Leadership Motivation

As leadership facilitator, one of my greatest questions that I always got is if all the theory in the training were great, why not too many people practice it?  Another question is why there is no change in my leader after he or she join the training?   

If I have to be honest, I also has a question myself.  Why people who join my leadership training always said that the training is good, but afterward not too many people practice what they have learned?  

Why is it so hard for people to practice effective leadership even though we agree that it is good?  Why people when asked if they believe in coaching, all of them believe, but when asked if they practiced it or not, only about 15 - 20% who really practiced good coaching.  The others, either they didn't do it or what they do were no coaching at all, but more on shouting orders.

I don't blame them.  As a leadership practitioner myself, (more than 10 years in leadership position), I realized that the road to become great leaders is not easy.  It takes hard work and determination and most importantly, the right MOTIVATION!

According to management theory, people will be able to perform well, when their skills and wills are high.  Skill is ability and will is motivation.  It is also the same with leadership.  If one person has high leadership ability and motivation, he or she can be a great leader.  However, why in society right now, we lack great leaders?  Why in many big organizations such as Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Citibank, Merrill Lynch, AIG and many others organizations, leadership is one of the key cause in their downturn?  Why we heard a lot of news regarding leaders in the government or even non-profit organization who lost their reputation due to integrity issue?  While if you check in the web, there are millions of books on leadership.  In addition, if you check also, there are a lot of leadership trainings program that are really great and being taught by leadership guru.  We never lack any knowledge about leadership, but why we still lack great leaders?

After learning from others and also from my own experience, I found out that why so many people stop short on becoming great leaders is not because they don't have skills, but because they don't have the right motivation.

Then, you might ask, what is the right motivation to become great leaders?  I believe the word by Robert K. Greenleaf; the father of servant leadership can sum this up.  He wrote in his book, The Leader as Servant, "The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.  Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead."

That's the right motivation in becoming a great leader: a desire to serve others!  It is so simple yet so powerful!  If we are motivated to see other people become better, then we will start to see that all leadership theory that we learn make sense.  We coach people because we want them to become better. We hire the right people because we want our organization to be able to serve our customer better.  We train our people because they will grow in their ability.  That makes sense!  People will have find it hard to follow the effective leadership practice if they only think about themselves.  Why should they coach people if by threatening people that they will lose their jobs is easier to do?  Why should we train people if we are afraid that they will be smarter than us and replace our position?

People said to me before, Darvin, be realistic.  People will always have self-interest.  I agree with that.  I understand that in this world, we have to be realistic.  I don't say that you have to remove all your self-interest.  If you can, it is going to be great, but if not, then you have to be able to balance it with other people interest.  Lower your self-interest and start to focus on other people interest.  It will bring great reward back to you later.  People will start to respect you and you will create legacy

Let start to re-check our motivation in leadership.  If all your purpose in becoming a leader is to satisfy yourself, then you are sowing trouble for yourself.  Start to focus on your team and your customer.  Satisfy their needs and you will reap great rewards, you will become a Great Leader!

Written by:

Darvin Widjaja