1: We are finishing up another school year.
As parent-managers, we want our children to do their schoolwork before they play. So, we try to motivate them.
“I incentivize them by threatening to take away their iPhones if I see them using them before their work is done,” Fred Kofman writes in The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership.
“I add a carrot to the stick, promising that if they finish their homework they get ice cream for dessert.”
As parent-leaders, we take a different approach.
“I don’t just want my children to do their schoolwork,” Fred observes. “I want my children to want to do their schoolwork. I want them to do it because they want to do it, not because I want them to do it and can impose consequences on them.
“I want to instill in them healthy habits because I love them and because I know that a work discipline will enhance their lives.”
However, knowing or wanting this for our kids is only the first step. We “have to help them know it, and know it so deeply that they will internally commit to it,” he notes, “and make the hard choices required through their own will.”
To do that, we must rely on a higher principle: Love.
“Only when my children experience me as trustworthy, and as totally on their side,” Fred writes, “will they listen to me. Only when my children experience me as a role model, as practicing what I preach, will they believe me.”
2: Traditional command-and-control managers show up like “parent-managers” above. They attempt to use incentives to get people to do what they want.
Fred writes: “They ask questions such as: How can I motivate my subordinates to achieve their individual and collective targets? How do I combine rewards and punishments to maximize results? How do I tickle their greed and fear in the right combination?”
The challenge is that standard management tools create silos, fiefdoms, and inter-departmental conflicts that prevent teamwork.
“Such managers,” he notes, “may have an inkling that they can neither buy nor intimidate inspired performance, but they still believe that they can coax extraordinary efforts through carrots and sticks.”
The only problem? It doesn’t work. “But this is ludicrous,” Fred observes. “Imagine a thief pointing a gun at you and commanding, ‘Give me your respect! Your support! Your friendship!'”
3: Being a leader is different.
“Leadership is about getting what can’t be taken, and deserving what is freely given,” he suggests. “The followers’ internal commitment cannot be extracted by rewards or punishments. It can be inspired only through a belief that giving their best to the enterprise will enhance their lives.”
Great leaders ask different questions than traditional command-and-control managers. They ask themselves: “How do I encourage each person to take full responsibility for his or her individual performance while making the right sacrifices to reach our company’s goal? How do I inspire my team or organization to accomplish great, lasting, amazing things?”
And: “How do I make my life and the lives of those around me truly meaningful?”
Becoming an inspiring leader begins with knowing that leadership is not about formal authority.
Instead, it concerns moral authority: “Hearts and minds cannot be bought or forced,” Fred writes. “They can only be deserved and earned. They are given only to worthy missions and trustworthy leaders.”
In reality, we don’t want our people or teams to do what they are told.
Why? Because many times, we “can’t know what they ought to do to most effectively help the team to win.”
What do we really want? For “them to act with initiative, intelligence, and enthusiasm; we want them to truthfully reveal the opportunities and challenges they see in their surroundings; we want them to give their best to the organization, in concert with everyone else.”
We can’t get there with incentives or force. We must inspire it with zest and love.
“To elicit this internal commitment in our followers, we need to reach beyond operational issues, beyond profits and losses,” writes Fred. We “need to latch onto something better and more beautiful—something that all our stakeholders will not only support but also wholeheartedly love and embrace.
“We need to make our lives and the lives of those around us truly meaningful.”
What happens when we pursue success or happiness directly? We can’t get there.
“Pursuing happiness directly may result in short-term hedonistic pleasure,” Fred observes, “but it does not lead to authentic, soul-satisfying happiness.”
Success is similar. “To achieve success, we must live a life of meaning and purpose,” he notes. Only when we “pursue significance, self-actualization, and self-transcendence–not just for ourselves but also for everyone else who works for us” will we find true success.
Fred writes: “A great leader makes the following offer: ‘In addition to compensation and benefits, I will provide you with an opportunity to infuse your life with meaning. I will provide you with a platform on which you can build a personal and social sense of worth.
“This platform will enable you to prosper not only materially but also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually: emotionally because we will relate to you as one of us; mentally because we will respect your intelligence; spiritually because we will join in a project that transcends our small egos and connects us to a larger purpose.
“‘In exchange,’ such a leader proposes, ‘I want your unbridled enthusiasm. I ask that you give your utmost energy in service of our great project. I ask that you exemplify our values and culture and hold others accountable for doing the same and that you relate to your teammates with kindness, compassion, and solidarity.
“‘I want you to subordinate your personal agenda and collaborate with your teammates, doing whatever it takes to help the team win. I ask that you put your heart, mind, and soul into fulfilling the noble vision that animates all of us, aligning your efforts with the rest of the organization.'”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How am I showing up–as a manager or as a leader? What precisely can I do today to become a better leader?
Action: Do it.
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