Friends,
Why don’t we see the importance of challenge in our efforts to motivate others to reach higher levels of productivity and achievement? I’ve asked this question in prior Reading for Leading columns and asked it of audiences to whom I have spoken. I have shared the perplexing data from tens of brainstorming sessions: for every one person who tells me that the way to energize followers is “challenge,†there are six others who say that the way to energize them is to “feed them,†and two more who say feed them “chocolate!â€
On Friday I was wondering aloud to a group of lawyer-leaders why it had taken them so long to identify challenge as an energizer. I pointed out that challenge was in the title of my speech and permeated a discussion leading up to this inquiry about energizing. “Why,†I inquired of them – and now inquire of you – “don’t we see the tremendous power of challenging ourselves and others to unleash energy?â€Â Think of Mary Lou Retton, Baryshnikov, Bill Gates, Colin Powell or YOU: In instances of great achievement isn’t there always someone there setting a high bar, a lofty goal, a challenge?
I don’t think you can dispute that. Can you? As I pondered-remonstrated with the group of lawyers for not more quickly seeing the power of challenge, Judge Stephens pushed back. She said challenge won’t work unless people feel you believe in them, feel like they have what they need to meet the challenge, and know it’s okay if they fail. What do you think? Are those the necessary conditions to make challenge work to unleash energy? What do we need to put in place so that those we lead (and we ourselves) will accept challenges to: improve, grow, stretch, excel, reach, risk, aspire, experiment, and otherwise expend energy to accomplish our full potential?
I’d love to hear your successful experiences, where others have challenged you, or you have challenged others. What were the conditions or context that led challenge to lead to actual motivation, energy expenditure, and results? We’ve got to challenge yet challenge well if we’re to
Lead with our best self!
Dan
Sometimes a relatively small/short period of time, well spent, has lasting results of positive influence. This is respective of say, a sports coach, interacting for one season, which is a very short period of time relative to a lifetime.
I took on the responsibility of boys basketball coach at a local countywide rural middle school several years ago. Although I am not a teacher or school system employee, I relished the thought of being instrumental in teaching the X’s & O’s of the game, and using the sport as a metiphor for life’s lessons. Fast forward five years…..two of the boys (brothers) that I coached in middle school are seniors, and both playing varsity basketball. They are winning every game, showing exceptional promise for a post season championship, at the state level. I decided to attend a game half way through the season. As I arrived early to watch the JV game, one of my former ‘pupils’ saw me enter the mezzanine, and immediately got out of his chair amidst a table of his peers (this is a young black man, I’m an old white guy! 🙂 and came over to greet me with a hug and a question, “Coach, what are you doing here?” My response was, “I’ve come to watch the # 1 basketball team in the state win tonight.” Moving on…..the team was highly successfull, moving through district and regional play, to the state championship game in Richmond, VA. The young man told me, after the final regional game, that if he had not been coached by me, in particular, how to play defense, he, and his brother would not be where they were today!~ VALIDATION for time spent; mentoring!! The boys went on to win the state championship. It was the first time EVER for any sports team from this county to win a state title!! The community was jazzed. I called the varsity coach, to introduce myself, and tell him what a fine job he had done this past year. I told him about the one regular season game I attended….he stated he remembered the game….I asked him how….he responded by telling me that my former player had pointed me out to him as I sat in the stands as an observer and fan. So, the story goes…..sometimes you won’t be around to see the results of good groundwork laid, but be certain, no good deed goes unrewarded…..sometimes it just takes time for the seed to grow strong.
Mark,
You just desribed the Power of One! Keep doing what you are doing and know that You Make A Difference!
The TIP lady
I’m still pondering something I heard on the radio last week. U.S. Rep Tim Wahlberg was on a local talk radio program in Kalamazoo, and he criticized Gov. Granholm for riding her bicycle to work. He said that having the governor of our automobile-producing state ride her bicycle to work sends the wrong message. (I didn’t hear him say anything about State Senator Tom George, a Republican, who has ridden his bicycle the 75-mile distance from Kalamazoo to Lansing.)
I think that our governor and Sen. George should both be commended for riding their bicycles to work. Their efforts actually prompted me to start riding my own bike to work, including today (10 miles one way). Riding a bicycle produces less carbon dioxide, provides exercise, and saves money and gasoline. It can also be a lot of fun; I usually see deer or other animals when I ride my bike to work. The governor and Sen. George (both of whom are also more fit than I am!) represented true leadership. By contrast, I have to wonder about Rep. Wahlberg, who last year publicly compared Iraq to the Motor City.
Speaking as one of the “lawyer-leaders,” I agree that challenge can be motivating BUT can also be paralyzing. Some members of my profession are highly risk-averse and seek to accomplish tasks “the way we always have” so as to minimize the likelihood of failure. While such traditionalism can serve to avoid disaster, it also eliminates the potential for growth.
Fortunately, this malady does not infect all lawyers, otherwise we would never see progress in the law. History is replete with examples of lawyers who saw a challenge and rose to it, rather than shrank from it. Think of Thurgood Marshall and his stellar victory in Brown v Board of Education.
I see my task as a leader of lawyers to encourage them to let go of their fear of failure and tackle the challenges head on.
Fear of failure….when that concept creates a level of paralysis to push oneself, or motivate another possibly, guarantees the results. I’ve taken risks, accepted failures, got knocked down, continue to get back up, and most importantly, learn from my past, both in failure and success. Surprisingly, the mix of these two elements, success, AND failure, help to formulate vision, and humility. One is not attainable without the other.
Yin and yang.
While I appreciate your premise that we want to empower those with differing views to challenge and speak up and be heard, there are those “repeat challengers” who do not reciprocate by “hearing” what others are saying. All need to be amenable to the challenge, not just stand their ground out of insecurity in changing or the need to be the center of attention.
The key for me is that I believe so many just shy away because they have never developed themselves enough to cope with challenge and the art of challenging others. Men are great at it as we compartmentalise things so well and wish to have everything ‘solved’ and nothing that causes us grief as ‘outstanding’. The classic example lies in the home and the simple challenge of asking their wife who is obviously upset about something… ‘How are you’. What is this? This is challenge, this is tough, asking a question to which you know you are going to have to possibly go deep or call on your strength to participate in the outcome – to love. So many just do not go there because they have never developed themselves enough to cope with challenge and in the example of husband and wife it is such a classic catalyst for communication breaking down and becoming less and less. By the way a lot of what I’m talking about here is in the book The Way of the Wild Heart by John Eldredge – 2nd book after ‘Wild at Heart’.
To take it out of the home – and I hope you didn’t mind me going to such a sacred place to make that point – challenge in a team sense or corporate culture is not much different. Again, whilst many may espouse that the theory of ‘challenge leads to growth’ is true, very few actually love and run towards that fact. That is the key to the whole thing but it must first start with development and the state of personal development that any one person is in. Of course the only way to personally develop, IS CHALLENGE… LEARN… AND CHALLENGE… LEARN …AND CHALLENGE and of course the learning can also come from putting the right stuff into one’s head.
I concur as many have stated, that those we are to challenge require our love and support as we put the challenge before them. Just like a child who we give a job to that they have never been asked or trusted to do on their own. And in fact look at a new baby and those first years and tell me how challenge is not energising and doesn’t lead to great results. As a child learns to walk they know no other way but to keep going until it is mastered and what of those around them who are watching the miracle… come on Billie, you can do it, come on, you’re going great! What a lesson on how to we need to deal with those we set challenges before (though we may need to be cautious on making someone feel like a baby! 😉 ). However, in the same example, as a child gets older and we ask them to do something to stretch them but just leave them to their own devices the outcome can be terrible. They hit a wall, they struggle, if we aren’t around it can so often lead to a damaging result where not only are they unsuccessful at that attempt, but they choose to make no further attempt and worse still, feel that any challenge is worse than it is because they weren’t supported.
To summarise what I am trying to say. I believe so few see challenge as energising not because it isn’t, but because they feel it is just too hard because it requires strength and a personal output or investment of heart or soul. People do not see themselves as being capable of coping with challenge so they avoid it. Show belief in people to do the exact opposite, and be the example of running towards challenge yourself, and the journey to challenge as an energiser is begun.
cheers,
Daniel
I heard only a few minutes of Dan’s address to the Joint Education Conference this morning, but was impressed with the material he shared on ‘energizing’ people. I was also surprised that challenge was so low on the list of energizers. I’m lucky, I guess, that when my boss challenges me to do a new task, I feel that his confidence in me is all that is necessary. But I also know that he supports my efforts, and will constructively help me reach the goal (and then act like it was all my doing). That makes it easy to accept the next challenge.
I hope to read more about this topic from Dan’s materials.
Mihalyi Csikczentmihalyi, the author of Flow, argues that we need a mix of challenge and support to achieve that wonderful state (which he calls “flow”), in which we lose our self, our sense of time, our resistence, that place where we soar towards committed achievement.
Too much challenge and we are paralyzed. Too much support and we just don’t bother–why would we? We can’t see ourselves in the work that’s going on.
Finding a mix of challenge and support that encourages, strengthens, and inspires is a tremendous act of leadership. It’s also remarkably selfless because it requires us to relinquish our ideas about where others “should” be or what they “should” need.
Krista,
This comment makes a ton of sense! Thanks for sharing it. It seems like a gauge that would be really useful both for coaches of athletes/teams and business people/teams.
Thanks for joining the conversation.
D.