I saw poet and author David Whyte several days ago. He spoke for an hour and a half to probably 1,000 of us that packed into the venue. I overheard one woman say that she had driven up from Portland, Oregon (3-4 hour drive) to attend. When I was recounting the evening to my young son, I stumbled upon a thought that hasn’t left me. See, for the 1,000 of us at the show, we were committed. We bought a ticket. We left our homes or our workplaces. We drove to an unfamiliar place. We fought the traffic. We found a place to park. We endured the driving rain while walking into the venue. We got there early. We stayed in our seats. We listened. And, the thought that hasn’t left me is this: we did all of this not because of who the speaker was as a person, but because we knew how the speaker would make us feel. We did all of the work to get to that place at that time for ourselves. There is a key lesson here. People will move heaven and earth not because of who you are, or how great you are, but because of how you make them feel. They will do all of the work, but only because it adds value of some kind and in some way to them. If we want others to move on the organization’s mission, let’s make that mission personally meaningful.
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...