My Driving Motivation

Welcome!

As I kick off this new blog series, I want to take a moment and share with you why I’ve chosen to dedicate a blog and books (and a life) to the idea of love and loving leadership.

I’m chuckling inside, as I’ve rewritten this next part a zillion times. I realize nobody wants to read something that sounds like a cover letter … boring! So, bear with me as I try to boil it down to this … years ago, I got an MBA and set out in pursuit of success in the corporate world. I cut my teeth as a financial analyst at a large consumer products company, and then went into strategic planning at a major financial institution, and eventual became a Division Finance Officer for a couple of billion dollar organizations.

I’d received a number of awards and promotions along the way, signifying some level of success. Yet one day I found myself in my boss’s office having what felt like an ironic, but very thought-provoking conversation.

I’d just spent eighteen months building and leading a highly successful support organization. Our team successfully completed over 75 initiatives targeted at improving organizational effectiveness for an industry-leading business. Our team had great relationships across the organization and three of my team of 16 received an award given to only the top 1% of the entire company. That’s right! Almost 20% of the team received the top award.

So the conversation with my boss was about to be fantastic, and in fact potentially epic, right? Haha Well … epic it was! Despite all the team had accomplished, the conversation meandered to the point my boss said, “Rich, I need more of a bulldog in this role.” Now note, I highly respected this leader and still do (and what’s really funny, he doesn’t remember telling me that). But the words hit me like a ton of bricks.

It took some time to digest what had happened, but eventually those words fueled an epiphany. I began to realize, this boss, and for that matter almost all of my previous ‘bosses’ and leaders, had no idea how or why I did what I did. They generally loved and benefited from my results, but they didn’t understand what TRULY motivated me. It seemed not only did they not understand, but if they got close enough to see, what I did just didn’t ‘look right’ and didn’t fit the typical corporate leadership model. What was perhaps even more disturbing was the fact that I really didn’t understand why or how I did what I did either.

Clearly, I wasn’t the ‘typical’ corporate leader. There really was something different about my leadership approach and I needed to understand what it was. So, I set out on a quest to identify what was so ‘different’ about my leadership style to determine what I needed to do, or not do, to move up the executive ranks. And … after much reading, study, reflection and soul searching what did I discover? I found that my motivation and leadership approach was centered on … brace for it … love.

Could it be? I questioned it. Could love really be the difference? I’m all about strategy, profitability, financial acumen and getting results. Could I really be motivated by love and could it really work in leadership? Could love really help create strong relationships, high performance teams, outstanding results and great organizations?

I must say, the more I’ve read and studied about culture, leadership, customer engagement and human dynamics … and reflected on my own experience and the examples of many other leaders (both good and bad ) … the more I’ve become convinced that Love …