I’d love to be able to say that I was one of the people who left the Army as a top performer and immediately found myself at the top of my new profession (sales), but I was not. Two years running I watched colleagues collect hardware and hard cash at the National Sales Meeting while sulking in my chocolate cake from the audience.
When I left the Army, I felt like I lost my identity. I lost my profession, I lost my rank, I lost my community, and I just about lost my family. It was devastating and led to a loss I had never experienced amidst all of the hardship in my life to that point - a loss of motivation.
In the Army of the late ‘90’s, when a Soldier withdrew from a course or asked to leave a Special Operations Unit, we called it quitting. Then, sometime in the early 2000’s, the term quitting was replaced with the phrase lack of motivation, or LOM. So instead of saying, “roster number 128 quit”, we’d say, “roster number 128 LOM’ed.” I didn’t love it at first. It felt like some politically correct (PC) invasion of the Army. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that LOM is right because it is actually a better description for withdrawing, or failing to muster the effort required to achieve the goal.
I never LOM’ed in the Army. I learned how to quit in the real world. And in the process I learned that motivation is the fulcrum between inspiration and effort that must be owned internally if we intend on achieving our goals. Because here’s the thing:
We can have inspiration without motivation; and we can have motivation without effort. We cannot achieve our goals without inspiration, motivation, and effort.
Still of Demi Moore during the infamous “ring the bell” LOM scene from G.I. Jane, 1997, Hollywood Films.
This seems unclear today. Let’s dig in a little and see if we can make better sense of it.
We can have inspiration without motivation. Alex Honnold (free solo climber) inspires me, but I’m not motivated to free climb El Capitan…or anything for that matter. I’m not motivated because I cannot see myself within his vision of success. Which is totally fine - he’s not trying to motivate me to climb El Cap. Yet, I am inspired by the passion, commitment, and courage that's required for him to do what he does. Inspiration is a spark, even a catalyst, but it cannot sustain us.
We can have motivation without effort. I saw thousands of young Ranger hopefuls attend the assessment and selection program. Each man was inspired to serve our country; each man was motivated to be a Ranger. But at least 50% of those men in each class were either unwilling or unable to translate that motivation into the effort required to be a Ranger. I don’t fault them for that at all. Rangering isn’t for everyone.
We cannot achieve our goals without an appropriate blend of inspiration, motivation, and effort.
Sometimes our best isn’t good enough to achieve the goal. Oftentimes, our best efforts are yet to be found because our motivations are not properly aligned, regardless of our leaders' best efforts to directly inspire performance.
In my first two years as a sales rep, inspiration wasn’t my problem, motivation and effort was.
I was inspired to sell cancer diagnostics testing having lost my mother-in-law to cancer two days after Kelly and I married. My leadership directly inspired me with a clear vision and mission. And they attempted to motivate me with a clear role, goals, and financial rewards. They also supported me with hours of personal and professional development.
But my problem with motivation was my problem. In team dynamics, providing inspiration is 100% the leader’s responsibility, but motivation is always a 50/50 proposition. Motivation is the middle point between the leader and the lead that must be broached mutually to produce results.
Leaders are responsible for inspiring their teams by providing an aspirational vision of a better future. And they are responsible for motivating their people by showing them how and where they fit into that higher goal. But that is where the leader’s responsibility ends, and the individual’s begins.
Because a leader cannot force someone to be motivated.
A lot of leaders show up in an effort to motivate their people without teammate reciprocation.
During those early sales years when I was at the bottom of the stack rankings our VP of Sales flew from New York to Atlanta where I picked her up and we drove 3 hours through the night to Birmingham for lunch with the state’s largest Gastroenterology practice. She was my bosses’, bosses’, boss at the time. She knew that I was on my last leg after getting my teeth kicked in for 18 months in Alabama. I suspect she also knew that we weren’t going to get any business out of this large practice, but that’s not why she came in the first place.
She came for me. She showed up and she cared. Because that’s what leaders do.
Photo Credit: @eugenetriguba via Unsplash.
Authentic leaders care for their people and care enough to discover what their people need when the typical approaches aren’t working. I knew my goal, and I understood my role in the vision. I even understood the rewards the company was offering for my performance. But it wasn’t enough. Truth be told, I wasn’t motivated by the bonus money available; I needed something else in my life, namely a team again. And even though I was capable of sales, I didn’t want to be a yucky salesman.
My baggage was holding me back.
Over the long, rain soaked Alabama highways, Michele talked to me and didn’t try and sugar coat the situation. The expansion territory that I had been hired to operate was a bust. We all knew it. But they wanted to find a way to keep me on the team. I appreciated her honesty. I felt validated. But the territory wasn’t the only problem in the equation.
I wanted to lead people again. I felt alone and unmotivated as an individual contributor and I would have rather been a manager of people instead of front line selling to customers. With kindness and candor, she looked at me and said, “you’re a great leader, and you could be a great sales leader, but you cannot lead a sales team until you learn how to hit your number - consistently.” Full stop.
I asked for transparency and truth. She gave it to me, but I needed to be willing to receive it.
Leader transparency matters; employee willingness to trust is equally important.
The path was clear. She could do no more in this situation. The choice to respond was mine alone.
This is important to embracing the 50/50 reality of motivation. Leaders can try to motivate teammates with transparency and care, but followers must reciprocate with willingness and trust to produce the necessary effort. And make no mistake about this: effort is 100% on the part of the follower.
Your effort is binary. You either do or you don’t.
Regardless of which direction you choose, you chose it.
Photo Credit: @kmagnuson via Unsplash.
Consistent application of smart efforts in pursuit of achieving goals is the responsibility of the teammate - effort, not activities. When I was that young sales rep I logged my calls, filed my reports, drove my miles, and had my meetings. It was a lot of activity, but it was neither the right frequency nor the right types of smart efforts to achieve the goal.
A few months after that ride-along with our VP, I was afforded the opportunity to relocate from Alabama to Colorado. My leadership opened the door, but I had to get my motivations right and walk through it. They had all done their part. It was up to me to do mine.
And though most of my life I have fought to prove people wrong, I was motivated to prove Michele, Matt, Jason, Joe, Tara, and Babe right - about me, which I eventually did. By the time I hit the ground in Colorado I was on a mission. And I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from achieving my goals. I crushed my number the next two years and was promoted to Sales Director. I earned the chance to lead people in the corporate world and that was all the reward I truly wanted.
And during my first National Sales Meeting as a Sales Director, I was standing at the front of the room, collecting my own hardware, and returning to my team to prepare for the year.
Cover Photo Credit: @frankiefoto via Unsplash.