Fred Koffman, Author of Conscious Business and The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership highlights how an organisation’s management of incentives impacts employees’ behaviour. Organisations face the dilemma of either rewarding co-operation or accountability. For example, if the organisation rewards based on the performance of individuals which is a local incentives reward system, it encourages working in silos, sub-optimisation and does not encourage co-operation for whole organisation success. iOn the other hand, a global incentives reward system which rewards co-operation towards whole organisation performance has the downside of encouraging free riders which may make them lose their high performers.
He highlights the strengths and weakness of both the global incentives and local incentives systems and advocates that to solve this dilemma, a third way is needed. He suggests that the answer to this economic dilemma is a spiritual one.
Conscious Leaders can break the prevailing mindset of maximising self interest that global and local incentives systems promote by enrolling a higher level of commitment and interest of their people that expands to include the full dimension of what it means to be human. They do this by:
He advocates that instead of focusing on an incentive system of material incentives whose goal is compliance to desired behaviours, that leaders focus on offering their people love and support for their growth and wellbeing in return for their commitment, enthusiasm, energy and support of the organisation’s. goals. Leaders can do this by:
- Setting a Purpose that is Noble
- Following ethical Principles
- Building a Community of People
He posits that what may be standing in the way of leaders doing so is the fear that they need things from the outside to be happy and finding that these does not fill them and so they do this more and more. He advocates that leaders live from the “inside-out” by realising who they are and tapping on the energy coming from the truth of who they are which they want to offer to others instead of an “outside-in” grabbing what they can from the outside to fill themselves. Using Koffman’s terms, this is the way of Transcendent Leadership leading Conscious Businesses.
This is an enlightening “third way” of leadership that recognises that business organisations are first of all human enterprises and needs to be run as such to engage the best of their people towards worthy purposes and in a way that is honouring of the best of what it means to be human. This requires inner work which needs to start with the leaders.
#Transcendent Leadership #Incentives Management #Conscious Businesses #Human enterprises #Leading from the “inside-out”