Employment Research Institute's Chief Executive Officer, A. Harrison Barnes, in a webinar as he analyzed the three primary motivators – power, relationships, and achievement. Harrison believes that it is crucial for your career to understand what motivates you and which job allows you to thrive with your particular personality style.

Drawing from the examples of his two old Aston Martins, Harrison discusses in length the characteristics of power, achievement, and relationship motivated people. Power people see the world as a highly competitive place in which people are constantly struggling for power and influence over others. They are solely focused on themselves, cannot identify with others, and do not like anything that they feel is a threat to their perceived power. Unlike these people, achievement oriented people are those who are more concerned with competing with themselves rather than with others. They are purely interested in success, in being experts, in setting goals and priorities, in having missions, and in making sure that things are of the best possible quality. Very different from power and achievement motivated people are the relationship motivated people whose main interest lies in creating and maintaining positive relationships. They tend to be much more focused on getting along with others, harmony, friendship, teamwork and so forth–and not authority, for example.

In order to be successful in your career you need to understand and realize whether or not you are motivated by power, relationships, or achievement. Failure comes to people simply because they are in a job that requires them to be motivated by a particular style when they are not. Ask yourself questions about the type of people you get along best with and your favorite activities, and analyze what is it that makes the most of your particular outlook and approach to the world.