Challenge with Purpose
Leaders don’t challenge for challenge’s sake. It’s not about shaking things up just to keep people on their toes. Individuals who criticize new thoughts and ideas or point out problems with the ideas of others without offering any kind of alternate options are not chal- lenging the process. They are simply complaining. Leaders challenge for meaning’s sake. They challenge, often with great passion, because they want people to live life on purpose and with purpose. What gets people through the tough times, the scary times—the times when they don’t think they can even get up in the morning or take another step—is a sense of meaning and purpose. The motivation to deal with the challenges and uncertainties of life and work comes
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G E from the inside, not from something that others hold out in front
of you as some kind of carrot.8 The challenges that leaders raise are always accompanied by a drive to do something themselves to resolve and improve the situation, not simply complain.
The evidence from our research, and from studies by many others, is that if people are going to do their best, they must be internally motivated.9 Their tasks or projects must be intrinsically engaging. When it comes to excellence, it’s definitely not “What gets rewarded gets done”; it’s “What is rewarding gets done.” You can never pay people enough to care—to care about their products, services, communities, families, or even the bottom line. After all, why do people push their own limits to get extraordinary things done? And for that matter, why do people do so many things for nothing? Why do they volunteer to put out fires, raise money for worthy causes, or help children in need? Why do they risk their careers to start a new business or risk their security to change the social condition? Why do they risk their lives to save others or defend liberty? How do people find satisfaction in efforts that don’t pay a lot of money, options, perks, or prestige? Extrinsic rewards certainly can’t explain these actions. Leaders tap into people’s hearts and minds, not merely their hands and wallets.
Arlene Blum knows firsthand the importance of challenging with purpose. Arlene, who earned a doctorate in biophysical chem- istry, has spent most of her adult life climbing mountains. She’s completed more than three hundred successful ascents. Her most significant challenge—and the one for which she is best known— was not the highest mountain she’d ever climbed. It was the chal- lenge of leading the first all-woman team up Annapurna I, the tenth-highest mountain in the world. “The question everyone asks mountain climbers is ‘Why?’ ” Arlene explains,
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and when they learn about the lengthy and difficult preparation involved, they ask it even more insistently. For us, the answer was much more than “because it is there.” We all had experi- enced the exhilaration, the joy, and the warm camaraderie of the heights, and now we were on our way to an ultimate objective for a climber—the world’s tenth-highest peak. But as women, we faced a challenge even greater than the mountain. We had to believe in ourselves enough to make the attempt in spite of social convention and two hundred years of climbing history in which women were usually relegated to the sidelines.10
In talking about what separates those who make a successful ascent from those who don’t, Arlene says, “The real dividing line is passion. As long as you believe what you’re doing is meaningful, you can cut through fear and exhaustion and take the next step.”11
Why concern yourself with purpose and meaning? After all, people in the workplace aren’t volunteers; they’re getting paid. However, it’s precisely because people are getting paid—precisely because they are eligible for bonuses and other awards—that you ought to be concerned. If work is seen solely as a source of money and never as a source of fulfillment, organizations will totally ignore other human needs at work—needs involving such intangibles as learning, self-worth, pride, competence, and serving others. Employ- ers will come to see people’s enjoyment of their tasks as totally irrelevant, and they will structure work in a strictly utilitarian fash- ion. The results will be—and already have been—disastrous. Just take a look at the costs of recruitment and retention these days. Have big stock option plans or huge signing bonuses really done much to make organizations successful? There’s very convincing evidence that reliance on extrinsic motivators can actually lower performance and
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G E create a culture of divisiveness and selfishness, precisely because it
diminishes an inner sense of purpose.12