6 minute read
by Rick Van Arnam
WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVE?
by Rick Van Arnam
Vice President of Leadership, Team Development, and Strategy
Irecall a conversation a couple of decades ago that remains stuck with me since, and one that New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni has put in better context in his book, The Motive. Meeting with a retired Army officer and now software engineer, he asked me, “Why do we think we need to get promoted into a leadership role if all we really enjoy doing is coding software?” He went further saying as much that we have a culture of work in America that rewards being promoted and defines success by climbing the corporate ladder of leadership. He was right.
REWARDS-CENTERED LEADERSHIP
1. Being a leader is the reward for hard work 2. “I’ve made it! I’m being recognized and rewarded. Life is about to get easier and more comfortable.” 3. I’ve achieved my goal! 4. Leadership is a prize 5. Drawn by its trappings: title, attention, power, status, compensation, perks. 6. May believe the role should be convenient and comfortable. This is truer today than ever before. Today, C-Suite executives are viewed as celebrity-like, followed in the press and on social networks, like media stars or athletes. It is hard to argue that the attention, title, compensation, and perks do not have some impact on how people show up in leadership positions. And it does not have to be in high-profile or publicly traded companies. As human beings, none of us are immune from the trappings that often come with leadership positions, and it often starts earlier, not later.
RESPONSIBILITY-BASED LEADERSHIP
1. Being a leader is a responsibility 2. “Wow, I’ve got a lot of responsibility –
I better get to work!” 3. What can we achieve now? 4. Leadership is a privilege. 5. Drawn by responsibility: grow my people, make the best decisions, represent the company well. 6. Understands the role will require uncomfortable conversations and prioritizing others over self.
—Patrick Lencioni
In 1994, I was a new Marketing Manager for an online service company in Columbus, Ohio. I transitioned from the Army, through business school, to lead a small team in my new career. I was excited to have my own office and quickly learned that office size matters. A colleague stopped in and counted ceiling tiles – I had never seen that before – and made some remark which I do not recall. It happened so fast that I did not realize what was going on. After all, I had been in the Army and I wasn’t a swift calculator! But I do recall, from that point forward, that even junior managers paid attention to office size. In his book, The Motive, Patrick Lencioni writes on the five responsibilities a leader cannot abdicate. At the Anthony Marano Company, we use these five responsibilities to coach-up, provide focus, and equip our leaders – like a coach’s checklist. These are the five responsibilities, in our own words, that our leaders need to master: We’ll go into these five responsibilities in our next issue of Sourced, but first, let us address the question that comes before these responsibilities, “Should I lead?” There are two motives for wanting to lead. One motive is for the responsibility and the other motive is for the rewards. As Lencioni says, “The wrong motive for wanting leadership is to benefit oneself, for the admiration of others, for money or, more often than not, to just to do what’s fun and enjoyable. These people go into the job thinking, ‘What am I going to get out of this?’ And then, when the difficult
1
Build a Cohesive Team
2
Run Great Meetings
3
Manage Direct Reports
4
Has Uncomfortable Conversations
5
Is a CRO
(Chief Reminder Officer)
parts come up, the really sacrificial parts that only the leader can do, they say, ‘Why would I do that? That won’t benefit me.’” On the other hand, says Lencioni, “The right motive to lead is because you are accepting the responsibility of helping other people live a better life through their work, through what they’re doing for customers, and for the organization. That’s a burden. It’s a sacrifice. The economics of leadership are not great. When I say economics, I mean the personal economics. Any great leader knows that they put far more into it for others than they get out of it for themselves. And they’re okay with that because that’s why they became a leader in the first place.” If you follow Pat on his podcast “At The Table” or watch some of his YouTube videos it won’t take long before you hear a Southwest Airlines story. I worked closely with Pat long enough to get tired of hearing these tales, but there is a reason that Southwest Airlines isn’t like all of the others, and it has much to do with their commitment to organizational health. I once heard their former Chief People Officer talk about the questions he would ask during interviews. The set-up questions were designed intentionally to get the candidate talking about the different teams he or she had led. The questions would lead the candidate to share the number of direct reports for which the candidate was responsible (more is better, right?). Then, he would ask the candidate to provide the names of those six to ten direct reports. Going further, he would pick a specific name and ask the candidate about the that direct report’s family – how many kids, age, interests, hobbies, etc. You can see where this interviewing was heading. To lead well at Southwest Airlines, you have to be in the people business. If you don’t like serving people first, you may not be a great fit for the airline. To be fair, no company, including the Anthony Marano Company, gets it right all the time. In fact, sometimes I believe you have to give a person a shot – someone who thinks they are leading for the right motive – and allow for some self-discovery when the messy works starts. Done best, the person will opt-out of the role and return to their previous role, or a new one, often happier and more productive. What does help to avoid mistakes is to be organizationally aligned on finding the right leaders for the right reason, and, then, to be organizationally aligned on just the few things leaders need to master to be successful. I often say, “produce is easy, people are hard”. I’m not minimizing the long grower-distributor supply chain and the challenges to deliver fresh produce; I am just pointing out that leading people can be messy work. It’s not for everyone. That’s okay. Let’s just start at the beginning – so, what’s your motive?
SOURCES The Motive, by Patrick Lencioni What’s Your Motive?, Interview by Dan Bigman, CEO Magazine, March/April 2020
