Drive and Initiative

Daniel Pink has written a book titled Drive.  It is about a powerful motivation that comes from intrinsic energy that lies within a person.  In the book he makes a compelling case for how this drive has been show to disappear when in the presence of extrinsic motivation.  To offer incentives for a behavior, actually will give you less of the behavior than had you not offered the incentive.

This week I was in a pilot project, called transformational leading.  With in this course, we want to help people experience leadership that transforms.  One of our assignments will be to coach someone and in this assignment, we got to see coaching modeled for us where the coach was asking questions, but not ever giving advice.  This was so that the course of action would be those formulated by the person being coached, he would own them, because they came from him and since he was the initiator of the action, he would also be the owner of the action.  The coach talked about the battle for initiative and how important it was to not take the initiative from the person you are trying to help.  To take their initiative would be like steeling power from them that they needed for the battle.  Its very similar to if you have ever been nagged about something, how the nagging actually made you want to do the action even less than you did before the nagging.

Advice does this.  It takes the initiative away from the person.  So I am seeing the intersection of several large concepts and these always intrigue me.

The law    vs.    freedom
Incentive   vs.    intrinsic motivation
Advice      vs.    initiative

So to me, the law, incentive and advice all seem to be similar agents in human behavior.  Freedom, intrinsic motivation and personal initiative all seem to be similar energies that come from within the divine part of a created being.