My Class
Welcome back to the Corporate Academic. This week I want to acknowledge my cohort in the Master of Arts in Learning and Technology (MALAT) at Royal Roads University who have been diligently creating their own academic blogs as one of our course assignments for the LRNT502 Introduction to Research course. In my opinion, blogging is a great opportunity for self-reflection and an opportunity to connect my academic understanding with my work as a corporate learning professional. Coincidentally, after joining the MALAT program I discovered that one of my fellow students was not only located in the same city is as me but also works at the same company and in an operational learning team. For today’s post I will be responding to Elaine’s recent post entitled “BRAIN-spiration” from her blog at http://studentsandstarbucks.tumblr.com/.
Response
In Elaine’s “BRAIN-spiration” post (August 22, 2014) she provides a wealth of links to various TED talks videos and other online resources for those looking for inspiration on leadership and motivation. Elaine uses thought leaders Simon Sinek and Daniel Pink as the focal points of her post and I discuss my thoughts on these two below.
I hadn’t heard of Simon Sinek prior to today but after watching his TED talk video I urge those interested in leadership to watch his video on “How great leaders inspire action.” Elaine points out in her summary that “great leaders all think the same way, but it is the opposite of everyone else.” I found it difficult to accept Sinek’s appraisal of “great leader” as he compared military leadership to corporate american culture. He attacked the modern corporations’ focus on metrics and upper leadership’s focus on self-survival rather than self-sacrifice for the betterment of team. Sinek’s solution requires leaders in any organization to focus primarily on what he calls the “golden circle,” a set of concentric circles beginning with “why” at the center and continuing with “how” and “what” as questions to answer as you progress outwards. The result, he proposes is more loyal employees, cost savings and better productivity. However, he offered no statistics or studies to validate this claim. I found his theories interesting as I have experienced a wide gamut of leadership styles during the course of my career but lacking hard evidence with which to initiate the kind of cultural change require to overhaul the deeply quantitative and risk-management focused modern workplace.
Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle”. Source: https://www.startwithwhy.com/
Elaine’s second highlighted speaker is Dan Pink. Unlike Simon Sinek, I am aware of Dan and his work in the area of motivation. I had seen his wonderful TED talks video which was later animated. I’m glad that Elaine included Dan’s work in her blog post as it is well researched and supported by international qualitative and quantitative studies. Similar to Sinek, Pink argues that the modern corporate culture is fundamentally flawed and requires a re-thinking or else continue to make the same costly mistakes which led to the recent economic downfalls. Unfortunately, Elaine missed what I would call Dan’s simplest message during his TED talk video: the role of “Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose” in the motivation of knowledge workers. Pink states that those engaged in rudimentary mechanical tasks benefit from financial incentives to perform but that once any cognitive load is required to solve problems, that financial incentives have a measured detrimental effect. Autonomy, mastery and purpose are therefore critical to engage these knowledge workers and sustain growth. I’ve included a graphic below to highlight this point.
Screen captured image from RSA Animate – Drive: The surprising truth about motivation. Source: http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/07/daniel-pink-motivating-sales-team.html
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