may be coming from.
When trying to help a client with high levels of dissatisfaction, we can explore whether some of the areas that are taking up the most
energy are actually preventing him/her from investing energy in areas which would produce greater levels of satisfaction. This
question alludes to one of our main findings: it is important to explore the causes of satisfaction and dissatisfaction on an individual
basis.
Olivier
Q: Question: how do you distinguish Satisfaction from Motivation? Would you say that the stimuli or drivers are almost all very
similar, but satisfaction is for something in the present and the past, while motivation is for something in the present and the future?
A: Interesting question. I will describe the different terms in a way that shows how they relate to one another. A stimulus is
something in our environment that we perceive, and are drawn to, drawn away from or decide not to act on. Drivers refer to our
internal motivation to pursue and experience specific stimuli and avoid others. Satisfaction (and dissatisfaction), as we measured it in
this study, is a subjective assessment of how we feel about the different parts of our world. The level of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction)
that one experiences will be influenced by the degree of alignment between one’s environment and their internal motivational factors
or drivers.
In terms of the temporal relationship between satisfaction and motivation, satisfaction is usually assessed during and after the fact.
Our current motivational state influences our actions in the present and future. However, our level of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction)
can influence what we are motivated to do in the future.

37. Q & A from the webinar
Frederick
Q: Do you feel this data substantiates Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
A: There is certainly some support for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Some of the factors that are most relevant to satisfaction and
dissatisfaction reflect more basic needs (e.g., low insecurity, belonging), which appear at the middle or bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy.
However, we also see some esteem needs showing up as important for predicting satisfaction and dissatisfaction (e.g., belonging,
winning). This could be the result of our sample, which includes leaders who have most likely met their basic needs and are striving to
excel in other areas of their lives and careers. This supports our view that we need to understand where the individual is in their life
and career development to best coach them toward satisfaction.
Anne
Q: In coaching - does this suggest that focusing more on decreasing dissatisfaction is more impactful than increasing satisfaction?
A: What a great question. It really depends on the individual and how they are currently experiencing their world. If someone is low
on both satisfaction and dissatisfaction, then you really want to target satisfaction. If someone is high on both satisfaction and
dissatisfaction you would target dissatisfaction. However, if someone is closer to the middle, it might make more sense to address the
parts of his/her life that are causing dissatisfaction and introduce some of the exercises that increase awareness of satisfaction.
Rik
Q: What about satisfaction and being able to use your talents in your job?
A: When we are satisfied we are more creative, process information and solve problems more efficiently, and arrive at more insights.
All of these factors would suggest that we would make better use of our talents at work when we are satisfied. On the other hand,
dissatisfaction could hinder our ability to apply our talents. They might be there but we will be less likely to recruit those talents when
they are needed.

38. Q & A from the webinar
Janice
Q: To what extent are we seeing changes in satisfaction with younger workforce/generations? Do we know?
A: This is a great question. We have not explored this in our research yet. However, we know that other research on career
development shows that career satisfaction tends to increase with age. Extrinsic motivators (e.g., salary) appear to be an important
factor for predicting career satisfaction early in people’s careers. Later on, intrinsic motivators (e.g., enjoying the work) appear to be
responsible for increases in career satisfaction. This would suggest that once we reach a certain level of financial remuneration for our
work, the ability to perform well at work, which increases with experience, is related to career satisfaction.
The question of generational differences is an interesting one and something we hope to address in a future study.
Francis
Q: In factors explaining satisfaction, I am not sure how dissatisfaction can be considered an explanatory factor. Can you provide
insights?
A: When we say that dissatisfaction explains some of the variability in satisfaction, we are saying that there is a relationship between
the two variables (remember is our assessment we are measuring degree of Satisfaction and degree of Dissatisfaction separately).
From a statistical perspective, it allows us to say that we can approximate how high your satisfaction is if we know your dissatisfaction
score (in this case there is a relationship across the group we studied between lower scores on dissatisfaction and higher scores on
satisfaction. Of course this is a pattern across a large group and does not indicate that we will necessarily see the same pattern in
individuals). The ability to do this increases as the amount of variance explained increases.
Q: In the variables correlated to satisfaction that were discussed, do you have any insights on which one are causal?
A: This is an important point to keep in mind when interpreting the findings of this and similar studies. With this research design we
can only search for relationships between variables. The directionality of those relationships is unknown. We can make some
educated guesses about causality but to truly understand causal relationships, an experimental design (with a control group and
random assignment to groups) would have to be employed.

39. Q & A from the webinar
Jonathan
Q: Have you compared different age groups among the 9,845 people completing PD? What about senior executive versus middle
management?
A: This was a question that we asked ourselves as we discovered the low amount of variance explained. As we mentioned during the
presentation, this number is usually a lot higher in our research. To address this question we split the sample in different ways:
gender, age group (e.g., 20s, 30s, 40s) and geographic location. The results from those analyses were very similar to what we found
for the larger sample. This would lead us to believe that the factors related to satisfaction are truly specific to the individual. Because
of this, we would expect that grouping the sample by management level would yield similar results. However, this would be
interesting to explore in a future study.
Melissa
Q: Were there any major cultural differences among the participants (e.g. from different countries)?
A: Culture is always an important demographic variable to consider. To explore how it influences the relationship between
satisfaction/dissatisfaction and other factors, we conducted the same statistical analyses with groups from different regions. We
found very similar results for different regions in terms of variance explained, which suggests that cultural factors did not strongly
influence the relationship between motivation or life architecture and satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Due to time constraints we did not
look at all the countries in our sample separately, so it is entirely possible that some countries will show different patterns.

40. Upcoming Webinars:
The Relevance of Emotional Intelligence:
Finding the Motivation Behind EQ
Wednesday, November 15, 2017 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (US Eastern Time)
Preparing for the Millennial Era:
A Data-Driven Look at What Motivates the Next Generation of Leaders
Tuesday, December 5, 2017 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (US Eastern Time)
To register, visit:
www.mrg.com/calendar

41. [Footer text to come] Page No 41
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