By By Owen Phelps, Ph.D.3/31/2007
Midwest Leadership Institute (www.MidwestLeadershipInstitute.net)
www.catholic.org/leadership
“... strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Cor 12:31-13:1)
When it comes to motivating people, one size most definitely does not fit all. Each person is unique. So effective motivation is a matter of intimacy. The more you know and the more you care about someone, the better you will do motivating them.
This becomes clear when we look at the most successful organization in history. No, it’s not Microsoft or GE, or even the church. It’s the family. No other organization or type of organization has come anywhere close to matching the family’s contribution to the development of people.
Since the dawn of humanity, families have been taking tiny, helpless, illiterate and incontinent little babies and growing them into sentient, responsible, creative and contributing human beings. The nuclear family — especially when supported by the extended family — is the most successful personal development agent known to humankind.
It’s true that the news media focus on the failures. Nevertheless, most people navigate the awesome developmental process from helpless baby to competent adult successfully. Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if that growth could continue — and be nurtured — in the workplace?
Other organizations and their leaders can learn a lot from families and their leaders.
Why are families so successful? Because a family’s leaders typically know and care deeply about the family’s members. In fact, leaders in effective families generally care more about other family members than they do about themselves.
We know this caring — it’s love — is the powerhouse of effectiveness in families because we know what happens in families without competent and caring, selfless leaders. These families are not able to consistently produce healthy and whole human beings who take care of themselves and contribute to the common good.
This fact only confirms what we know from the long experience of effective families — that nothing motivates, nothing shapes, nothing develops people so much as love. Just to be clear: we’re not advocating the proliferation of office romances. The love which grows whole people is not eros, it is agape — love that is selfless and seeks only the good of the other. Such a love is the basis for true servant leadership.
But many will object, “We can’t go around our place of work even saying we love the people who report to us — much less actually love them.” We’ll concede that, owing to the limits of the English language, it’s generally better not to spend our work hours verbally expressing our love for the people around us.
Yet, if we want to be effective leaders, it is essential that we spend our working hours expressing our love for the people around us in every other way possible.
For those of us uncomfortable with the use of the word love in this context, it’s important to remember that in the Christian context loving all others is not only a choice, it is a commandment. We are to love others as we love ourselves — which is to say, to love God we must fight the natural tendency to be self-centered and strive to always give our neighbor as much consideration as we give ourselves.
The big question is not: What is good for me? The big question is: What is good for us?
Moving beyond self-centeredness is not easy. It may not even be possible all the time. But we are told by Jesus that it is one of the two more important things we must do.
Thus, it makes no sense for Christians to be squeamish when it comes to talking about love in the workplace — or anywhere else, for that matter. Loves makes as much sense anywhere else as it does in our homes — even if for most of us it comes much more easily in our homes.
Well-known organizational guru Jim Collins uses only slightly different language to make a similar point in Good to Great when he describes the very best leaders as selfless, humble and mission-centered.
There are two reasons why intimacy — or love — is so important to effective motivation.
First, love is a powerful force that changes everything toward which it is directed — even inanimate objects. Consider, for example, what happens to a car or a house when it is cared for. Most cars deteriorate into rust buckets in a decade or two. But with tender, loving care antique car buffs enjoy models that are 75 or more years old. A house that’s not maintained will soon become inhabitable. But one that serves as a home for caring people can continue to serve its purpose for centuries.
If love can so drastically change the destiny of inanimate objects, how much more powerful is it when directed toward human beings?
Intimacy is especially powerful in human relations because no two people are alike. So no two people can be optimally motivated using quite the same tools in quite the same way. The more we know about the people for whom we are responsible in some way, the better we can devise a strategy and employ useful tactics to help them become and remain motivated.
Ultimately, as people become more self-motivated, they also become more other-motivating. And when that happens, the synergy that results makes an organization a virtual perpetual motion machine.
Good families have been behaving that way since the dawn of humanity. But there is no need for them to have a monopoly on this generative process. Our churches, schools, factories and offices can enjoy the same benefits — and the same incredible results.
The recipe for success requires but one ingredient: Just add love!
To read more about Christian leadership, Click here.Copyright © 2007 by Owen Phelps, Ph.D., Midwest Leadership Institute. All rights reserved
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