In all leadership including self-leadership or leading others, it is often one thing to get results or to see long term flourishing.
Execution ability and ability to deliver results under time pressure is a crucial skill in professional business life for example, where the time constraints can determine whatever business goes bankrupt or not.
If we are to operate in sustainable manner, of course we would have the amount of proactivity that we could push the immediate threat of bankruptcy far enough so that we do not have to react to these critical events that require immediate attention so much in the present. So that we could focus being proactive.
Proactivity in this case means also building the production capability, means preparing and training ourselves to meet the future challenges.
External motivators such as rewards can be harmful for the Production Capability yet they are used all the time to get the result. This results in just golden eggs, while we could focus having more golden gooses.
If we want to have more apples, well harvesting them this year certainly gives us X amount of apples. However, in the long term we do not get more, we get less unless we plant more apple trees.
Same is with the people. Unless nurture ourselves and others, we do not produce more, we produce less.
CFO asks CEO, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave us?”
CEO: “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?” – Peter Baeklund
In leading ourselves, we need to remember to develop our Production capability. Doing more is only helpful until to a point, where our work starts to exhaust us in the long run. We need to work smarter and to build our capacity to produce in limited time.
With people this means training and nurturing each individuals belief in what they have potential to become. If you treat people as what they have potential to become, they just might respond to that. Nurture their internal drive and remember the autonomy, meaning and mastery.
If you are interested in further about this topic see Daniel Pink’s ted talk, his book Drive and Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for starters.
Tagged: autonomy, capacity, challenge, develop, flourishing, golden eggs, golden goose, Leadership, mastery, motivation, nurturing, Proactivity, production capability, progressive challenge, purpose, self-leadership, sustainable growth, Sustainable happiness, time limits
