Guy: Imagine two individuals vying for the role of president of the United States. The first
viewed the presidency as the ultimate validation of their inherent greatness. Landing the highest
office in the land, they relish the accompanying status, influence and power, using these perks
primarily to enhance their own comfort and lifestyle. In contrast, the second candidate
sees their election not as an end, but as the beginning of an extraordinary opportunity. With
the same status influence and power at their fingertips, they feel a profound sense of
responsibility to use these resources for the collective good of the nation. While the first
candidate shirks responsibilities like reading briefings, understanding legislation, engaging
with constituents and seeking wise counsel, the second does the opposite. They actively pursue
these tasks, aiming to be the most well-informed and effective leader they can be, regardless of
the political leanings of those they govern. So given only their motives, which of these
candidates do you think would make a more effective leader? Now, imagine these individuals
were competing not to lead a country, but your organization or even your own team. Who would
you prefer at the helm?
Guy: Welcome to the Best Business Bookshelf, a podcast that summarizes the main takeaways from
the best business books I've read. I'm Guy Martin, and I've been collecting, reading and
listening to business and self-development books for over a decade, and I've discovered there are
a few that I keep on recommending to friends and colleagues. Maybe you'll find something useful
too. On today's episode, The Motive by Patrick Lencioni.
Guy: Patrick Lencioni is widely recognized for his leadership fables, such as the Five
Dysfunctions of a Team. Death by Meeting, and more recently, The Six Types of Working Genius.
If you're unaware of Patrick's style, these books typically start with a fictional story
where the main characters learn the concepts at the core of the book through a narrative example.
This makes them more interesting and accessible than just dry business texts. With the story
drawing us in and making us care about what happens next, the second, and usually much
shorter part reviews the fable, teases out the relevant lessons and themes, and goes into
analysis of the decisions of the characters in the fable. The motive, released in 2020,
introduces us to Shay and Liam, two CEOs at the head of competing companies in the same industry.
One Shay is struggling to turn around their company, and in a candid conversation with Liam,
who runs the more successful company, discovers there may be a fundamental difference in their
respective approaches to what it means to be a leader. In other words, what their motives are
for leading.
Guy: The central takeaway of the motive is that there are two motives for becoming a leader.
There's reward centred leadership and responsibility centred leadership. Reward
centred leadership views the role of a leader as a reward for past accomplishments. They have the
status, money, power and influence because they've worked hard and deserve to reap those
benefits without enduring discomfort or doing anything they don't want to do. On the other
hand, responsibility centred leadership sees being a leader as a responsibility. They have a
desire to serve others and make a positive impact on the people and the organisation itself.
The hard work continues and the work may be and probably will be difficult and challenging.
Lencioni acknowledges that few leaders embody either extreme exclusively or so. Some
exceptions do come to mind. Still, there tends to be a more dominant motive, and this can
directly linked to the success of a leader and in turn, the success of the organisation they
serve. These attitudes towards leadership are not set in stone, though. Once we recognise our
own motives, we can work to change our behaviours and beliefs and move from being a
rewards centred to being a responsibility centred leader.
Guy: The story of Shay and Liam -. The two CEOs of competing companies obviously show the
contrasting motives of being a leader. It isn't just a description of how things are, though. As
the story progresses, we see lamb responsibilities ended, guiding Shay, the reward
centered leader, to a different way of seeing things. Based on five themes that Lencioni
frames as the five emissions of reward centered leaders, The great thing about the fable is that
we get to see a natural resistance from Shay's character that may not be too far removed from a
real reaction to some of the ideas. For example, the first theme that reward centered leaders
tend not to do is developing the leadership team. Many leaders will talk about building the
executive team, but when it comes to actually doing this, they'll delegate to H.R. or not even
do it at all. In the fable, Liam mentions that not everyone in these team are perfect, but it's
his job as a leader to help them get better. Shay rebuts this with an argument I've heard
from actual leaders. "I hire adults. I hire competent people. I shouldn't have to coach them.
I can't afford to spend all my time babysitting". To which Liam responds, "It's not babysitting.
It's management. And it's your job." The fable is like a role play of the principles Lencioni
is proposing. It applies the theory in a practical, albeit fictional, situation. And we
can inject ourselves or those we're coaching more easily in the lessons section about this
theme. He offers some reflection and a call to action on what your motives are concerning this
idea. Each of the other formations are handled in the same way, pulling out the lessons from
the fable and then showing how to address this in an actionable way. Now, I don't want to spoil
the book because it is an enjoyable read, but if you're anything like me, your curiosity is
burning for these other formations. So first, as we already looked at, is developing the
leadership team. Number two is managing subordinates and making them manage this.
Lencioni says this is one of the most overlooked responsibilities of many leaders, ensuring those
subordinates that are people managers are actively managing their people. Sometimes this
can lead to the third mission of reward centered leaders having difficult and uncomfortable
conversations.
Here we're treated to a few real life anecdotes of people Lencioni has worked with in the past.
Fourth on the list is running great team meetings. This could be surprising coming from
the author of a book called Death by Meeting. But the problem isn't meetings themselves. It's
bad meetings. Meetings that are tests of endurance rather than effective and engaging.
What's missed is that those with the power to transform a meeting are often the greatest
complainers about them. The analogy is made that leaders who view their meetings as a grind are
similar to a doctor who sees surgery that way, or a teacher who considers class lessons a chore.
Number five is communicating constantly and repetitively to employees. Lencioni suggests
that the best leaders can see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers, they see redundancy in
their messages as far better than having employees that are uninformed. They remind of
the vision and the mission and the values of the organization to ensure there is alignment across
the organization.
Guy: So why do I recommend this book? Lencioni stated that out of all his books, this is the
one he recommends people read first as it covers the why of being a leader before even looking at
the how. If your reason for being a leader is for the rewards that may come with you will not
be a good or effective leader and will do a disservice to the organization. I've come across
plenty of people in my career where the rewards dominate the responsibilities. And for many,
it's not that they're bad people. They just lost sight of why they ended up there. It's for those
people and for those that may be new to people management that I recommend this book to. We're
seeing more and more examples of leaders in the world with business leaders, political leaders
or otherwise that are reward centered where the personality of the leaders outshines, and
usually not in a positive way the organization they are leading CEO pay compared to the average
salary of organizations they lead has skyrocketed in orders of magnitude, and
politicians embroiled in corruption scandals on a daily basis. And we're getting numb to it all.
We're almost expecting and accepting our leaders are reward centered, and this is a problem. We
need more leaders like George Washington or Marcus Aurelius, leaders who willingly
relinquished power to better serve their people.
Guy: The former US ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun, knows this. And in the next episode
we'll take a look at his work on the best Business bookshelf The Power of Giving Away
Power.
Guy: Thanks for listening to the Best Business bookshelf. If you like this episode, please
subscribe using your preferred podcast platform. Engineered and hosted by me Guy Martin Music by
Aleksey Chistilin from Lexin Music. This podcast is a production of Neolux Communications.