When someone joins a group, a team, or takes a new job, they are seeking some experience or benefit that the group offers. In other words, they see the group as a resource to a particular experience or set of experiences. The choices they made to get into that position and the choice to join the group all have a basis in that which the person is seeking. The person has a vivid, passionate idea in their head which they believe they can turn into reality. They view the group as a resource for their efforts to make it all happen.

Too often, however, once a person joins a group they become submissive to the group's hierarchy. In order to maintain a position in the group, they must listen to and follow the authority. In the process, they get caught up in rules, regulations, and standards. Their mission changes. Rather than seeking experience, they start seeking membership. Consequently, the vision they once worked for is deferred, sometimes forgotten. They are trapped in doing whatever it takes to remain as a part of the group. Unfortunately, the person's actions in the present become more about pleasing and worrying about authority, and less about pursuing a dream.

The authoritarian mentality can be devastating to an individual with a dream or with untapped potential. As missions begin to change, group members become separated from the idea(s) that gave them energy in the first place. This results in advisors, managers, or coaches having to watch over people more, and to provide motivation for doing things that often seem to have no purpose to students, employees, or players. Leaders complain about group members not taking responsibility. Group members complain about entitlements.

Solution: Unlocking Peak Performance

Preventing or removing the authoritarian mentality requires a return to individual dreams. Remember that someone's purpose for joining a group revolves around the experience and benefits associated with that group and how the group fits into the person's vision of turning some idea into reality. It is imperative to understand this motivation. An athlete, student, or employee must be assisted in re-framing their mission—getting away from seeking membership and back to seeking experience.

Essentially, motivation for working exceptionally hard depends on a clear and consistent path toward some dream. But what happens with the authoritarian mentality? The path becomes disconnected. Group members fall into the trap of thinking that making it to the next level is a result of impressing the leaders. And impressing leaders is a result of putting up good statistics, following the rules, working extra hours, and kissing select behinds. Unfortunately, the later are not the energizing experiences that draw individuals toward participating in elite groups and what results, in most cases, is a reduction of responsibility and effort.

This is why the original mission is so important. If we get a handle on the truly energizing experiences that young adults are seeking, we can restructure their approach so that they are following a path which breads energy and life rather than a path generating frustration and, ultimately, low productivity. The result will be a team-wide focus where it needs to be for developing talent—on exceptional experience not on grades, wins, money, sales, etc.

On an action level, the requirements are:

1. Establish a qualitative understanding of each individuals' expectations in joining the group. Discuss their dreams, ideas, and visions. Ask them about the choices made along the way to get where they are today. Ask them about the most energizing experiences they are seeking from high level performance.

2. Reverse individuals' perception of coaches, managers, and administrative staff so that they are viewed as resources rather than authorities. This requires that group members identify unnecessary obstacles to their experience and for leaders to commit to removing those obstacles. The result will be a team-wide focus on exceptional experience instead of arbitrary measures of success such as moving up levels.

3. In conjunction with #2, group members need to be taught how to evaluate their own performance. Self-evaluation needs to be based on the factors in their control associated with reaching sought after experience(s). Coaches, advisors, and managers need to facilitate this method of evaluation through feedback as well as frequent reminders and discussion of peoples' missions.

Summary

Individuals lose motivation or lack to perform up to potential often as a result of their mission changing. Instead of passionately pursuing experience(s) associated with high level performance, they merely try to stay in the group (or, advance in the group with unrealistic hopes that a higher position will finally allow them to chase the experience again). It is necessary to remove this thinking trap, illustrated by the following sequence:

1. Making it to the next level = Impressing leaders


2. Impressing leaders = Hours, #'s, following rules, etc.


3. Hours, #'s, following rules, etc. ≠ Energizing experience

Managers, advisors, and coaches tend to key into the top step of this sequence. The assumption is that, since this is the pinnacle of an individual's current thinking, this must be the motivational engine. It rarely is. Continual attempts to reinforce this motivation usually results in stagnant performance.

JOHN F. ELIOT, PH.D., is an award winning professor of management, psychology, and human performance. He holds faculty appointments at Rice University and the SMU Cox School of Business Leadership Center. He is a co-founder of the Milestone Group, a consulting firm providing training to business executives, professional athletes, physicians, and corporations. Dr. Eliot’s clients have included: SAP, XEROX, Disney, Adidas, the United States Olympic Committee, the National Champion Rice Owl's baseball team, and the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Eliot’s cutting edge work has been featured on ABC, MSNBC, CBS, ESPN, Fox Sports, NPR, and highlighted in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Entrepreneur, LA Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Times. Dr. Eliot serves on numerous advisory boards including the National Center for Human Performance and the Center for Performing Arts Medicine. His latest book is Overachievement: The New Model for Exceptional Performance. For more information, visit Dr. Eliot’s site at http://www.overachievement.com

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