We are an achievement-driven culture and value achievement oriented leaders. Ensuring people achieve the organization’s goals is one of the leader’s ultimate responsibilities. Determining what those goals are and ensuring people are motivated to achieve them, calls for aspiration focused leaders.
Aspirations are hopes and desires. Achievements are end results. When leaders tie end results to aspirations, the magic of motivation happens. There is, however, one very important caveat.
What Aspiration Focused Leaders Don’t Do
It came to me while reading an article I don’t recommend, The Art of Decision-Making. The author suggests substituting the aspirational question, “Who do I want to be?” for the achievement-focused question, “What do I want to do?” But there’s a problem underlying both questions. They are entirely me-focused.
Aspirations are not me-focused personal ambitions. Me-focused leaders attract like-minded people focused on furthering their own ambitions. To do so, they attach themselves to the leader. Others see the leader, and those attached to him, as overly engaged in organization politics. Because they are. Most people find this demotivating. So if most people in the organization aren’t motivated, leaders should ask, “Am I focused on something aspirational that taps intrinsic human motivations? Or am I too focused on my own ambitions?”
What Aspiration Focused Leaders Do
Aspiration focused leaders tie end results to something universally compelling. Something is universally compelling when it taps intrinsic human desires. Achieving these commonly shared desires motivates us. It often requires us to collaborate because together we can achieve what we can’t on our own. This is what organizations are designed to do – enable large groups of people to collaborate to achieve common goals.
To be an aspiration focused leader begin by asking yourself three questions:
- What change do I want to see in the world? That’s the seed of your aspiration.
- How can I use my role as a leader, and the organization I’m leading, to make that happen?
- How can I exemplify that change?
It’s a good starting point but requires more.
President John F. Kennedy’s moon shot speech exemplifies what aspiration focused leaders can achieve by tapping intrinsic motivators and shared desires.
He asked every person in an entire country to pitch in so collectively they could go where no human being had gone before. He tapped their universal quest for knowledge, the tree Adam and Eve ate from. He catalyzed their shared desire to explore, to grow, to go beyond previous achievements. He mobilized the human resources of an entire country. Institutions designed to maintain stability changed rapidly. The math curriculum changed in schools across the country. Teachers changed what they taught and how they taught it. Interest in studying science, math and engineering exploded. Kennedy set an aspirational goal. People didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to achieve it. So collectively, they developed that knowledge and expertise. Collectively, they went where no human being had gone before.
Intrinsic Motivators that Work at Work
Aspiration focused leaders tap intrinsic motivators, so I thought it would be helpful to identify a few.
- Autonomy – We want to self-direct, to make our own choices and decisions.
- Mastery – Remember Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge? We want to continually understand better, know more and apply that knowledge to do what we do better.
- Purpose – We want to do something meaningful that makes a difference to others. We want to improve the world around us in some way.
Universal aspirations satisfy one or more of these intrinsic motivators. To win the triple crown, hit all three.
For more on the issue of me-focused versus universally focused you might look at, Have we reached the limit of individualism?