Can you think of a time when you learned something so obvious you couldn’t figure out why anyone had to explain it to you? That’s how it is with the lesson behind The Motive by Patrick Lencioni, a book recommended to me by our soon-to-be-retired Fire Chief Tracy Fox.
How often do we associate our job title with our identity? When we are introduced to someone for the first time, it is rarely enough to just say our name. If my boss introduces me to someone he knows, he is usually going to finish with, “he’s one of our Assistant City Managers.” When my mom introduces me to one of her friends, she might lead with, “Meet my son…”
Here’s the first half of the insanely obvious things we learn from this book. We are not what we do. You are who you are, regardless of who you are with. Embracing this idea really messes with concepts like work-life balance and the ability to compartmentalize, but it also enhances other capabilities like self awarness.
It takes the rest of the book, and a bit of tension between two CEOs for us to find the second half of the moral of this story. The first CEO, Shay, is a former marketing director, and his company is struggling. When he is asked what he does all day, he says, “I put out fires.” We learn that the other, more successful CEO, Liam, spends his day thinking about what it means to be a good leader.
If you were paying attention, you just realized that an outstanding Fire Chief just recommended to me a book in which the way to be an unsuccessful leader is to spend your day putting out fires. Let that sink in – and the more you think about it, the more perfect it becomes.
The second half of the lesson in this book rises up, grabs you, and shakes you before you even realize what is going on. Liam eventually asks Shay why he wants to be a CEO. Shay describes how he earned the position and the higher salary and acclaim that goes with the title are deserved. Liam explains that the only real reason to be a CEO is to want to do what a CEO does. For Shay, that means leaving behind the marketing tasks for the person who replaced him – and stepping into a role, in which he spends time thinking about the needs of his company and his people.
For a rewards-centered leader, everything becomes about that person and the things they feel entitled to as a result of their efforts. That’s the person who believes the title belongs to them because they earned it, and that the organization owes them.
For a responsibility-centered leader, everything is about the organization and the ways in which they can give back to the people they are privileged to serve. This is the reason that Chief Fox once missed a meeting with all of the other Executives in our City because he was covering a shift on an ambulance during the pandemic. That’s not to say that everyone who attended that meeting should have been somewhere else – only that Chief Fox went where he was needed rather than where he could have been.
The best leaders set out to do what leaders do. That’s the simple, obvious truth that Lencioni spells out in The Motive, and it’s the way that Tracy Fox spent a lifetime in the Fire Service. I will be a better manager because of what these two men worked together to teach me. The most amazing thing about Tracy is, that even though he is retiring, his identity doesn’t have to change. He has always known who he is, and being Chief never got in the way of that.
Thank you for being the amazing person that you are, Tracy.