Driven Not Drained

By Chris Coultas

Proven tools to ignite your motivation for career success, and to make you a better leader.Many of us start out feeling good about our career choices—but over time, our energy flags. We all want success. We want to achieve. What is it, then, that keeps us from engaging wholeheartedly? What can we do to optimize our happiness, effectiveness, and influence in our careers?From the makers of the revolutionary self-insight tool DRiV comes a path to greater career fulfillment, based on the twenty-eight qualities that motivate behavior. By better understanding what drives and drains you, you can chart a path for more fulfilment and joy. But beyond yourself, understanding what drives and drains your colleagues gives you the tools to build and lead high-performing teams.Based on extensive, in-depth research, Driven Not Drained offers powerful tools for enhancing your self-awareness and capacity to work with and lead others. For ambitious people who want not only to stay engaged but also to thrive, this book is an invaluable development tool to help you reignite your motivation, purpose, and leadership. Learn about what drives (and drains) you at work, along with incisive development tips for each drive to create more job satisfaction and improve your performance. Along the way, you’ll also discover critical tips for working with others and leading them through the lens of their own drivers and drainers.The DRiV tool has been used to offer high-impact coaching and business consulting services across all industries and all levels, from preparing early-career individuals for new managerial assignments to team building at the C-suite level. Everyone deserves a career they are driven by, including you. Let’s get started, so that you can feel energized again about the days ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Coultas
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781774580080

Chris Coultas

Christopher Coultas serves as vice president of product innovation, and senior consultant, at Leadership Worth Following (LWF). Since joining LWF in 2014, Chris has not onlyassessed and coached hundreds of leaders, but also spearheaded a number of company-wide research and development initiatives, including the development of the DRiV. Chris’s research and work with leaders focuses on the impact that drivers can haveon a variety of workplace outcomes, including engagement, resilience, burnout, culture fit, teamwork, leadership influence, and overall job performance. Chris graduated from the University of Central Florida (UCF) with master’s and PhD degrees in industrial and organizational psychology. He has authored several peer reviewed publications and presented at many nationally recognized conferences on issues pertaining to coaching, leadership, and team performance. He also holds undergraduate degrees in religion andcounseling psychology. Chris is currently affiliated with the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology, the Society of Consulting Psychology, and Quantitative and Qualitative Methods, all divisions of the American Psychological Association. He serves as the research domain head for the Society of Consulting Psychology.

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Driven Not Drained. Discover Your Path to Career Happiness, Effectiveness, and Influence. Christopher Coultas PhD and Leadership Worth Following. Page Two

Praise for DRiV and Driven Not Drained

"Using the DRiV process with your team is like handing out an owner’s manual for each of your colleagues. You’ll know how to tap into natural motivations and steer clear of the tasks that wear people down. Most importantly, you’ll create the empathy required to build a high-performing team. If you’re building a team, add DRiV and Driven Not Drained to your toolkit."

Liane Davey author of The Good Fight

"I am always on the lookout for new, innovative self-insight tools for use in my leadership development work, and have used Leadership Worth Following’s DRiV self-assessment tool with my EMBA executive leadership class with great success. Paired with the DRiV assessment, Driven Not Drained provides a valuable guide to engaging more deeply in personal development. Grounded in science, Driven Not Drained provides real insight into the motives, values, and personality characteristics that drive our leadership practices. No doubt this will prove an invaluable resource for developing and established leaders alike."

Tommy Daniel business professor at SMU

A rare gem in the self- and team-insight market—a science-based diagnostic tool that will help individuals and teams develop, mature, and prosper. Well done.

Eduardo Salas professor, Allyn R. & Gladys M. Cline chair, Department of Psychological Sciences chair, Rice University

DRiV brings us a modern self-awareness tool with incredibly useful information: what motivates us. For those who struggle with occupational burnout, DRiV can help you find the energizing parts of your work that buffer against the emotional exhaustion of burnout.

Candice Schaefer PhD, ABPP, clinical occupational health psychologist; former program manager at Facebook

This smart, science-based, and straightforward methodology by Dr. Coultas and Leadership Worth Following will change the way you approach work. If you are ready to transform from a self-draining job position to a role of leadership and fulfillment, this book reveals the keys you already own that will drive your career in the right direction.

Kelli Carlson SVP Workplace Experience, Wells Fargo

"Powerful. Insightful. Valuable. The DRiV assessment starts where competency and emotional intelligence assessments end. Increasing one’s self-awareness about what drives you can result in greater success and personal happiness. This book provides not only hundreds of insights and techniques for individual leaders to step up their game, but also ideas on how to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and happiness among leadership teams. Driven Not Drained should be one of your must-reads in 2021!"

Randy Manner Retired Major General, US Army; former senior partner, Korn Ferry

"Driven Not Drained gives a fresh perspective on the importance of motivation for long-term job satisfaction, providing insights that can clarify career decisions for anyone who might feel stuck or just wants to assess themselves for their next career challenge. The book presents a survey-based discussion, and perhaps a meditation, on aligning your work life with your most important motivations to achieve your best performance and highest satisfaction. Aspiring managers and leaders will find an easy-to-follow structure for intentional job succession and career choices resulting in long-term learning and growth."

Randall P. White partner, Executive Development Group, LLC; professor of leadership, HEC Paris; and author of numerous books on leadership development

Driven Not Drained. Discover Your Path to Career Happiness, Effectiveness, and Influence. Christopher Coultas PhD and Leadership Worth Following. Page TwoDriven Not Drained. Discover Your Path to Career Happiness, Effectiveness, and Influence. Christopher Coultas PhD and Leadership Worth Following. Page Two

Copyright © 2021 by Leadership Worth Following

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Cataloguing in publication information is available from Library and Archives Canada.

ISBN 978-1-77458-007-3 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-77458-008-0 (ebook)

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

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Edited by Kendra Ward

Copyedited by Tilman Lewis

Proofread by Steph VanderMeulen

Jacket and interior design by Setareh Ashrafologhalai

Ebook by Bright Wing Media

Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Distributed in the US and internationally by Publishers Group West, a division of Ingram

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DrivenNotDrained.com

To the amazing leaders we work with—thank you for allowing us the privilege of joining you in Changing Leadership—Changing the World!

To our amazing LWF team and the families who support them—thank you, everyone, for your contributions in making this a premier work.

Chris and Leadership Worth Following

To my amazing wife, Catalina—for your love, support, insight, and laughter through the long hours of an undertaking such as this.

Chris

Contents

Chasing Your Smile, by A. Dale Thompson,

PhD, Leadership Worth Following

Why Drive Matters

Getting the Most out of Your DRiV

FACTOR 1IMPACT

Charisma

Commercial Focus

Courage

Caution

Deliberation

FACTOR 2INSIGHT

Creativity

Growth

Wisdom

Compliance

FACTOR 3CONNECTION

Collaboration

Inclusion

Rapport

Autonomy

FACTOR 4HARMONY

Honesty

Forgiveness

Service

Authority

Competition

Personal Wealth

Status

FACTOR 5PRODUCTIVITY

Alignment

Excellence

Persistence

Enjoyment

FACTOR 6MEANING

Authenticity

Legacy

Purpose

Recognition

Your Drive from Here

Selected References

Landmarks

Cover

Body Matter

Dedication

Copyright Page

Title Page

Half Title Page

Conclusion

Index

Table of Contents

Chasing

Your Smile

We all get a few critical moments in our lives—moments that are so important, so impactful, that we remember every detail surrounding them. I have had my share. Moments that led to big decisions that significantly changed the course of my career. One such moment happened for me on the morning of January 5, 2004.

It began with a phone call.

I had gone through some rough times professionally over the previous few years and had been on sabbatical from leadership and the field of consulting psychology. I was wrestling with big questions that mattered for me personally, like What will I do with the rest of my life? But bigger questions too—What makes leadership worth following? I might still be mulling these over if I hadn’t set a date by which I would decide my next step, and if I hadn’t asked an accountability partner to hold me to it. When the phone rang that morning, I knew the date had come, but I didn’t have an answer. At least I thought I didn’t.

So, what’s next for you?

I don’t know, I said.

My partner insisted, You promised to decide by this morning. What is it going to be?

I took a deep breath and said, I guess I will start a consulting firm.

A pause. And what will you call it?

I smiled and said, Leadership Worth Following!

In the years that followed, I and others who rallied around the idea that leadership should be worth following would build a thriving consulting firm dedicated to changing the world by changing the way leadership works. We wanted to challenge the notion of what it meant to be an effective leader and executive. We believed it was important not simply to have the capacity to lead and be sufficiently committed, but also to demonstrate the character to lead. We wanted to help organizations and their leaders identify and develop leadership that is worth following. I was seeing the vision come to life, and I couldn’t help but smile again.

During my more than three decades of coaching, getting inside the minds of thousands of leaders, I have come to realize a fundamental truth about leaders: they have mostly good intentions.

Perhaps this truth surprises you, but it shouldn’t. After all, it’s a well-known fact that we are judged not by our intentions but by the impact of our actions. For example, leaders who are driven by quality but struggle with letting go are still labeled micromanagers, even though their intent is positive. For many of the leaders who we assume have bad intentions, that is simply not the case. Their intentions are good, but they act them out in ways that have unintended negative effects.

I have also found that getting really clear on intentions—understanding what drives you to do the things you do, to lead the way you lead—is essential in unlocking leadership potential. And it works, from the first-time manager to the seasoned CEO. If you know why you do what you do, you can make more thoughtful choices about what is best to do, and how to have the best impact on those you are leading and influencing.

The problem is: How do you arrive at this knowledge? People are a complex blend of conflicting emotions, beliefs, attitudes, goals, habits, and more. Even when you’re working with a skilled coach, it’s challenging to sort out and pinpoint what is most important.

So, we here at Leadership Worth Following endeavored to develop a way to do just that—take the complex jumble of every-thing that drives human behavior and distill it down into something accessible, insightful, and scientifically validated. We wanted a method for shedding light not only on what drives behavior but also on how those drivers affect our happiness, effectiveness, and influence at work.

It was this need—to help leaders understand and better leverage what drives them—that spawned the DRiV. I’ll spare you the intricate details of how an assessment like this is developed and validated, but suffice it to say that careful research, development, and testing were involved. And in both science and practice, the DRiV has exceeded my wildest expectations. Our Science Advisory Board, composed of luminaries in the field of psychology, leadership, and psychometrics—people who have had a hand in developing some of the top tools in our field—has repeatedly underscored the rigor, value, and importance of drivers and the DRiV tool. (And if you want to see more of the science behind the tool, there is an extensive technical manual laying out everything that went into its development and validation, which you can access at DrivenNotDrained.com.)

Fast-forward to just a few years ago. Leadership Worth Following was continuing to grow, and I had a great leadership team working with me, yet it felt like something was missing. My smile was fading. My energy was draining. The old adage physician, heal thyself came to mind.

So, everyone at Leadership Worth Following took the DRiV test, and I was blown away.

The results of my DRiV, and those of my team, offered an explanation for the disconnect I felt. It turns out I had hired and built a leadership team that was highly competent and a great complement to me in many ways. We were all driven by the mission of Leadership Worth Following, achieving our business goals, and pouring ourselves into our clients’ development. But my team members had a significantly lower drive to connect on a personal level than I did. This meant fewer personal interactions and more focused, efficient meetings. I had overlooked one critical part of what drives me, what makes me smile: I need connection with my team.

There was no ill intent, but we were misaligned. I wasn’t getting what I needed from my team, and so I felt like something was missing. Interestingly, I hadn’t been able to diagnose the problem until I saw it spelled out in front of me. Through looking at and reflecting on the DRiV results, I could better express what I needed and find a new way of working together—one that was good for them, and for me.

That is the power of the DRiV.

Life is too short not to go after what makes you smile, but that’s easier said than done. Life is complex, and what drives us can be just as complex.

We wrote this book to help you answer the questions, What drives you? What drains you? And most importantly, What do you do now?

As you read this book, explore your drivers. I hope you find ways to thoughtfully pursue situations and circumstances that give you energy and a sense of fulfillment. I hope you won’t simply let your career and life happen to you. I hope you will be able to stay in a space that makes you happy and smile—and that makes others happy and smile too.

And if you have one of those moments where you feel trapped, stuck, and drained, I hope that the insights you get from exploring your drivers—initially in this book and later through the full DRiV tool—give you the hope and courage to chase your smile!

A. Dale Thompson, PhD

Founder & CEO

Leadership Worth Following, LLC

Why Drive

Matters

Drew shut the door behind him and eased into his office chair. In his small, windowless office, all the lights were off, save a corner lamp. The soft glow of the computer screen illuminated Drew’s face as he savored the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. He could hear his colleagues milling about outside his office, exchanging pleasantries, talking about the weather. He put on his headphones, turned on some music, leaned back, and double-clicked the email icon. Forty-three months of hard work had led to this very moment.

More than three and a half years of brainstorming, researching, running chemical trials, analyzing data, writing about data. Some might call it hell, but for Drew, the job had been heaven. He had always been curious—even as a child—and here he was, getting paid to come up with interesting questions and then discover the answers to them. He had always been a bit introverted, and here he could work, holed up in his office, human interaction being the exception, not the rule. Those forty-three months represented an enormous amount of work, to be sure, but they had flown by. He had given his heart and soul to this project, and at long last he was about to see the fruits of his labor—the results of his research published in the top journal in his field.

The email opened, but he didn’t read the whole message. He didn’t need to. Glossing quickly over the opening words of perfunctory praise, Drew locked in on the crux of the message—but. Everything hung on that one word. The reviewers found much to like about the work, apparently, but Drew would essentially have to go back to the drawing board before it could be published. He needed to collect more data, run more analyses. Given the pace of his work, he was looking at another two, three years, minimum.

Drew was understandably disappointed, but with this came a surprising moment of clarity. Do I even want to do this for the rest of my life?

He spent the next few days assessing everything about his work, from the minutiae of his present-day reality to all the places this job might take him in the future. After all, there was much to love about the job, Drew thought to himself. Creativity. Independence. Security. He was energized and driven by almost all aspects of it.

Almost.

The more he mulled it over, the harder it was to shake a feeling of disillusionment. Do I really want to slog through all this bureaucracy? Will my work make a difference? Will it matter five or ten years from now? Is there a faster way to have a bigger impact? And as he wrestled with these questions, the energy he had previously felt coming to work every day started to fade. He started to feel drained simply thinking about going to work. Eventually, these questions faded and blurred together, until Drew was left with just one looming question. Why am I so unhappy?

...

What do you think about Drew so far? Be honest. Are you rolling your eyes? Does he seem a little impatient, maybe even entitled? He had a great job that he was good at. What else can you hope for? After all, there’s no such thing as a perfect job. Why couldn’t he get over himself and find a way to be happy and effective in spite of the bureaucracy? If this is your reaction, you have run into a truth central to the rest of this book: We create our own happiness and success at work, and we’re often not very good at doing that.

Yes, our actions and attitudes, even how we define happiness and success, are in many ways personal choices that profoundly affect whether we enjoy and succeed at work. But perhaps you feel a bit offended that some would place the blame on Drew. After all, he is creative, passionate, dedicated, ambitious. He’s trying his best. He hasn’t done anything wrong, and yet his work went wrong and he’s questioning his path. You may even have experienced this firsthand yourself, feeling out of place at a job you once loved. It can happen for a million different reasons—some within your control, some outside of it. But whatever the reason, it illustrates another critical truth: Even small problems at otherwise good jobs can gradually drain the life out of you.

Of course, you might be looking at Drew’s situation and thinking to yourself, I’d enjoy a slower-paced job like that. Maybe then I could breathe for a minute. And I have no problem dealing with bureaucracy! Indeed, the old axiom is as true in the career context as it is anywhere else. One person’s (career) trash is another’s (career) treasure. You might very well be happy, effective, and influential in the same situation in which Drew felt the life draining out of him.

That’s the point of this book, and of understanding your drivers. We believe that everyone deserves to have a career they enjoy, where they can be their authentic selves and from which they come home after work feeling reenergized about the days ahead. We also believe that when people are fully engaged in their work—when they are driven—they are more effective and influential at whatever they put their minds to.

Finding your path to happiness, effectiveness, and influence at work is easier said than done, though. So, let’s begin with a simple premise.

You don’t know the future... at all. Hopefully, that statement isn’t shocking. Life is full of surprises—good and bad, big and small—that prove every day that we have very little control over the future.

But what about happiness? Do you know what will make you happy three, six, or twelve months from now?

Science would say the answer to that question is no, because people are notoriously bad at something called affective forecasting. This is the universal error in thinking that causes people to be overconfident about their ability to predict how they and others will feel in the future. At its core, failures of affective forecasting happen because:

Emotions are inherently not rational and therefore not subject to logical rules.

We tend to see things through the lens of our current experiences.

We cannot account for all the factors that might affect our happiness at a particular moment in the future.

To illustrate this point, let’s reconsider Drew for a moment. He knew he was a creative and independent person, so he pursued a career where he could play to those strengths. He assumed that a job that would allow him to express creativity and independence would feel good and therefore make him happy. Unfortunately, he failed to account for his need to do something that really mattered, and his desire to do so quickly. The fact that his expectations may have been unrealistic is irrelevant. The point is that when he was deciding his career direction, Drew could not account for all the variables that might affect his future happiness, for better or worse. As a result, he landed in a role where he could be effective, but over time he became less and less happy.

We can’t predict the future. We can’t even predict our own emotions. Ultimately, this biases us toward assuming, deciding, and acting in ways that feel reasonable to us in the moment, even if they won’t set us up for long-term happiness and success.

One of the goals of this book, then, is to give you greater clarity into what will drive or drain your own happiness, energy, and resilience at work—and life!

But if you can’t predict how you will feel, what you are going to do, or what will happen in the future, how do you make good decisions? How do you craft a life where you are happy, effective, and influential? That takes us to the next premise.

You have reasons for everything you do. Despite what your friends, parents, or significant others may have told you, you do have reasons for your actions. That’s not to say you are completely, mechanistically rational (that would make you a computer, after all), but your behaviors are not random. Just as every effect is preceded by a cause, there is always a reason (cause) behind your thoughts, decisions, and actions (effect).

Ultimately, you do things because you want to, think you should, and/or habitually do them anyway. These reasons may not always be evident to you in the moment, but they are there. You greet someone in the hallway because you enjoy spending time with that person, or because it’s the polite thing to do, or because it’s a habit. On your commute home, you beat yourself up over a bad decision because you think doing so will help you avoid future mistakes, or because it’s how you assuage your guilt, or again, because it’s habitual. These three forces—want, should, and habitually do—make up your drivers. And when they all point in the same direction, you are driven to think and act in that way.

In an ideal situation, your drivers cause you to engage in behaviors without putting much thought into it, and things turn out fine. These behaviors come naturally to you, and importantly, they are self-reinforcing. In other words, you receive some kind of psychological benefit simply by engaging in a particular behavior. You find that it is enjoyable, relatively intuitive, and delivers desired results. Doing things aligned with your drivers feels good. It isn’t work, it’s drive. Ultimately, drivers are those things that make you feel driven.

And just as you innately seek out what gives you that feeling of drive, you avoid what seems likely to take it away—the behaviors and patterns of thinking that don’t feel right to you, that seem needlessly difficult, and that you don’t like, because being in those situations drains your energy. Again, in an ideal situation, what drains you is not a problem. No one faults a painter for an aversion to financial details, just as no one faults the tax auditor for a lack of artistic creativity. However, not every situation is ideal. Occasionally, you will encounter circumstances where you are forced to deal with demands that drain you. These require extra effort, willpower, and attention because they are misaligned with your drivers. You can deal with them, but after the fact, it feels like you have been drained of all your energy and willpower. The more you are forced to go against the grain of your natural drivers, the less willpower you will have to keep up the charade. If you’ve ever bitten your tongue for what seemed like forever in an argument only to either pop off or simply give up and walk away, you’ve experienced drain firsthand.

This is the reason behind why we do