Each guest on my radio show is asked what are they reading, for fun or work or both. I ask them that because they are readers. One habit consistent across leaders of all ages, industries, skills, markets...is they are avid learners. And that means they are avid readers. They are able to lead because they are able to read and learn from others.
If you want to be a leader, follow in the footsteps of leaders. Read what leaders read.
Derek Irvine is such a leader. He is co-author with Eric Mosely, of WINNING WITH A CULTURE OF RECOGNITION: Recognition Strategies at the World's Most Admired Companies and head of client strategy and consulting for Globoforce is our joined the show recently.
He recently joined the show. You can listen here.
I asked him:
Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that. I just quote him. You’re a leader. What are you reading these days, for work or not.
I’m re-reading a book I read 6 months ago. Many of your listeners will know it. It’s Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. The reason I’m re-reading is I put Dan’s book in a slide presentation for a client. I wanted to make sure I got all the details.
I put it up there with a number of other scholarly academics from over the years. Names like Maslow or Frederick Hirshberg. I put Dan up there with these two legendary figures because I think he’s doing a great job bursting some myths himself around the whole topic of what really motivates us.
In that book and we shared a speaking platform with him, he talks about sharing a great culture and managing that culture to support those things that truly motivate us.
Dan is creating a few ways to describe our industry, the incentive industry. He talks a lot about incentives as such, old-school incentives, just aren’t working in today’s workplace. Where we’re so much more dependent on knowledge workers and people need to act in an autonomous way.
Incentives came out of the industrial era when they were putting widgets together. Some people don’t like it. They have vested interests in the old-school sales incentive model. But we’re in total alignment, supporting good winning cultures, cultures designed to get a good working place where you’re inspired to give your best every day.
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You can read the full transcript of my conversation with Derek Irvine here.
You can see the recent webinar, organized by Derek and his fine crew at Globoforce, titled 10 Myths of Employee Recognition. Besides Derek, David Zinger, founder of the 3500 member Employee Engagement community, and I participated.
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