Part 3: Leading with Purpose & Direction. Leadership Lessons from Horses Part 3 of 3.

Welcome to the Leadership & Business Lessons from Horses Series of 3 posts where I share valuable MBA-worthy lessons that these fascinating animals can teach us.

In Part One of this series “Leadership & Business Lessons from Horses; Part One- Horse’s Worldview and The Three Engines of Motivation,” I mention that the second engine of motivation – Retention of the Status Quo/Neutrality, causes horses to interpret everything that is non-essential or of no benefit to their survival as basically a call for inaction. This comes from their innate instinct to conserve energy. For more on this, refer to Part One.

This motivated inaction is not only relevant to horses though. Direction and purpose are crucial aspects of strong leadership, inspiring performance, and creating a strong following for a brand or an idea. This subject was beautifully elaborated upon by Simon Sinek in his wonderful book and Tedx Talk: “Start With WHY. How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action”

One particular quote that I think sums up the idea of leading with direction and purpose is:

“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.”

It is such a simple statement, yet, such a powerful one, if we grasp the full essence it represents. Simon Sinek goes to a great length to discuss all of the different ways in which such manipulations work in different sectors, especially product advertisement and sales– promotions, rebates, rewards, enticements, innovations, you name it – and it is true, they do work, but it is also true that they work temporarily until someone else’s manipulation works better. Same in the workplace – if someone works for the company because the pay is good, hours are decent, all conditions are met – great! Until someone beats those rewards and overcomes the worker’s “loss aversion” tendency.

The truth is - it is not a better product, it is not being more innovative, it is not better working conditions – that make us buy a particular brand or perform inspired work for a particular employer. Yet, how many employers/companies/businesses don’t realize that at the core level, and continue to utilize people as instruments, as opposed to creating partnerships driven by the same values?

Here I’d like to quote Stephen R. Covey from his “7 Habits of Highly Effective People:”

“You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart; his heart is where his enthusiasm is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is. Treat employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best parts - their hearts and minds.”

This beautifully correlates with the powerful leadership lesson Mark Rashid (whom I mentioned in Parts One and Two of this article series) received during his apprenticeship:

“… find a way to make what you want to do important enough so that she (the mare he was trying to teach some new maneuvers) wants to do it with you.”

Except, to make it more applicable to our human interactions (in the workplace, with customers, or within a family), - instead of “finding a way to make something important,” I would say: discover WHY it is important and share that discovery to inspire others.

Many great works refer to the same concept of “start with the end in mind.” Stephen R Covey names this principle as one of the 7 Habits, Simon Sinek also references a perfect example of this in his “Start With WHY,” by recalling a story of Japanese automakers that surprised a group of American car executives on their visit to the assembly line in Japan, when the Americans found, to their surprise, that the Japanese didn’t have a worker who would ensure a proper door fit by tapping the edges of the door with the rubber mallet. When asked how the Japanese made sure the doors fit perfectly, they simply answered: “We make sure it fits when we design it.” This example perfectly demonstrates not just a difference in the process, but a difference in mentality – if you have to devise the workarounds for errors, then it is the design that is faulty and needs to be addressed, and for that – there needs to be a clear sense of purpose and reason.

So, what happens when you start with the end in mind, and “the end in mind” is the very purpose, the WHY that inspires the relentless pursuit of excellence? Essentially, the WHY becomes the start and the end, making it a perpetual process for the sake of the process itself – life for living, creating for the sake of creating, loving for the sake of loving. It is essentially meditative, presence-driven work and life – it is a way of thinking, a way of perceiving the world. Here, I’d like to quote one of my other all-time favorite business manuals, a wonderful “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't” by Jim Collins.

“First Who…. Then What. We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats- and then they figured out where to drive it… People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”

Here, while we are talking about WHO – the people, the emphasis on the importance of the people to be right circles back to the WHY. If you know what a perpetual engine ought to be, you know what is necessary to support that, and it better be real.

Before moving on from this subject, I’d like to bring once again a few quotes from “Start With WHY,” that beautifully illustrate how purpose and direction, the WHY, is different from an end result/goal/target/product - the WHAT. Particularly, talking about Apple, as a perfect real-life example of a business that built a truly loyal following of people who identify with their cause, Simon exemplifies as follows:

“A marketing message from Apple, if they were like everyone else, might sound like this:

‘We make great computers. They are beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. Wanna buy one?’

… Let’s look at that Apple example again and rewrite the example in the order Apple actually communicates. This time, the example starts with WHY.

‘Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. And we happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one?’

It is a completely different message. It actually feels different… Apple doesn’t simply reverse the order of information - their message starts with WHY, a purpose, cause or belief that has nothing to do with WHAT they do. WHAT they do - the products they make, from computers to small electronics - no longer serves as the reason to buy, they serve as the tangible proof of their cause. The design and the user interface of apple products, though important, are not enough in themselves to generate such astounding loyalty among their customers…. There is something more, something hard to describe and near impossible to copy that gives Apple such a disproportionate level of influence in the market. The example starts to prove that people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.”

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the “Start With WHY” by Simon Sinek – I highly recommend reading it, and for those who are – re-reading it, because these were just small crumbs of the powerful insights he shares on the art of inspiring action in others, and yourself!

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If you haven't already, check out Part One of this series: “Leadership & Business Lessons From Horses; Part One - Horse’s Worldview and The Three Engines of Motivation" to learn more about horse’s innate wiring and how and why it drives its behavior, as well as what the label “passive leader” represents, as it doesn’t refer to the style of leadership, but rather defines how the leader is chosen in the first place.

Click here for Part Two: “Leadership & Business Lessons From Horses; Part Two - The Four Qualities of the chosen ‘passive’ leader,” to learn more about the correlation between the ultimate traits of the “passive leader” horses choose to follow and the ultimate leadership qualities emphasized in classic business literature