Patrick M. Lencioni - The Motive

The Five Temptations of a CEO

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Death by Meeting

Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars

The Truth About Employee Engagement

The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family

Getting Naked

The Advantage

The Ideal Team Player

Patrick Lencioni

Cover image: calvio/Getty

Cover design: GaryAChristenson.com

Copyright 2020 by Patrick Lencioni. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 7508400, fax (978) 6468600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 7486011, fax (201) 7486008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 7622974, outside the United States at (317) 5723993 or fax (317) 5724002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Lencioni, Patrick, 1965- author.

Title: The motive : why so many leaders abdicate their most important

responsibilities / Patrick Lencioni.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2020] |

Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019045547 (print) | LCCN 2019045548 (ebook) | ISBN

9781119600459 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119600442 (adobe pdf) | ISBN

9781119600466 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Leadership--Moral and ethical aspects.

Classification: LCC HD57.7 .L4489 2020 (print) | LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | DDC

658.4/092dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045547

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045548

This book is dedicated to Sister Regina Marie Gorman and Weldon Larson, for your precious witness of faith and deep humility as leaders.

Whenever I hear a graduation speaker exhort a group of students to go out into the world and be a leader, I want to stand up and shout, No!!! Please dont be a leader, unless youre doing it for the right reason, and you probably arent! Let me explain.

This is the eleventh or twelfth business book Ive written, depending on how you count them. If someone were to dive into a stack of my books for the first time, Id tell them to start with this one.

Thats because the majority of the other books Ive written focus on how to be a leader: How to run a healthy organization, lead a cohesive team, manage a group of employees. However, over the years Ive come to the realization that some people wont embrace the instructions I provide because of why they wanted to become a leader in the first place.

Throughout my childhood, people exhorted me and my peers to be leaders. I accepted their encouragement at face value and sought opportunities to lead people and organizations from the moment I could captain a team or run for student council. But, like so many people, I never stopped to consider why I should be a leader.

As it turns out, the primary motive for most young people, and too many older ones, is the rewards that leadership brings with it. Things like notoriety, status, and power. But people who are motivated by these things wont embrace the demands of leadership when they see little or no connection between doing their duties and receiving those rewards. Theyll pick and choose how they spend their time and energy based on what they are going to get, rather than what they need to give to the people theyre supposed to be leading. This is as dangerous as it is common. The purpose of The Motive is to make it a little less common.

I hope that this book helps you understand and, perhaps, adjust your leadership motive so that you can fully embrace the difficult and critical nature of leading an organization. Or, perhaps, it will help you come to the peaceful conclusion that you might not want to be a leader at all and allow you to find a better use for your talents and interests in a different role.

Shay Davis knew that it was too soon for him to get fired. Six months was not enough time for even the most aggressive private equity firm to axe a recently promoted CEO. But it wasnt too soon for them to start thinking about it.

Golden Gate Security wasnt exactly failing under Shays brief period of leadership. The company, headquartered in Emeryville, a mostly commercial town on the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay, was still growing, albeit more slowly than most other regional security companies in the west. Profit margins were solid, but they looked anemic compared to those of All-American Alarm, the massive and most aggressive national company in the home and small business security market.

Shay figured that the private equity guys would give him another nine months to jump-start Golden Gate, but he wasnt going to wait that long. After climbing the ladder for more than two decades and finally making it to the top, he wasnt about to let all those years of hard work go to waste.

So he decided to throw his pride out the window and make a painful phone call.

Lighthouse Partners was a small consulting firm located in Half Moon Bay, California, that had a reputation for working with interesting and successful clients. One of those clients was Del Mar Alarm, a San Diegobased company that was the shining star of the regional security arena in California and a small thorn in Shay Daviss side.