You Will Never Lose Your Way: The Motive Question Every Leader Needs

Two leaders hand off the same project on the same Tuesday.

The first one does it because he's watched the person he hands it off to for a year and he's convinced she's ready. The second does it because if this thing goes sideways, he'd rather it not have his fingerprints on it.

Same calendar entry. Same email. Same handoff. Completely different leader.

That's the problem with judging yourself by what you did. Your actions are the part everybody can see, so that's the part we all learn to manage. I've watched people spend years getting better at the actions and never once look underneath them. They get more skilled at something that was hollow from the start.

So I stopped asking leaders what they did. Now, I ask why.

It isn't the action in the moment or the inaction in the moment. It's the motive behind it. Am I backing away, holding off, withholding, avoiding, because I don't want to be invalidated right now?

That question is the compass. You'll never lose your way if you always look at your motive.

And once you start looking, you notice your motive wasn't formed in the moment you acted. It was already made somewhere else, in three places.

Your identity is where your motive is made. Who you believe you are is the material your motive gets built out of. If you believe your worth is on the line every time you open your mouth, then protecting it will shape everything you do. You won't decide that. It'll just happen.

Your mission is where that motive gets decided. The day you actually name what you're for, half your motives resolve on their own. Most leaders aren't tired from the work. They're tired from making the same decision over and over because they never really made it once.

Your community is where that motive gets revealed. You can hide a motive from yourself for a long time. You can't hide it from the people who work for you. They've already read it. They just haven't told you.

The goal here isn't certainty. You're never going to be 100% sure of your own motive, and chasing that is its own trap. You're after 51% or greater. Is more than half of this about the impact I want to make, or more than half about the validation I want back?

Fifty-one is honest enough to act on.

So here's the challenge: Pick the one thing on your calendar you've been dreading. Before you walk in, answer one question: what do I want to happen in there, and who is it for? Then walk in anyway.

You'll be surprised how often the dread wasn't about the meeting.