The Challenged Life

“Because it’s there.” So said British climber George Mallory in 1924 when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine perished later that year as they attempted to get to the top. Since May 29, 1953 when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally conquered the summit, countless people have successfully taken on that challenge. Of course, many have also died in the process. It is one of the essential elements of humans. We all seek challenges. It is the internal drive, to seek a new challenge. While it is certainly not easy to climb Mount Everest, you can only climb it “the first time” once. The challenge is never quite the same. To some extent, we all seek a new challenge every day. It’s when we fail to purse some new challenge that we become bored and uncaring. It doesn’t have to be a new mountain every day, just a different challenge. It could be something small or something huge, as long as it’s something important to you. Every team needs a challenge, a shared challenge, a challenge they all buy into. That’s where team motivation comes from. When you, as the leader, fail to develop a challenge that is important and relevant to all of your team members, then that challenge will not motivate them. I don’t understand climbing a mountain just because it’s there, but Mallory did. What’s your personal challenge? What’s your team’s challenge? If you can’t answer that, you need to take time to find a few challenges to take on.

Would You Move Away From A Burning Car?

If you were next to a burning car, assuming there’s no one inside, would you move away? 99% of us would. But, just how far away would you move?

There are two general strands of thought in motivation methods: people move away from something (getting fired, losing the house, getting another heart attack, etc.) or people move toward something (a raise, a bigger house, a new car, etc.). The problem with the first one is that it tends to be short-term.

When that car starts to burn, people in the crowd move quite differently. Some will run away as fast and as far as they can, leaving the scene before the cops can get there to ask questions. Some will walk briskly away. Some will just saunter off a few steps. Most will move a safe distance away, turn around and stare at the car to discuss what happened. A small few will remain too close and get injured or even killed when the gas tank finally explodes.

When the boss comes in and announces that the unit is not producing where it should be and that some people will get fired if performance doesn’t improve, the employees will behave like the crowd and the burning car. Some will really start producing as fast and as much as they can. Some will start producing enough to keep their jobs, but not much more than that. A few will not produce enough and get reprimanded and even fired.

The other problem with this approach to motivation is that it is the easiest thing to do: threaten people with something terrible. It only moves people so far. You have to keep doing it over and over again, and then it becomes a very negative environment.

Moving people toward something is much harder. Which is why most managers don’t do it. You have to know your people and know how their own goals intersect with your organization’s goals. It’s more targeted and requires long-term thinking. That’s hard. Leadership is hard. It requires thinking.

On the other hand,there's the rare organization where people work together to pull everyone away from getting fired, like the crowd that rushed to save a man under the car. That would be a great organization to work for. Is your organization like that?

Motivation versus Leadership

I am not a motivational speaker. I tried it once. I failed miserably. I learned my lesson. I should have known better. I knew my skill was in leadership training and development, not in motivation. I know the difference and I should have passed on the request.

I had someone go through one of my leadership sessions. They were impressed and thought I could do the motivational presentation.

I really couldn’t.

The audience had to get up and stretch after my presentation. Maybe that I spoke after dinner had something to do with it, but I don’t think so. So, I’ve avoided motivational presentations ever since. I know I’m not Tony Robbins. I won’t get you to walk in your bare feet over red, hot coals. I may not even get you to clean up your office.

The take away here is that a good leader (or trainer) needs to know where their strengths are. I could probably get better at being a motivational speaker, but that’s not really where I want to be right now. I want to get better as a leadership trainer. That’s where I’ll stay for now.

That's motivation

In my leadership training work, there are always questions that keep coming up over and over again. One of these questions concerns motivation and enthusiasm. It comes from business executives, teachers, elected officials, government staff, church volunteers ... that is to say, from virtually everyone. "How can I maintain my enthusiasm and motivation, day in and day out, when I keep running into obstacles and problems?"

It is a serious question. But my response is always the same. "Look to a successful model," I suggest. Having a good role model can be incredibly helpful. I add that we need to see how some people manage to maintain their motivation and enthusiasm every day without letting obstacles and setbacks drain their joy. And this is what I tell them:

Let me start by telling you that I know of one group of people who consistently show incredible enthusiasm every single day of the year. They wake up with smiles on their faces. They're ready to go from the moment they open their eyes. They take on the day as if it were a race. They want to get started where they left off the night before.

If you try to distract them from their goals for the day, it can irritate them, but not for long. They bounce back from setbacks with incredible resiliency. And they do it with a smile.

You don't believe that there's anyone like that? Let me assure you there is.
These people don't know the meaning of the word "no." They believe in "now." No door can remain closed to them for very long, if at all.

They celebrate everything. And they celebrate everything every day! When they succeed, their celebrations can make the Super Bowl look like a tea party.
Although they are dynamos individually, they are a virtual hurricane when they join as a team. They can overwhelm any office they might walk into.

If you thought Ronald Reagan was "the Great Communicator" or Barack Obama drew cameras like a magnet, you haven't seen this group show off their networking skills. If one of them were to walk into your morning staff meeting, all attention would be focused on her instantly. They have a way with words and can talk to anyone as if they were life-long friends. They ask any question that comes to mind and answer your questions with brutal honesty.

Unlike most of us, they have no real need to play phone tag or carry cell phones. They live for the face-to-face contact. They thrive on it.

At the end of the day, they fall asleep knowing they have done their absolute best. They never fret over unfinished lists of things-to-do. They never look to the end of the quarter. They measure success in very different terms than you and I.

I would urge you to go find them and study them. Given an opportunity to study the great leaders – Roosevelt, Churchill, Zapata, Gandhi, Caesar – you would probably want to just stand and watch them, hoping to catch a glimpse of what drove them, listening to their ideas, examining their sheer determination to overcome all challenges.

And so it is with the people I am telling you about. Given a chance, you should listen to them and study them. You will never find a better, clearer model of enthusiasm.

Yes, they do exist. The secret is finding them.

But it really isn't a secret. They meet in the same room every single day. But, I warn you, they will suck you right into their tornado of a world. No one walks into their meetings and leaves the same. Prepare to be taken by the hand, literally, and forced to find your own enthusiasm. It is a challenge some people are not up to. If you really want to learn to maintain your enthusiasm and motivation, go there ... if you dare.

Go look for them.

They're in kindergarten.

We're behind, just where we want to be!

It was something that was repeatedly said by Sen. John McCain during his presidential campaign. His supporters kept saying that he was known for coming back from behind to win. In October, as his poll numbers kept dropping, he kept telling supporters, "My friends, we've got them just where we want them."

Now, let's talk basketball.

It's halftime, and your team is behind. Should you stay or head for the exit to beat the crowd? Most people would say, "Go now and get a slice of pizza for the drive home." Not so fast, say Wharton professors Jonah Berger and Devin Pope in a research paper titled "When Losing Leads to Winning" that looks at how teams perform when they're behind. The results of that research are summarized in a Knowledge@Wharton article. And, unlike John McCain, your team may still have a chance if they aren't as far behind as he was.

According the research, based on the results of more than 6,500 college basketball games, "(A) college squad that is leading by six points at halftime is the victor about 80% of the time." So, your team is behind by only one point. Do they still lose? Apparently not. According to the data, teams down by only one point at halftime actually win 51.3 percent of the time. Seems counter-intuitive.

As Berger and Pope see it, when a team is behind by such a small margin, the losing team can literally see the game within reach and works that much harder. "Take any situation where someone is so close to a goal that they can almost taste it," Berger noted. "The fact that they're almost there makes them work harder."

There are lessons to be learned here for your team, whether it's a business, community or sports team. According to Pope, "A lot of tools are used in the workforce to motivate people, such as wages, bonuses, etc. While surely these things can have motivating effects, one should not underestimate the potential importance of psychological motivation as well. This paper shows that the psychological impact of being behind by a small amount can cause significant increases in performance."

The lesson is that smaller, more achievable goals are more effective than bigger, loftier goals that may be out of reach. Of course, you need to stop and look around every so often to see where you are and reset your goals on a more frequent basis.

Well, it's half-time, finish reading the Wharton article while the dancers do their routine and the concession stands are still long.

What leads to success?

I am currently reading "8 to be Great," by Richard St. John. It's an interesting book so far. I was turned on to it by a video I came across on TED. See the video here. Its less than four minutes long:



It's a great presentation. It all started with a simple question, what leads to success? If you ever need to do a presentation about success, this is a ready-made one. You can take the basic outline and put your own touch on it. The quotes in the book help quite a lot. Just give credit to St. John for the ideas.