Monthly Archives: September 2014

It’s an Inspiration. Why You Can’t Motivate Anyone.

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Present day culture often confuses motivation and inspiration, and this confusion spills over into the business environment. However, it is not an issue of motivation or inspiration. Rather, great business leaders know that exceptional business results require both motivation and inspiration and, equally important, they understand the different origins of motivation and inspiration.

How often have you heard some variation of the following phrase, “We need to figure out how to motivate this [insert the name of a team member, customer, supplier, etc].” In reality, it is impossible to motivate someone else to do anything. Why? Motivation is an internal driver. A wide range of factors motivate us. Some of those factors involve basic physical needs—food, clothing and shelter. Other drivers arise from our spirit. Some desires of the heart appear almost universally—gaining the respect of others, feeling loved, and aspiring for significance. Yet, other desires of the heart come from inherent character traits and vary from person to person. For example, crowds energize some of us and drain others. Lastly, spiritual drivers flowing from an intentional commitment to certain values inform and guide our behaviors—caring for the defenseless among us, beliefs about an afterlife, or the importance of learning.

Inspiration, on the other hand, involves an external animating force that draws out behaviors Inspiration is the province of leaders who seek to influence the behavior of others. Inspiration seeks voluntary cooperation not compulsory compliance.

What inferences and behavioral implications might we draw from these differences between motivation and inspiration:

  • Effective inspiration requires caring and curiosity. Is not about me. Skillful inspiration is very others-centered and requires cultivating a curiosity about what drives others.
  • Effective inspiration requires the expenditure of energy. If we hope to inspire others, we must often provide an input to produce the action we seek. We find in chemistry a complementary analogy where two substances require the presence of a separate catalyst to create the desired chemical reaction.
  • Inspiration cannot impose or inject from the outside an idea foreign or repulsive to an individual. We call that coercion. Rather, inspiration is about discovering and drawing out motivations already resident within the other person.
  • We can inspire through leadership, but if motivations arise internally, we must seek and hire people motivated by factors suitable for our team or business. Hiring for motivation requires that the organization explicitly understands its own drivers since you cannot hope to find what you cannot describe.

Part 2 (next week’s post) will convert these implications into 15 actionable methods that can inspire ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things.

What Kind of Fool Am I?

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None of us likes to be thought a fool, but fools we are. Hang with me on this one. I end with a constructively positive challenge, but getting there means we have to first wade through some, well… Foolishness.

We all know people who are generally fools. It seemingly is a habit they cannot break. We also know people (Including ourselves) who occasionally do foolish things. So, a gathering of fools is not an elite club, but rather a quite crowded room. Before you declare yourself free from the taint of foolishness, quickly consider the types of fools:

Rash fool – Plunges ahead without taking time to consider the costs or potential consequences of their actions. It is surprising even among supposedly smart business people how often this happens.

Lazy fool – Fails to musters the energy to observe and learn from the world around them, the actions of others, or their own life experience. Neglects to prepare for the future.

Undisciplined fool – Lacks the will to consistently act in accordance with wisdom

Stubborn fool – Refuses to adapt to changes in the world around them or knows the proper action in a particular situation but refuses to act on what they know is the prudent course of action

Intentional fool – Knows the proper action in a particular situation, but refuses to act accordingly, or, even worse, purposefully chooses to act in contradiction to prudent course of action

Stupid fool – Steadfastly ignorant, lazy, undisciplined, rash and stubborn. This combination is especially deadly.

Ignorant fool – Lastly, even if we are knowledgeable, disciplined, and prudent, we may yet act foolishly out of ignorance. No one person can possibly know everything; so at times our ignorance in certain areas leads to foolish actions. Nonetheless, our good intentions do not shield us from the consequences of our ignorance.

So, how does one minimize the self-inflicted damage of our own foolishness?

  1. Seek after knowledge and wisdom. No, they are not the same. Knowledge involves an acquaintance with facts or principles where wisdom adds the element of discernment that knows when, where and how to apply those facts and principles to achieve the best outcome for everyone involved in or impacted by a particular situation.
  2. Cultivate a heart of gratitude that leads to humility. See “Antidote to Pride” for more on this subject.
  3. Surround oneself with people whose knowledge complements our own gaps.
  4. Spend our time with people whose character inspires us to avoid rash, lazy or undisciplined behavior.
  5. Practice prudence. I love that word. Webster’s dictionary explains prudence as “wise or judicious in practical affairs; discrete or circumspect; sober; careful in providing for the future.”

Antidote to Pride? It’s Not What You Think

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Pride and humility. Mutually exclusive and polar opposite attributes of human character. But, do we conquer pride by striving for humility?

We all know prideful people and do not think highly of them. The inordinately high opinions of their own importance, merit, or superiority creates a discordant clash with reality. They annoy us. They frustrate us. They may even thwart our best intentions with their attention-seeking behavior.

Each of us also knows people who were genuinely humble. The humble do not seek status or rank. They may be meek, but they are rarely weak. The genuinely humble understand and leverage their talents and resources on behalf of others. The humble are not victims. Instead, they act with purpose. The humble are servants, but not subservient. These people are often gifted and giving in a modestly unassuming manner which garners the respect and admiration of those around them.

Our view of self lies at the core of these opposing behaviors. The prideful consider themselves more important and, therefore, worthy of elevation above others. By contrast, the humble consider themselves no more or less important than others and seek no benefit or advantage by their actions. The prideful have a high view of their own capabilities to influence people and events around them. The humble are quick to recognize the limitations of their own abilities and appreciate the contributions of others. And therein lies the secret antidote to pride… A grateful spirit that recognizes the value of others.

Allow me to explain by shifting attention to people who project false humility. These people know that humility is more valued than pride; so they attempt to counteract pride by acting humbly. However, fearing their humility will go unrecognized, they trumpet it at every turn, and in so doing, reveal the self-serving and ungrateful nature of their heart.

If we are brutally honest, we must each confess to at least the occasional prideful thought. Unfortunately, the naturally self-centered tendency of human beings also means that prideful thoughts sometimes pass unrecognized through our heads and even out of our mouths. Countering an unrecognized behavior is almost impossible. Fortunately, our best defense against pride is not consciously stamping out prideful impulses or striving for humble behavior. Instead, we merely need to establish an habitual spirit of gratitude to turn our hearts from self-centered pride to genuine humility. We may cultivate a grateful spirit if we start each day by expressing thanks for the blessings in our lives.

A shout out to Melvin Benson for the core concept of this post.

Love at Work. It’s Missing, and That’s Bad.

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A recent blog post “Law. Liberty. Love.” argued that absent a constraining force the amoral nature of liberty destroys the peaceable and productive threads that bind together any societal group, whether a family, team, community, company or country. The choice to constrain liberty by an external force (law) or restrain liberty from an internal motivation (love) impacts societies and businesses in innumerable ways and results in vastly different outcomes.

Society of Liberty Constrained by Law

Liberty constrained by law and administered by imperfect human beings faces a continual and mostly losing battle to find the proper balance of prudence, reasonableness, equality and reliability.

Liberty constrained by law creates narrow spaces hemmed in by the boundaries of many regulations and policies and wastefully consumes attention and energy to understand and avoid those boundaries. This approach demands long lists of dos and don’ts that cover every conceivable situation. Consequently, we end up with voluminous regulations and policies; including bulging employee manuals that no one reads; except to determine, after the fact, whether an infraction occurred.

When we constrain liberty by law some people in the group will push those boundaries to test how far they may go without suffering harm. Consequently, the group consumes significant time, energy and money protecting those boundaries and addressing the people who flout them. On the flip side, more risk averse people withdraw in fear of breaching an ill-defined or unknown boundary. Both responses drain the vitality from a society.

Society of Liberty Restrained by Love

On the other hand, liberty restrained by love creates vast open fields of opportunity for creativity and risk-taking. When we know that others have our best interests at heart we trust (not fear) them. This freedom from fear unleashes the innovative spirit within each of us.

Rather than an energy-sapping focus on boundaries, we channel our resources on wide-open opportunity spaces. We shift our minds from the negative to the positive. We concentrate on opportunities not obstacles. We focus on constructive behaviors; not catching people doing wrong. We don’t spend money on compliance. Instead, we invest our resources on encouraging and developing people.

People began to watch out for each other and catch mistakes (not as a gotcha, but for the good of the team). The late Bob Galvin of Motorola was fond of saying, “Individuals make mistakes, but teams can be perfect.” People start compensating for each other’s weak spots and collaborate in ways that yield results far beyond the sum of their individual efforts. People feel better about coming to work in an environment that encourages and challenges to be their best. Consequently, attendance and attention improve and drive a safer work environment, better quality and higher productivity. You get the idea.

How do we develop liberty restrained by love?

Present society defaults to liberty constrained by policies and regulations to the point that “love” for others is rarely heard in the public square or board rooms. Why? In the English language the word “love” carries multiple meaning, and this creates confusion. Classical Greek used three different words for different types of love. Eros, or physical love, which often involves sexual expression. Phileo, or soul love, is most commonly associated with affectionate feelings toward friends or personal interests we enjoy. Agape is a mature sacrificial love that is intentionally and overtly others-focused; the expression of which almost always comes at a cost to the bearer of agape.

Unfortunately, the sexually charged nature of our society means that eros dominates the meaning of love in public discourse, and, thus, we rightly shy away from it in a business environment. Yet, we instinctively know that building and sustaining any collective effort requires expressions of affection (phileo ) and sacrificial caring (agape). Since we cannot use the distorted word love, we have sought a substitute in “respect.” Unfortunately, in an environment of liberty predominately constrained by policies and laws, respect is often just a bland and unemotional tolerance with no caring for the object of respect. We just put up with or ignore each other and our lives and businesses suffer for it.

How then do we change this dynamic and unleash the power of liberty restrained by love?

It starts with each of us individually. We must shift our mental and emotional focus from personal rights to personal responsibilities. We must change our mindset from what can I get to what can I give. Invest time in getting to know others beyond work (i.e. care for the whole person). Invest resources in developing people around us. Treat others as voluntary collaborators with us rather than “assets” we leverage only for what they are worth to us or the group to which we both belong.

Openly express our appreciation for others and their work. Openly praise expressions of sacrificial caring by others. Gratitude and giving are contagious, but they will not go viral if these behaviors are stealthy. We have a real live example from recent weeks where over 300 people in line at a Starbucks in New York City paid for the order of the person behind them.

Our place in the group’s hierarchy matters little. Anyone can be a catalyst for liberty restrained by love. Yes, it may feel lonely in the beginning, but others will notice and begin to emulate sacrificial selfless behavior.