Note: Originally posted to my engineering-managers channel at dbt Labs on November 17, 2024.

Hey team — I love to read books, but lately I’ve found that a better use of my time is to either find summaries or ask an LLM to make one for me. For various reasons, books are architected to be long and make the same point at length rather than to be as concise as possible. And I just don’t have time for that, and I bet most of you don’t either.

As many of you know, I respect Patrick Lencioni for his groundbreaking and funny Five Dysfunctions of a Team — a fable about teams, leaders, trust, and how they can change to achieve remarkable (you knew I was going to say it at least once…) outcomes.

Recently, I found and read a summary of another Lencioni book, The Motive: Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities. Like other Lencioni books, it’s written in the form of a fable, and then the fable is summarized (seriously meta, eh?).

While the fable is about two CEOs, that’s not my point, and this note isn’t even vaguely about Tristan. Tristan is his own wonderful unicorn of beliefs and behaviors. When I read the summary, I read it as being about me — and all of you.

While reading it, I started to wonder about my own motives as a leader. So I took some time and considered. Thankfully, when I was done, I felt confident that, in my heart, I’m not a rewards-based leader and was instead a value/team-based leader. However, as I read the summary again, I realized that I still exhibit many of the characteristics of a rewards-based leader. (Sigh — we’re all on journeys, darnit.) While I believe that I am a leader who wants to serve others and the company, to do whatever is necessary to bring about good outcomes for both our company and the people in it, I have some behaviors to unlearn and some to learn.

Everybody reading this is a leader. I’d love to invite all of you to find the six-page summary of The Motive and reflect on the leader you are and the leader you want to be.

I have said for decades that senior leaders never change their behavior because they are TOLD to (unless it’s to avoid being fired) — but instead only change their behavior because they WANT to, because they change what they value. Your values, whether you like it or not, are what guide you through your hours, days, months, and years. As you read the summary, consider what it is that you want, what you want to want, and what your teams would say about what you appear to want.

Extra credit

Reread the six pages and replace every occurrence of leadership with yourself, with who you are in your personal life. Replace every occurrence of team with whoever your personal stakeholders are — your partner, children, friends, whoever. It can be sobering — and was, for me. I’ll be making some changes with how I interact with a couple of my kids as a result of reading it this way.

I hope you’ll find this a useful spend of your time. Let me know either way.

— Mark