What motivates you as an entrepreneur? When was the last time you even asked yourself that question?

It’s easy to get caught up in all the building, growing, advancing, and disrupting that you forgot why you’re leading in the first place.
This talk from Patrick Lencioni will help you reconnect with your why so you can avoid the pitfalls that stifle your organization. He originally presented the content at the 2022 Faith Driven Entrepreneur Conference, and we’re excited to share it with you here.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Glad to have you back again this week. What motivates you as an entrepreneur? When was the last time you even asked yourself that question? It's easy to get caught up in all of the building and the growing, the advancing and disrupting, but you forget why you're leading in the first place. This talk from Patrick Lencioni will help you reconnect with your why so you can avoid the pitfalls that stifled your organization. He originally presented the content at the 2022 Faith Driven Entrepreneur conference and we're excited to share it again with you here. If you liked this episode, you can also check out the two free video series we have with Patrick and special host Paula Faris. Find out more at www.FaithDrivenEntrepreneur.org/the-motive. All right, let's get into it.

Patrick Lencioni: Hi, I'm Pat Lencioni, and I'm excited to talk to you today about the principles in my book, The Motive. Now, the motive is the last book I wrote, actually, and it came out at a great time right before COVID shut down. And so it didn't have quite the the introduction that, like the other books I've written, have had. But in fact, the motive should have been the first book I ever wrote, because after a career of working with people and helping them understand teams and leadership and how to build an organization and how to have it meetings, everything else, what I realized was there was something missing. And I realized this one day when I was at a conference and I was working with CEOs in a room and answering their questions, and some of them were having a hard time receiving my advice. And I couldn't figure out why because usually people were pretty receptive to it. And so I realized in talking to them that actually there was something missing and that was their motive. Their reason for being a leader in the first place was not aligned with what it should be if we want to be great leaders. And that's especially true if we're leading for Christ, if we're faith driven leaders. And so what I realized is before I could introduce anybody to my principles about teamwork and leadership and vulnerability and organizational health, I needed to know that they were doing it for the right reasons. And in fact, there are two reasons two motives why a person wants to become a leader. And I think about this every time I go to a graduation ceremony and somebody says, go out and be a leader, make a difference, our motive has to be pure. And the two motives are, one, I'm doing it because I'm reward centered. And when you tell an 18 year old or a 22 year old to go be a leader and make a difference, many of them are saying that would be really cool because being a leader must be great because it comes with a lot of attention and some money and some control over my life and influence on others. And that is a very understandable and natural and dangerous reason to be a leader. And we're all susceptible to this because we've all fallen into this. The other motive for being a leader is that you want to serve its responsibilities centered. This is a burden. And when somebody makes you a leader, you get promoted to a position of management or you start a company. It is first and foremost a burden because you are now responsible for stewarding that role for the good of these people, your employees, your customers, partners, everybody else. So the right motive for being a leader is responsibility. It's kind of heavy and it's really important now, with God's help and pure intentions, that can be a wonderful thing. But if you're doing it for your own personal economics, I don't just mean financial economics, but what it does for you, you're going to get really frustrated because I'll tell you what, leadership is never economically sound. You are going to give far more than you receive, which makes sense if you're a follower of Jesus, because that's why we're here, is to love others. Now we all receive things. But if we think that the economics are going to play in our favor, that's not going to make sense. And that's why it's so important that the world has faith driven entrepreneurs who are willing to give far more than they receive, knowing that their rewards are eternal, and even that there are rewards here now, in this day and age, in this modern time, in the in the church and in the world, being motivated the right way is so important because to be a faith driven leader, you are going to suffer. It is it is not a theoretical statement to say that we suffer if we're followers of Jesus. And if people know that we're followers of Jesus, there's a lot who might abandon us and we have to love them through that, even as they turn away from us. And even as we get hurt by that, we can know that our motive is to love on them and to love on the people that stay with us and to love on the customers that belong with us. And even on the ones that leave us. We can we can do that if our motives are pure. Okay. I want to talk a little bit more about the motive. We talked about the the the idea that we have to be motivated by serving others. And as Christ centered leaders, we know that that's what he showed us. But here's a few good ways to think about this, because what I've noticed in all the things I teach about leadership and about running an organization, practical day to day things, there's five things that reward centered leaders, self-centered leaders, including myself, when I've been there, often abdicate. Now, it depends on who you are and what you like to do. One of the things about being reward centered is that we tend to think I get to go to work every day and do what I feel like doing. I used to think that was really the reward I wanted, that I could go to my office and do what I felt like. Of course, if you're a responsibility center leaders, you do what's necessary and what's required. And so here's five different things. And I've had leaders. I love it when they call or they write to me and they say, Oh my gosh, Pat, I was over five. I don't do any of these things. And I realize now it's because I'm reward centered and I'm so glad the humility of them to admit that and say I'm going to change because this can be changed. So here's the five things you might want to ask yourself and I'll tell you the ones that I struggle with. The first one is a lot of leaders who are reward centered, not responsibility centered. They abdicate responsibility for having difficult conversations with others. There's this issue and they can see that it's a problem. And I have to go confront them and have a difficult conversation now. As a follower of Jesus, we know what iron sharpening iron means. You know, we have to be willing to enter the danger and love somebody enough, even if it's uncomfortable. But if you're reward centered, you're going to go, I don't want to do that. And I've seen leaders abdicate responsibility for that. I remember once I worked with a leader, a very famous guy that you've probably heard of, and one of his direct reports was telling everybody around him that he was going to become the next president and chief operating officer of the company. And this guy was not at all well-liked by his peers. Well, somebody went to the CEO and said, are you going to make that guy, the president and CEO and the CEO said, no, I'm not going to do that. He was are you going to tell him to stop telling everybody that? And he goes, no, I don't have time and energy for that. And so many leaders don't have the time and energy. You know, it's just calling the guy up and saying, hey, buddy, you're not going to be the next president. You should stop telling everybody That is kind of pissing me off. And something bad might happen to you if you don't stop. Right. Have a great day. We don't have that conversation, even though it's an act of love to say, I want to correct you in that. So if we're reward centered, we go, That's uncomfortable. I really don't like doing that. It's not fun. He could be upset. I'll just let it go because it doesn't bother me that much. But that's not living our responsibility as leaders. So the first one is having difficult conversations with people. And I promise that was a true story and I've had it happen, that kind of thing, so many times in working with leaders. The next one is related to that, but it's different, and that's what we have to manage our direct reports. I will tell you, I don't like this one. Managing your direct reports just means I know what they're working on. I'm helping them set goals. I'm available to them to coach them when they need help, and I'm following through with them. Well, I used to justify not doing this. I'm just not a very detail oriented person. And I would say, well, I hire adults and they're good at what their jobs are and I don't need to be on top of them and know what's going on. And a lot of leaders will say, I don't like to micromanage. That's not micromanaging. It's managing. And it's an act of love. And so I used to be kind of lazy about that and think that's okay. And one day I realized, Oh, that's just because I don't feel like doing it. So managing your direct reports and I find that this gets harder. The hire people go up in an organization, no line level manager fails to do that. But many leaders, when they get hired, they just think, I don't have to do that anymore and I'm kind of glad I don't. So that's one of the things that people abdicate sometimes if they're giving in to reward center leadership. Another one is building a team, doing doing team building sessions. Now, I love doing this. This is what I do for a living. So even as a reward centered leader, I would do that because it was fun. But I know some CEOs who hate that kind of stuff, so they go, I'm just not going to do it or I'm going to farm it out to somebody else. Well, the truth is, if you're a leader, nobody else can be responsible for building your team, just like having those hard conversations and managing your direct reports. So we have to say, whether I like this or not, I'm going to do it because it's necessary. So building your team and doing the the interpersonal work necessary to do that is critical. Two more. One is many leaders I know don't like to repeat themselves. Repeating yourself as a leader is one of the most critical things we have to do. You know, like that old saying, like the woman who says, Honey, why don't you ever tell me you love me? And the husband says, Well, I told you when we got married, I'll let you know if it changes. Many leaders are like, I don't like to repeat myself. I find it to be redundant. It's a waste of time. People might think I'm stupid or that I think they're stupid. The best leaders in the world are constantly, constantly repeating themselves, even if it's not fun, even if people make fun of them. As a parent, I know this because my kids constantly make fun of me. Dad, if you tell me to, you know, not do that one more time, I'm like, good for them for remembering. But at work we often think, I don't want to have to do that. Great leaders repeat themselves. And the last one is that to be a great leader means this is not sexy or interesting that we have to run great meetings. Oh, so many leaders I know go. Oh, if it weren't for meetings, I really love my job. But the truth of the matter is the meeting is the playing field, the stage, the classroom, the the operating room of business, of leadership, of organizations. A teacher would never say, I hate teaching in the classroom, or a surgeon would ever say, I hate the operating room. A football player would never say, I hate the playing field. An actor would never say I hate the stage. But when a leader says I hate meetings, it really is saying I don't like what I do because that's where we lead. That's where we make difficult decisions. That's where we confront people and and make decisions for our customers. And so if you're reward centered and you don't like running meetings, you will often abdicate it or try to avoid them as much as possible, and you won't be doing a good job. Okay, So your responsibility centered leader, regardless of your personal preferences, you've got to have difficult conversation. You've got to manage your direct reports. You've got to repeat yourself constantly. You've got to build your team and you've got to have good meetings. Those are just the five super common areas that people tend to abdicate when they fall into reward centered leadership. Now, I hope what you can do is look at those and whether you're over five or four, four, five or five, four, five. You can constantly say to myself, I need to do this because it's it's necessary, regardless of whether I particularly enjoy it, because being a leader can be a very enjoyable experience. But if that's our first reason to be a leader, then our motive is wrong in the first place. You know, people talk about servant leadership, and I used to love that you would be a servant leader. And it comes back to Jesus, you know, And I love that there's books written about that. One day I realized, though, I kind of don't like that anymore, because when we say that person is a good servant leader, what we're doing is we're kind of saying that there's another type. You see, I think if you're not a servant leader, you're not a leader at all. If you're not a servant leader, then you're doing it for yourself and you're calculating what you feel like doing. I think I'm looking forward to the day when somebody says leadership and we all know what they mean is servant leadership. So let's all go back, go out and be that way. And when we see in ourselves or others that they're not, help them realize that there's only one kind of leadership and that's to be a servant. So my message to you today is check your motive. Know that it can change at times. I've been at times in my career when I became very self-motivated, very much reward centered, and things are off. So let's all check our motives, try to purify them, be responsibility centered, not reward centered, and give it all to Jesus. God bless you.