By way of reminder from 5 years ago.
Another great week at BUILT TO LEAD. Hope the same has been true for you. Here’s a quick tip for those of you that are leading teams. If you want to improve the performance of your individuals, teams, and leaders create more “do or die” situations!! It works. Performance will improve. You and the team will get a “rush of blood to the head” that will have you both running through walls and over people to achieve your big push. This is fear based motivation. This works…for a season.
During one of our “practice sessions” this week, with a very strong team that is getting stronger, this approach was mentioned by one of the attendees. The problem with this one is coming up with enough compelling “do or die” scenerios. Hmmm. That is a good point. What happens when people keep surviving these simulated, sabre tooth tiger encounters? Does their fear lessen? Most likely the answer is yes. At a minimum it is now less motivating!
As a leader your option is to fabricate more “life like encounters” for you and your team to “do or die”, and simultaneously fabricate compensation schemes that appear to be in reach, but really are a “stretch goal” for all but the 24/7 crowd. Another problem… The 24/7 crowd is shrinking. Seems some of them burned the candle at both ends for so long that they simply melted in the middle. Guess that one’s called “do,do and die.”
My blog humor may not be very good but this message is. Just change one word and this becomes the recipe for building sustainable high performance in work and life.
You want this recipe?
This one requires all the hard work up front and then life gets easier. Here it is….DREAM and DO! Strong, CORE centered leaders DREAM and DO. Their CORE is their guide and acts like an internal GPS mechanism with the destination clearly in sight. Fear is dead. Fake is too. These authentic leaders get our best. We bring it early and often. We go home too. Energy is everywhere.
Stop the fear based leading. Please. Yes it does work. Yes it is easier. Yet it comes at a high price with a very limited warranty. It only works for awhile. Remember, fear is seasonal; inspiration sustains.
Get real. DREAM and DO. It’s only one word away from normal. One word can make a world of difference. Go on…dream and do. We won’t let you down. Surprisingly, we’ll CARRY you.
Want to get inspired by companies around the world doing just that? Read “Purpose” , by Nikos Mourkogiannis or “The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs with a foreward by Bono. Both great reads. Talk about dreaming big.
BUILT TO LEAD 