Books by Shawn hesketh
There’s a book for how you're wired
Curious to learn more about the Motivational Dimensions that drive you? That’s where these eight books come in.
Each book is packed with detailed insights about what truly drives you — and more importantly, how to apply these insights to your life and use your unique motivational pattern to be more productive, collaborate more effectively, be a better leader, and deepen your sense of meaning and purpose in your work.
★★★★★
“This book does an excellent job of putting into words what I often feel when I run my business. From contextualizing my motivations to showing me how my results-oriented communications can sometimes feel curt/cold, it’s given me a ton of helpful, actionable advice to improve both my own work and how I work with others. I highly recommend it.”
Joe Casabona
Podcast and Automation Coach
★★★★★
“I could honestly write an entire book about how this book resonated with me and changed my life. I learned what I need to maintain momentum and passion. That combined with improved prioritization and focus means getting 10x more done than before. It also clarified the WHY behind my past failures and successes… insights I couldn’t see because I was already focused on the next challenge. I now feel empowered to be myself and communicate my desire to maximize, drive results, and be unique.”
Tessa Kriesel
Developer Relations Leader
Like two books in one
Each book is divided into two parts…
Part One is all about how you're uniquely wired
- You’ll learn more about who you are and how you engage the world so you can better understand yourself, the unique value you're designed to contribute, and how you interact with others around you.
- Building upon insights in your MCode results, each book will further illuminate your strengths, talents, tendencies, and motivations, and how they play out in various aspects of your work, relationships, and life.
- You'll earn new language to communicate what drives you to show up at your best and be a high performer, how you best work with others, and what you need to feel fulfilled and satisfied in anything you do.
Part Two is for those who lead others
- You’ll learn about each MCode Dimension and how to identify the people on your team, what motivates them to engage, what they need to succeed, and how they view or interpret assignments, tasks, decisions, and actions.
- Each book explores how people who are motivated differently work together — specifically how they approach their work, interact with others, and affect group efforts and goals.
- You’ll learn how to individualize your leadership approach for each person's wiring so you can craft assignments that fit them perfectly and inspire them to unleash their full potential, perform at their best, and accomplish goals others might say are impossible.
What's inside each book
Table of Contents
The first half of each book is written directly to you, loaded with insights about how you’re wired. The second half is for anyone who leads, manages, or coaches people motivated by each Dimension.
Part One: Understanding Your Motivational Dimension
Meet the Motivations behind your drive. Every Dimension is built from a handful of specific Motivations. You’ll learn which ones shape how you work, and why your wiring looks different from someone else with the same Dimension.
Understand why your drive never switches off. Every Dimension is enduring and insatiable. You’ll learn how to channel your drive instead of fighting it.
Spot the moment your strength crosses a line. The same wiring that makes you great can start costing the people around you. You’ll learn to catch the shift while it’s still small.
Notice what follows you home. Your motivations don’t clock out at five. You’ll see how it shows up with the people who matter most, and how to create harmony instead of friction.
Build relationships that bring out your best. Nobody does their best work alone. You’ll learn which relationships stretch you, sharpen you, and keep you grounded.
Do more of what lights you up. You’ll learn what your best moments have in common, so you can build your work and life around more of them.
Part Two: Leading Each Motivational Dimension
Craft assignments that energize. Match the work to how each Dimension is wired, and stop handing them projects that drain their energy.
Give recognition that actually lands. Skip the generic, one-size-fits-all praise. Learn what meaningful acknowledgment looks like for each Dimension, and when to deliver it.
Deliver feedback that fuels instead of deflates. Frame even hard feedback for how someone’s wired, so criticism becomes something they can actually use.
Catch burnout early. Every Dimension burns out in its own way. Recognize the early warning signs, and step in before it costs you both.
Build teams where they thrive. Understand how each Dimension functions in a group, where friction tends to show up, and how their drive can lift everyone around them.
Guide career conversations that fit. Point their growth in the direction their wiring already leads, so the next role fits even better than this one.
The Complete Series
8 Books to Help You Better Understand and Lead Each Dimension
Buy the individual books for just $4.99 each, or buy the whole bundle for $24.99 and get the bonus book, Fit-First Leadership.
Achievers are wired to excel and to be the one others count on, and this book gives the restlessness a name. You’ll see the Recognition Trap coming, and you’ll meet the deepest assignment an Achiever can take on: learning to set the bar yourself. If you lead an Achiever, Part Two shows you how to keep them challenged without letting achievement consume everything around them.
Some people need approval. Drivers need progress. This book explains the momentum that never stops, the walls it pushes through, and the people it can push past without meaning to. You’ll learn to steer the steamroller instead of becoming it. Part Two teaches leaders to assign and challenge a Driver without dimming the engine everyone depends on.
Influencers see gold in people. If that’s you, you already know the flip side: pouring into others until there’s nothing left in your own tank. This book explains why your impact never sleeps and how the over-investment trap sneaks up. Leaders learn which assignments land as callings, and how to spot an Influencer running dry before it costs them.
Learners have a strong desire for continuous intellectual growth and understanding. This book gives your curiosity the structure it deserves and names the depth trap that borrows time from the people you love. Part Two shows leaders how to see and credit work that stays invisible until someone knows how to look.
Optimizers feel the gap between what is and what could be better. Instantly. Involuntarily. In everything you touch. This book names your friction antenna (the always-on sensor most people don’t have) and teaches you the Calibration Loop for aiming it at gaps worth closing. It also walks you out of the Critic Trap. And leaders learn to value work that erases its own evidence.
Orchestrators bring order to chaos, ensuring deadlines are met and every part of a project aligns with the end goal. This book explains the drive to take charge and the gap between what you intend and how it sometimes lands. You’ll find the line between oversight and overreach. Part Two helps leaders give Orchestrators direction without reading initiative as a takeover.
For a Relator, people are the work. This book explores why belonging can become a cage and how the Caretaker Trap drains you so slowly you barely notice. The deeper assignment: learning to give freely without disappearing into the giving. Leaders learn to see the connector contribution that never shows up on a deliverable.
Visionaries notice what everyone else walks right past: the possibility hiding in plain sight. And that vision never sleeps. This book explains why partners matter more to your Dimension than to any other, and what changes when your ideas find their way into the world. Part Two teaches leaders how to receive what a Visionary sees and help it land.
Buy the Bundle and Save
Get the Complete Library for $24.99
Buy the bundle and you'll get all 8 MCode Dimension books, plus Fit-First Leadership, the playbook for leading every Dimension on your team. That’s $50 worth of books, if purchased individually.
Complete Library
$24.99
USD
The complete 9-book series to help you better understand and lead each person on your team.
Motivated Success: Unleashing Achievers — Your guide to the MCode Achiever Dimension, why you’re driven to be the best at what you do, plus how to lead an Achiever well.
Motivated Momentum: Fueling Drivers — Your guide to the MCode Driver Dimension, why you’re driven to make progress and keep things moving, plus how to lead a Driver well.
Motivated Impact: Mobilizing Influencers — Your guide to the MCode Influencer Dimension, why you’re driven to make a lasting impact on people, plus how to lead an Influencer well.
Motivated Mastery: Understanding Learners — Your guide to the MCode Learner Dimension, why you’re driven to understand and master new things, plus how to lead a Learner well.
Motivated Excellence: Equipping Optimizers — Your guide to the MCode Optimizer Dimension, why you’re driven to make things better than you found them, plus how to lead an Optimizer well.
Motivated Direction: Empowering Orchestrators — Your guide to the MCode Orchestrator Dimension, why you’re driven to organize people and plans, plus how to lead an Orchestrator well.
Motivated Connection: Engaging Relators — Your guide to the MCode Relator Dimension, why you’re driven to build deep, lasting relationships, plus how to lead a Relator well.
Motivated Possibilities: Activating Visionaries — Your guide to the MCode Visionary Dimension, why you’re driven to see what could be, plus how to lead a Visionary well.
Bonus Book! Fit-First Leadership — A practical guide that teaches leaders how to adapt their communication, assignments, recognition, and team-building based on how each person is uniquely wired.
Includes both PDF and EPUB versions, delivered instantly.
BONUS BOOK!
Fit-First Leadership
A new playbook that teaches leaders how to adapt their communication, assignments, recognition, and team-building based on how each person is uniquely wired.
Why the same leadership approach gets completely different responses from different people — and why treating everyone the same actually isn’t fair at all.
Learn to read your team members’ motivational patterns through everyday observation, without requiring them to take any assessment.
Tailor your communication so it resonates with each Dimension — what to lead with, what to avoid, and how to frame the same message so it lands differently with different people.
Create assignments that energize, recognition that actually lands, predict and resolve conflict, build balanced teams, hire for motivational fit, and onboard new hires by Dimension.
Explore how your own Dimension shapes your leadership — your natural strengths and the blind spots you need to watch.
Dimensional Leadership Toolkit: Quick-reference guides, conversation starters, and real-world scenarios you can start to use immediately.
Includes both PDF and EPUB versions, delivered instantly.
About the Author
Shawn Hesketh is a certified executive coach and VP of Learning Strategy at MotivationCode.com, where he oversees coach certification, curriculum development, and the company's learning platform. His work centers on training and certifying coaches and business leaders in the Motivation Code (MCode) framework — a motivational assessment that reveals the unique patterns driving how people think, work, and engage.
Through his certification work, Shawn has guided hundreds of coaches, consultants, and organizational leaders in applying motivational insights to real-world challenges - from team dynamics and communication breakdowns to hiring decisions and employee engagement. His frontline experience consistently reveals a gap between leaders who understand their own motivational wiring and those who know how to apply that same lens to the people they lead. His writing and teaching are designed to close that gap.
Shawn brings over twenty years of experience in instructional design and online learning to his work. His approach to education is rooted in evidence-based learning science and a simple conviction: people aren't broken. They're misaligned. When leaders learn to see the motivational patterns behind their team's behavior, friction that once felt personal or intractable becomes something they can name, understand, and address.
Before his work with MCode, Shawn built a career designing online courses and training programs across a range of industries, developing a methodology that combines proven instructional design principles with a deep understanding of how adults actually learn and retain new skills. He is known for creating practical, immediately actionable tools rather than abstract frameworks.
Shawn lives in Texas with his family. He writes about leadership, alignment, and motivational intelligence at ShawnHesketh.com and on LinkedIn, where he advocates for a quieter, more human approach to leading — one that starts with seeing people for how they're actually wired rather than how we assume they should be.
Shawn Hesketh
Certified Executive Coach and VP of Learning Strategy at MotivationCode.com