The Motive by Patrick M. Lencioni

Author:Patrick M. Lencioni
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119600466
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-12-31T15:00:00+00:00

Skype

When Shay returned, he saw Liam doing a video call on his laptop with a woman. Catching Liam’s eye, he motioned for permission to enter the room.

Liam waved him in.

“Here he is now, Amy.” Liam said to a woman on the computer screen.

Then, turning to Shay, he introduced them. “Shay, this is Amy Stirling, who you spoke with briefly last week. She is one of the principals over at Lighthouse, and the lead consultant who worked with us over the past three years.”

Shay sat down in front of the computer and greeted the consultant confidently. “Hi, Amy. It’s nice to meet you. I certainly appreciate Liam sharing what you did for him.”

“Do you?” Amy asked, without any sense of sarcasm or judgment.

“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s always good to learn new things.” Shay responded politely.

“I’ve only got about ten minutes here before I have to go back in with my client. So I’ll be direct, if that’s okay.”

“Please.”

“Well, Liam seems to think that you’re not all that interested in learning new things. Perhaps he hasn’t done a good job of portraying what we did with him at Del Mar. Does that sound right?”

Shay didn’t answer the question directly. “Amy, I’ll be direct too. I just don’t see how all this stuff about meetings and managing people and having uncomfortable conversations can possibly make the difference between success and failure. It’s not that I don’t see any value in it. But not every CEO goes about his or her job that way.”

Amy took it in. “Okay, you’re not the first CEO who said that. In fact, you sound a lot like Liam did a few years ago.”

Liam nodded at Shay as if to say I told you so.

She went on. “Let me make this as clear as possible. If you’re having bad meetings, you’re making bad decisions. There is no getting around that. And you’re almost certainly not talking about all the right things.”

Shay seemed like he was about to respond, but Amy went on.

“And if your meetings are bad, then there is a very, very good chance that your executives are having bad meetings with their teams. And it cascades from there. And the person who is responsible for making your meetings effective is you—no one else. You can’t delegate that job. It’s yours and yours alone.”

“I know. I know.” Shay said defensively. “That’s what Liam’s been telling me. And he said I’m not managing my people and not having difficult conversations. I get it. I just don’t buy it. That’s not who I am. It’s not what I’m good at.”

“Did Liam get to the last thing you can’t delegate?”

“I don’t know. Is there more?”

“Yeah. You also have to be the primary communication tool.”

“Well, I’m pretty involved in marketing and—”

Even over Skype, Amy was able to interrupt Shay. “No, I mean internal communication. With employees.”

“Yeah, I do that. We have a big kickoff with all the VPs at the beginning of the year. And I do a video thing we call the “State of the Union” right after that.

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