THE SUCCESS CONDITION
Every human being wants to be successful. In fact, they are driven to be successful. And whether they know it or not, most people are already successful, at least to some degree. It's all about their "Success Condition".
The world tends to define a "one size fits all" description of success: lots of money, position, fame, or physical achievement. Successful people are considered to be visibly motivated, dynamic, creative, intelligent, clever, and fearless. Under those terms, however, very few of us would ever achieve success and most of us would think we're failures. The world at large would then be made up of a few "successful" people and the rest be "success wannabes" and unmotivated or untalented failures. Can this be the only definition of success or just the mass media version we've all bought into?
It turns out that each one of us has our own, individual "Success Condition" that motivates what we do and how we do it. For one it could certainly be achieving position, recognition, power, or money. For another, however, success may be equally found in building relationships, family, or friendships or helping others. A third may find his or her success in personal creative outlets, trying new things, or taking personal pride in his/her work; and a fourth might define success as safely maintaining the status quo. Whether it came by nature or nurture (genetics or upbringing) doesn't matter; the Success Condition is part of who an individual is and, whether they recognize it or not, it's where they find fulfillment and accomplishment.
Our Success Condition also determines how we view our jobs and traditional measures of performance. One salesperson, for example, may find success in exceeding sales goals and maximum earnings, another may feel successful when he/she has created strong, stable customer relationships. A customer service person may find personal success in holding a secure, well defined job that rarely changes, but another may be motivated by receiving customer or supervisor kudos. Consciously or not, their job performance will always be highest when there is a direct connection to building their personal Success Condition.
Not surprisingly, most of us view success thru either the world's "one-size" definition or thru our own Success Condition. We evaluate the success or failure of others more by our view than theirs. For example, a manager may feel an employee is unmotivated because the employee is not motivated by the things the manager believes are important - imagine the frustration of a sales manager who offers a financial performance incentive to a sales rep but finds this fails to significantly motivate the rep to sell more. Clearly that salesperson must be "unmotivated".
As managers or leaders we are faced with the challenge of achieving goals or objectives by motivating the support and efforts of our team members. The bottom line is that we only achieve this when we understand the "success condition" of each person and when we can connect our objective to the achievement of theirs.
-- tim mcmahon
