THE BIG IDEA: Five habits that offer every leader continuous room for improvement in actualizing their potential and growing their organization.
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Scott Jeffrey
THE BIG IDEA: Outperforming leaders tend to be growth-oriented, both within themselves and within their organization. This week’s article highlights thirteen characteristics of self-actualizing people observed by Maslow.
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Psychologists primarily studied mental illness for the first 50 years of the field’s existence.
After World War II, Abraham Maslow asked a revolutionary question: What does positive mental health actually look like?
Maslow challenged the assumption that there was a clear dividing line between mental illness and mental health. He realized that his field of psychology—the study of the human mind—hadn’t studied or clearly defined the characteristics of positive mental health.
If you’re over 50, you probably remember the term “self-actualization” from the 1970s. Maslow used this term to characterize those individuals that tend to have a higher degree of positive mental health.
Self-Actualization Explained
If you recall from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, the first four levels—physiological, safety, love/belonging, and esteem—are basic needs. He also called them deficiency needs.
When we feel that these basic needs aren’t being met, we experience tension and exhibit neurotic behavior. If we feel that our colleagues at work don’t like us, for example, our need to belong is threatened. Most human beings in the modern world struggle to meet one or more of their basic needs.
Until these basic needs are gratified, our attention is mainly focused on them. The more we gratify our basic needs, the more our attention can shift to “higher” level needs. Higher level needs are growth needs. Whereas basic needs are external, growth needs are internal.
Maslow called growth-motivated individuals self-actualizing. He defined self-actualization as:
- Ongoing actualization of potentials, capacities, and talents
- Fulfillment of mission (or calling, fate, destiny, or vocation)
- A fuller knowledge of, and acceptance of, the person’s own intrinsic nature
- An unceasing trend toward unity, integration, or synergy within the person
Think of self-actualization as the need to become what one has the potential to be. One realizes this potential for its own gratification—not for any external gain or concern of what others will think or say.
How Self-Actualization Translates to the Bottom Line
Chief executives and entrepreneurs that outperform their peers in the long-term tend to be self-actualizing. That is, they are interested not just in the growth of their enterprise, but in their own growth as well. These two areas are intrinsically linked; one uplifts the other.
Your people are constantly watching your behavior, consciously and subconsciously. The more you focus on your own growth and demonstrate noticeable improvements over time, the more you’ll inspire your people to do likewise.
Certain businesses go so far as to make self-actualization one of their core values. Companies like Netflix, Zappos, and the Ritz-Carlton have learning and growth explicitly stated as something they stand for.
But having learning and growth as a core value only works if leadership has the same commitment within themselves.
Thirteen Characteristics of Self-Actualizing Leaders
Maslow observed thirteen interconnected characteristics commonly found in self-actualizing people:
1) Superior perception of reality: an unusual ability to judge others accurately and detect dishonesty in the personality.
2) Increased acceptance of self, of others, and of nature: less overriding guilt, crippling shame, and severe anxiety. Acceptance of shortcomings and contradictions, without feeling real concern.
3) Increased spontaneity: behavior marked by naturalness and simplicity.
4) Increase in problem-centering: more focused on problems outside themselves as opposed to personal problems (ego-centered).
5) Increased detachment and desire for privacy: comfortable being by themselves without the neurotic need to always be around others.
6) Increased autonomy and resistance to enculturation: dependent on their own development of their potentialities as opposed to being dependent on social or cultural forces that motivate the average person.
7) Greater freshness of appreciation and richness of emotional reaction: ability to appreciate the basic elements of life with awe, wonder, and pleasure long after these elements become stale to others.
8) Higher frequency of peak experiences: Maslow originally called this a mystic experience or oceanic feeling. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it flow.
9) Increased identification with the human species.
10) Improved interpersonal relations: capable of greater love and more obliteration of ego boundaries.
11) More democratic character structure: friendly with anyone of suitable character regardless of class, education, political belief, race, or color.
12) Greatly increased creativeness: innocent, playful, and spontaneous creative expression, similar to that found in young children.
13) Certain changes in the value system: with an appreciation and acceptance of human nature, many of our so-called “problems” are seen as gratuitous and fade out of existence.
Leadership: Constant Growth in the Service of Others
Maslow was disappointed when he saw what happened to many people who read his work and adopted the idea of self actualization.
While Maslow was attempting to define the qualities of those with positive mental health, many people simply used the term to form a stronger self-concept: “I am a self-actualizing person.” The term became a badge—yet one more way for people to inflate their egos.
Level 5 leaders, guided by humility and a strong personal will, can avoid this pitfall, finding their own paths of growth while staying grounded in the service of others.
THE BIG IDEA: The old paradigm of employee motivation can actually be hurting your business’s performance. Social psychology offers fresh insights on what drives modern humans to perform at their best.
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If there was a strategy that would simultaneously improve your personal effectiveness and organization growth, would you adopt it today?
How about if we told you it could make your life and the work of your employees a whole lot more enjoyable too?
Rethinking Employee Motivation
The primary form of motivation in the workplace has been the old carrot-and-stick approach: you work for us and we’ll pay you for your time.
Over the past century, money was the primary motivator in corporate America. In the past, money as a primary motivation worked because employee tasks were routine, unchallenging, and controlled.
Our current work environment is very different, characterized by complexity and rapid change.
In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, author Dan Pink provides substantial evidence that the carrot-and-stick approach is actually destructive to organizations in today’s dynamic workplace.
Focusing mainly on financial compensation as the primary employee motivator has been found to reduce lower performance, inhibit creativity, foster addiction, and promote unethical behavior in organizations.
Three Psychological Needs for Intrinsic Motivation
Money is an external factor. Study after study show that people improve their performance when they are motivated by something within themselves. Psychology calls this intrinsic motivation.
Self-determination theory suggests that there are three psychological needs that form of the basis for intrinsic motivation. Applied to your organization, they can improve employee health, wellbeing, and performance:
- Competence: allow employees to become better at something that matters to them.
- Autonomy: allow employees to be self-directed with control over key aspects of their work (which can include when they work, how they work, with whom they work, and exactly what they are working on).
- Relatedness: provide means for employees to contribute to a cause greater than themselves, to experience caring for others.
As a chief executive, you understand the importance of autonomy and the sense of freedom that comes from being the captain of one’s own ship.
Last week’s quote from PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi stuck with us: “If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you … I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don’t improve myself and lift the organization.”
Nooyi’s statement speaks to the motivation of competence and the drive to achieve greater mastery of one’s self. According to a survey of 267 C-level executives of Fortune 500 companies, chief executives invest an average of 30 minutes in personal development each day.
The Power of Purpose
Nooyi’s stated end goal is to “lift the organization.” This is the drive of relatedness, or what authors like Dan Pink and Tony Hsieh have called purpose. This universal need to connect and care for others doesn’t just motivate individuals—it translates to bottom-line profits too.
Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant ran an experiment with call center employees who were tasked with calling people to ask for donations.
He randomly separated them into three groups. Each group had the same conditions except for a five-minute story each group read before their shift.
The first group read stories from other call center agents about how their job helped teach them transferable sales skills (a personal benefit).
The second group read stories from university alumni who benefitted from the donations raised by the call center and how the scholarships helped them (a purpose that connected the agents with something greater than themselves).
The third group read stories that had nothing to do with personal gain or purpose (the control group).
Grant couldn’t believe the results of his study. He replicated it five more times to be sure: while the personal benefit group showed no change in their performance, the purpose group more than doubled their dollars raised.
The call center employees in the purpose group couldn’t identify what exactly was driving their behavior. They simply doubled their productivity!
Could helping others and making a difference in people’s lives be a secret factor in motivating people to higher performance? It certainly appears so.
How to Improve Employee Motivation
Here are three steps to improve employee motivation through purpose:
#1: Clearly define your business in the context of your customers: who are they as human beings? How are you committed to serving them and adding value to their lives?
#2: Communicate this customer-driven message throughout your organization. Everyone in your organization should know the purpose of the business so they may find their own ways (autonomy) of contributing to that purpose.
#3: Be consistent. Never stop “selling in” to your organization. Inspiring leaders always find fresh ways to reinforce their organization’s purpose through words, personal behavior, and corporate decisions.
Feeling motivated? Let’s get going …
THE BIG IDEA: Archetypes are a powerful and underused tool business leaders can leverage to gain market dominance, improve customer loyalty, and build stronger organizations.
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Archetypes are the secret weapon of an elite group of businesses.
Archetypes operate silently, below the surface, completely out of view of our awareness—until we shine a light on them and begin working with them in conscious and productive ways.
Here are three powerful ways business leaders can use archetypes to grow their business:
#1: Deploy Effective Advertising
Archetypes can be used by savvy business leaders, marketers, brand builders, and advertisers to associate their brands to specific archetypal images that reside in their customer’s mind.
This is unquestionably a powerful use of archetypes that every business looking for a competitive edge should employ.
The use of archetypes generally stops here, but the value of archetypes goes much deeper.
Archetypes have two additional fundamental uses that are more relevant to chief executives than any other leadership role.
#2: Uncover Penetrating Consumer Insights
Archetypes can be used to better understand your customers at a significantly deeper level.
When you know the archetypes that your customers associate to your brand, you can explore the nature of these archetypes through a process psychologists call amplification.
An archetype is amplified through mythological stories, fairy tales, and other associations to bring to life the emotions, drives, aspirations, and tensions your customers are experiencing (on a largely unconscious level).
Let’s say you figure out that one of your business’s archetypes is the Caregiver. When you think of a caregiver, what qualities come to mind? Perhaps altruism, patience, empathy, and compassion.
Which characters personify the caregiver in films? Mary Poppins. Mrs. Doubtfire. What additional qualities or attributes do these characters exhibit?
This process of amplification can provide a depth of customer insights that transcends any form of big data.
These insights can highlight specific actions you can take to move your business closer to the hearts and minds of your customers.
#3: Build a Thriving Corporate Culture
Finally, when you discover your business’s archetypes, you can use them as a homing beacon to attract a certain type of talented employee that resonates with your ethos (the characteristic spirit of your culture).
Archetypes within an organization are most often expressed in a set of core values. These core values establish set patterns of behavior by triggering archetypal images in the employee’s psyche.
Companies with thriving corporate culture like Southwest Airlines, Zappos, Amazon.com, Google, The Container Store, and Netflix have all aligned themselves with specific groups of archetypes that bring core values to life.
When this strategy is used consciously, the effects are usually extraordinary. Arguably, this is the most profound and underutilized application of archetypes in modern management.
THE BIG IDEA: When executed well, core values provide an unparalleled competitive advantage for leaders because they define a specific set of idealized behaviors they want their people to uphold.
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If you could wave a wand and magically have all of your employees behaving in certain ways, how would you want them to behave?
It’s easy to get frustrated when an employee is behaving in a manner that doesn’t support the organization—arriving late to meetings, speaking over others, or making rash decisions.
When you observe a negative behavior, you can try to correct it by calling the recalcitrant into your office and giving him or her feedback.
For this approach to be effective, the feedback needs to be well-timed (right when the undesirable behavior occurs) and consistent (more than once).
Humans don’t change their behaviors too readily or quickly. Conditioning new behaviors takes time, consistency, and patience.
How to Improve Employee Behavior
While its beneficial to train your leaders to become effective in-house coaches, when you’re heading an organization with thousands of people, the feedback approach alone cannot foster the behavioral changes you seek on a company-wide scale.
The alternative approach, used by a minute number of extraordinary business leaders, is to determine, in advance, the idealized behaviors they want their employees to embody. Then, to encapsulate these behaviors into a set of core values that permeates throughout their organization.
Now, any company can put together a list of values.
Enron, for example, listed core values in their 2000 annual report including “Respect: We treat others as we would like to be treated” and “Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely.”
Obviously, listing a set of values isn’t enough.
The Behaviors and Skills Your Organization Values
Core values answers the question, “What does our business stand for?”
More than anything else, what your business stands for is defined by the actions and behaviors of your people.
The actual values of an organization are determined mainly by where it invests its resources and how its employees behave, not what the leader says or what’s posted on a company website.
Businesses that use core values to build extraordinary organizations—like Zappos, Southwest Airlines, and Netflix—take their values very seriously.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explains, “Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.”
Businesses that consciously cultivate their culture hire and promote employees who demonstrate their established set of core values. They train and enforce these idealized behaviors at every turn.
Core Values Require Specificity
To be able to hire, train, and promote employees based on a set of values, your core values need to be specific so they can be measurable.
Enron’s lofty value of integrity and its brief description sounds nice, but could a manager easily evaluate if an employee was working with customers “openly, honestly, and sincerely”? (And what about open, honest, and sincere communication within the organization? Clearly, that wasn’t valued at Enron either.)
In contrast, look at Netflix’s core value of honesty, a value similar to integrity. For Hasting’s organization, honesty means:
“You are known for candor and directness.”
“You are non-political when you disagree with others.”
“You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face.”
“You are quick to admit mistakes.”
Can you see how these definitions make it easy for leaders to evaluate their employees and potential hires?
Core Values are the CEO’s Responsibility (Not HR’s)
Ultimately, businesses that use core values to create a unique corporate culture have leaders who embody the very same values they want their people to emulate.
Humans learn best through observing behavior, not words.
If a leader isn’t conducting herself with integrity, for example, you can be certain that the employees aren’t going to go out of their way to do so either. Research shows that employees are seven times more likely to demonstrate loyalty to leaders they believe have high integrity than to those they do not.
This suggests that chief executives must be clear on two things.
First, they must know what behaviors are necessary to move their organization towards their inspiring vision. Second, they must resolve to live these behaviors, to the best of their ability, each and every day.
This is not a small commitment. Could this explain why so few organizations succeed in creating thriving cultures with engaged employees?
SIDEBAR: Will Your Core Values Hold?
Here’s a quick checklist to test the integrity of your core values:
- Does each value speak to at least one desired behavior?
- Will each value help you make decisions (especially the difficult ones)?
- Are your core values memorable? Will every team member be able to encode them in their minds?
- Does each value represent distinct elements of your overall culture?
- Will you be willing to uphold these values 50 years from now?
- Are your values congruent with the behavior of your leadership team? Are these values BS-tested? Will an employee be able to observe hypocrisy?
- Can your organization hold up these values in stressful and difficult situations (like increased competition, product recall, stock devaluation, or downsizing)?
- Are you willing to defend these values unequivocally? That is, does each value permeate through the entire organization?
For concise instructions on how to discover your core values, click here.
THE BIG IDEA: Considering the staggering amount of time CEOs spend in meetings, investing time in improving meeting effectiveness is prudent for any outperforming leader.
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Management guru Henry Mintzberg was one of the first researchers to provide a glimpse into the daily lives of CEOs.
Mintzberg followed a handful of business leaders around the office for his Ph.D. thesis at MIT Sloan. His primary observation appears obvious: CEOs go to a lot of meetings. Roughly 80 percent of their work hours are spent in meetings.
That was over four decades ago. A more recent study by Oriana Bandiera of London School of Economics and colleagues had the personal assistants of 94 CEOs provide detailed time sheets over a pre-specified week.
The results were similar to Mintzberg’s observations: 85 percent of the CEO’s time was spent working with other people through meetings, phone calls, and public appearances.
Why CEOs Need Meetings
Meetings dominate a CEO’s day because personal interactions provide valuable information critical to effectively running an organization.
Harvard Business School professors Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria argue that the ability to extract critical details needed to inform big decisions from employees is partly what defines the most effective CEOs.
Meetings also provide CEOs with an opportunity to communicate what they think is vital for their teams to know.
The Dark Side of Meetings
Another management guru, Peter Drucker, had strong views about meetings. He wrote, “Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.”
Or, as economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, meetings are “indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”
The problem is two fold. First, we have too many meetings. Second, too many of them are unproductive.
12 Tips on Conducting Effective Meetings
Your goal, of course, isn’t to eliminate meetings, but to optimize their effectiveness as well as reduce their duration and frequency whenever possible.
Here’s a list of 12 ways to help you master the art of conducting effective meetings:
- Clarify the purpose of the meeting when it’s scheduled. Request that participants come to the meeting prepared in advanced.
- Clarify the objective of the meeting at its start. Every meeting should have purposeful direction.
- Be mindful of meeting duration. Many 60-minute meetings can be done in 30 minutes. Many 30-minute meetings require only 15 minutes.
- Start meetings on time regardless of who is late.
- Reward the behavior you seek: Don’t invest time in reviewing meeting content with latecomers. Doing so rewards tardiness and penalizes timeliness.
- Evaluate who really needs to attend each meeting. The more people, the more challenging it is be productive.
- Avoid holding meetings for informational purposes; that’s the proper function of digital communication.
- Elect a meeting moderator responsible for guiding the discussion toward the desired end goal. Don’t let specific participants dominate the meeting with endless conversation.
- Whenever possible, end meetings early. The extra time can create a positive experience for participants.
- Reduce distractions by closing the door and requesting that members do not use their phones during meetings.
- Ask participants distracted with things unrelated to the meeting to leave. A meeting should be an active dialogue with all members involved.
- End every meeting with a committed action plan.
Each of the above suggestions can greatly improve the quality, effectiveness, and results of your meetings.
A Bold Experiment: Cut All Meetings in Half
If you’re intrigued and brave enough, commit to cutting the duration of every meeting in half. Try this experiment over the course of the next two weeks and observe the results.
If you’re like many of our clients, you’ll find that you accomplish just as much. More importantly, you’ll discover a reservoir of free time that can be invested in more important matters.
If you have a clear objective, the shorter the meeting, the more focused the attention and the better the outcome.
Conducting more effective meetings will give you more time to focus on what matters most: leading with vision, cultivating a thriving organization, and better serving your customers.
THE BIG IDEA: Supporting behavioral change in employees and customers becomes possible when you understand what motivates human beings to change and why change usually doesn’t happen.
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Tom is a highly talented employee with an impressive CV. He had the precise skills and past experiences you were looking for when you brought him on board. His management position is key for your organization’s strategic direction.
But Tom, you later discovered, has trouble managing his emotions. He has a bad temper and has been known to yell in meetings. He has a persistent habit of aggravating his team members.
The recruiting process was long and costly to hire Tom. You don’t want to start that process over, but something’s gotta give. What do you do?
How Do You Inspire Positive Change?
One of the greatest challenges chief executives face is the management of large numbers of people.
Humans are complex creatures. While we seek organizational order, the reality errs toward chaos. As such, managing conflict among key team members is invariably a prominent, consistent, and challenging task for chief executives.
How do you attempt to persuade others to change? We often try to change people’s behavior by appealing to reason and logic. We provide a sound argument why a desired change is beneficial.
Does it work?
All physicians know that being overweight is bad for their health. Yet, aren’t there many overweight physicians?
You can try telling Tom that if he doesn’t change his behavior and get his emotions under control, that you will have to let him go.
Even if Tom wants to stop his poor behavior, however, this argument isn’t likely to lead to change. Why not?
The Secret to Creating Change
Rational arguments and logic appeal to our prefrontal cortex, our thinking brains. But before logic and reason can influence us, the limbic system—our emotional brain—must first be engaged.
The overweight physician knows that being overweight is harmful to his health. His thinking brain has all of the information he needs to make a rational decision to change.
But where’s the emotional drive? If he’s able to associate being overweight with not being alive to see his granddaughter grow up, for example, he may become sad or angry. These emotions can potentially help motivate him to change his behavior.
Tom is likely aware of the damaging effects of his poor emotional management. That is, his thinking brain knows there’s a problem. The key is to find a way to trigger an emotional response associated with the desired change.
Change is made possible when we evoke our emotional center first. We change when change is meaningful. Meaning is rooted in feelings, not thoughts.
Three Steps to Creating Change
So how can you inspire Tom to change his behavior?
You can paint a picture that highlights the cost of his continued behavior in his performance, his work relationships, and his uncertain future in the company.
In short, you can agitate him. Agitation can lead to action.
You can also inspire him to a new view of his potential: How would it feel to have better control over his emotional reactions? When he triumphs over this behavioral problem, what will it give him? How much more energy and enjoyment might he discover in his work and personal life?
Having awoken his emotional center, you can now give his thinking brain specific instructions. Perhaps he can take steps to improve his emotional intelligence through specific mind training exercises or breathwork.
Finally, what changes can be made to his environment to help make the change stick? Perhaps he can commit to a 3-minute breathing exercise before going into every meeting. Maybe everyone in the meeting can do the exercise together.
To recap, if you want to inspire behavioral change:
Step 1: Tap into the emotional center. Help the person feel the cost of not changing and the benefits to changing.
Step 2: Provide specific actions on the path to change.
Step 3: Set up the conditions in the environment necessary to support the change.
These Same Steps Apply for Your Customers Too
Your customers don’t make decisions based on reason alone. Customers, like all humans, have a healthy dose of irrationality. We are emotional creatures.
Remember: feelings come first; reasons come second.
It is because of this fact that aesthetics, design, storytelling, images, and other facets of branding are so critical for attracting customers.
Our emotional center is moved by beauty, not words; feelings, not logic.
When we first move people through emotions and then lead them with specific directions, positive change is always afoot.
THE BIG IDEA: Inspiring others doesn’t require charisma; it asks us to relate to our fellow human beings. To become more effective at moving people, improve your ability to take another person’s perspective.
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Robert was appointed CEO of a regional chain of banks three years ago.
As an executive of this financial institution for over a decade, he knew the strengths and weaknesses of his organization when he took the helm.
He was excited about his company’s potential, passionate about improving his organization’s culture, and saw ways of capitalizing on market opportunities.
Now, after three years at the helm, without seeing any measurable improvements in his company’s performance, his enthusiasm is fading. (And his board is questioning their decision.)
Robert wonders: Am I not the change agent—the inspiring leader—I saw myself to be? He can’t help feeling like he’s letting himself, his team, and his board down.
Thankfully, all is not lost for Robert.
Inspiration Starts with Vision
First and foremost, Robert must make sure he has established a compelling vision for the future.
Without this image of what his banking business can become, he has little chance to bring his organization together and collectively move it in a positive direction. He has no way of getting his people excited about the future possibilities.
As it says in Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
A compelling vision starts with a big idea. If you need help clarifying your big idea, read this.
The Key to Moving People
A primary role of the leader is to move people, to inspire positive action in a desired direction.
This is where Robert needs help. He needs to get his vision to stick, to sell the vision to his organization so that they are inspired to realize it through consistent action.
The key to moving people is not through overt persuasion or coercive means; those methods have deleterious long-term effects.
Instead, the secret to moving people is to be able to take their perspective.
Perspective taking allows you to see the world from another person’s point of view and to speak to them from their viewpoint.
The idea is simple enough, however, in practice, most people don’t do it often enough. Our egos are conditions to see the world through our own lens.
Three Vital Perspectives
Right now, as you read this, you can be aware of multiple perspectives.
Notice your own thoughts and feelings as you’re reading. This is your first-person perspective.
As you read these words, you’re also interpreting what we’re trying to communicate. This is the second-person perspective.
Where are you right now? Become aware of your environment: other people, lighting, temperature, sounds, and so on. This is the third-person perspective.
We are always experiencing the world from at least these three perspectives.
Perspective taking as a skill requires us to consciously take the second-person perspective in our communications with others.
How to Build Your Perspective-Taking Ability
Here’s a simple practice to help train yourself to take the role of others:
- Decide whose perspective you’re going to take. It could be an employee, a board member, a peer, or a customer.
- Allow yourself to be curious and let go of wanting to judge this exercise.
- Imagine that you are this person. As fully as you can, step into their point of view.
- Look out at your environment. What does it look like? What do you notice? What do you see? What do you think? What do you believe? How do you feel?
Maintain this perspective for two minutes. To help integrate what you’ve learned, invest a few minutes reflecting on the experience: What did you learn about the other person? What did you learn about yourself? Did you pick up a new perspective?
Becoming a More Inspiring Leader
Imagine if you practiced this exercise at the start of the day, before an important meeting, or before communicating your vision to a key team member.
Might you discover a superior way of communicating your ideas, of making them more meaningful to the people you’re trying to move?
When you feel like someone understands you, don’t you feel more connected with them? Doesn’t understanding help establish trust? And isn’t trust the foundation for getting people to work well together and move toward shared results?
Follow this procedure at least twice per day until perspective taking becomes effortless.
THE BIG IDEA: Cohesive organizations and customer communities are created by the same mechanism. If you know what’s at the heart of both, you can build a thriving organization that fosters passionate customers.
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Like a hand full of marbles pouring into a bowl, when you put a bunch of people together, there’s chaos.
Egos bump heads like marbles colliding.
But then, a group begins to constellate around the center.
This center can take various forms.
In sports clubs and political groups, the center is a common goal, like winning a championship or an election.
In activist groups, the center is a cause, a slogan, or a set of beliefs.
In religions, the center is a God-image.
In corporate cultures, the center can be an inspiring vision, mission, or set of core values.
In destructive cults, the center is a charismatic leader with narcissistic and messianic qualities.
In Cult Brands, the center is usually an ideal, a set of values, or a theme of interest.
What Draws Groups Together
The group’s center acts as a magnet, attracting members to its core. The more powerful the center, the more cohesive the group.
Here’s the secret to transforming your organization and your customer relationships: the more archetypal the center, the more solid, enduring, and cohesive the group.
Archetypes draw people together. They inspire loyalty and connectedness.
As inherited dispositions in every human being, archetypes cause us to react in typical (instinctive) ways. Archetypes bind us together as members of the human family.
An Illustration of Archetypes in Action
Historically, world religions have kept the largest groups of humans together. The center of these religions (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad) is the archetype of the Anthropos, the cosmic man, a collective soul that unites all people.
Destructive cults, too, constellate around this God image. Its members project this powerful archetype—what Jung called the Self—onto the leader.
The Self, as well as God or Nature, has been described by many ancient philosophers as an “infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” (We can all ponder that on our lunch break today.)
Symbolic images that point to the Self, like the circle, the apple, the star, the tree, and the egg, are found in countless religious narratives, myths, fairy tales, and individual dreams.
The Self, in its masculine expression, often takes the form of the wise old man, the guide, the mentor with supernatural aid. This archetype is expressed by characters like Merlin from the Arthurian legend, Gandalf in the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, and Yoda in the Star Wars franchise.
In its feminine expression, the Self may take the form of an earth mother or love goddess. Southwest Airlines, for example, is aligned with the feminine expression of the Self. Their organization is guided by the principles of relatedness, care, and love—all attributes of the feminine Self.
Putting Archetypes to Work in Your Organization
How do you put archetypes to work?
Start at the center. The center is unique for each organization. Your strengths hint at it. Your organization’s passions point you in the right direction. The forces that drive your customers to do business with you provide invaluable clues.
This center should be expressed in your ultimate vision, your core values, and the language of your corporate culture.
How will you know when you’ve found your center? Your heart will awaken. Your employees will come together as teams. Innovation will increase by virtue of the passions of the men and women guided by archetypal forces deep within them. Your stakeholders will observe it. Your customers will hear the call.
Remember: the more archetypal, the more essential, and the more human your center is, the more cohesive your organization will become. And, the more easily you’ll attract customers who want to join forces with you.
THE BIG IDEA: Cohesive organizations and customer communities are created by the same mechanism. If you know what’s at the heart of both, you can build a thriving organization that fosters passionate customers.
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Like a hand full of marbles pouring into a bowl, when you put a bunch of people together, there’s chaos.
Egos bump heads like marbles colliding.
But then, a group begins to constellate around the center.
This center can take various forms.
In sports clubs and political groups, the center is a common goal, like winning a championship or an election.
In activist groups, the center is a cause, a slogan, or a set of beliefs.
In religions, the center is a God-image.
In corporate cultures, the center can be an inspiring vision, mission, or set of core values.
In destructive cults, the center is a charismatic leader with narcissistic and messianic qualities.
In Cult Brands, the center is usually an ideal, a set of values, or a theme of interest.
What Draws Groups Together
The group’s center acts as a magnet, attracting members to its core. The more powerful the center, the more cohesive the group.
Here’s the secret to transforming your organization and your customer relationships: the more archetypal the center, the more solid, enduring, and cohesive the group.
Archetypes draw people together. They inspire loyalty and connectedness.
As inherited dispositions in every human being, archetypes cause us to react in typical (instinctive) ways. Archetypes bind us together as members of the human family.
An Illustration of Archetypes in Action
Historically, world religions have kept the largest groups of humans together. The center of these religions (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad) is the archetype of the Anthropos, the cosmic man, a collective soul that unites all people.
Destructive cults, too, constellate around this God image. Its members project this powerful archetype—what Jung called the Self—onto the leader.
The Self, as well as God or Nature, has been described by many ancient philosophers as an “infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” (We can all ponder that on our lunch break today.)
Symbolic images that point to the Self, like the circle, the apple, the star, the tree, and the egg, are found in countless religious narratives, myths, fairy tales, and individual dreams.
The Self, in its masculine expression, often takes the form of the wise old man, the guide, the mentor with supernatural aid. This archetype is expressed by characters like Merlin from the Arthurian legend, Gandalf in the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, and Yoda in the Star Wars franchise.
In its feminine expression, the Self may take the form of an earth mother or love goddess. Southwest Airlines, for example, is aligned with the feminine expression of the Self. Their organization is guided by the principles of relatedness, care, and love—all attributes of the feminine Self.
Putting Archetypes to Work in Your Organization
How do you put archetypes to work?
Start at the center. The center is unique for each organization. Your strengths hint at it. Your organization’s passions point you in the right direction. The forces that drive your customers to do business with you provide invaluable clues.
This center should be expressed in your ultimate vision, your core values, and the language of your corporate culture.
How will you know when you’ve found your center? Your heart will awaken. Your employees will come together as teams. Innovation will increase by virtue of the passions of the men and women guided by archetypal forces deep within them. Your stakeholders will observe it. Your customers will hear the call.
Remember: the more archetypal, the more essential, and the more human your center is, the more cohesive your organization will become. And, the more easily you’ll attract customers who want to join forces with you.