Bulldozer00's Blog

In one of the Vital Smarts crew’s books (I forget which one, and I’m too lazy-ass to look it up) they mention motivation and ability as two important metrics that leaders can leverage to help people improve performance. To make things simple, but hopefully not simplistic, I’ve constructed  a “Leader’s Action Table” (LAT) below using a binary “Present” or “Absent” value for each of the motivility attributes.

Since, by definition, a leader is pro-active and he/she cares about people and performance (both), he/she will take the time and effort to get to know his/her people well. The leader can then use the simple, two attribute , four action LAT to help his/her people grow and develop.

With bozo managers, the story is much different. Even if they stopped thinking about themselves and their careers long enough to consider the individual needs of their people in terms of the two motivility attributes, those bozeltines would get it back-asswards and hose everything up – of course. Instead of a LAT, they’d wield the BAT shown below. BATter up!

Do you think the LAT could be useful? What would your LAT look like? Are there any important attributes that you think are missing from the table? Should one or either of the motivility attributes be multi-valued instead of binary? Meh?

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They do not mean to do harm… They are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” – T. S. Eliot