“The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary.”

Vidal Sassoon, hairdressing magnate

You have goals in life. You want to make more of yourself, achieve more and get ahead. You wouldn’t have picked up this book otherwise. But exactly how hungry are you to succeed? What are you willing to do to achieve your goals? How many personal sacrifices are you prepared to make?

I work with a law firm, helping the senior partners to coach and develop young lawyers with the potential to be the partners of the future. Several years ago, the law firm chose a group of around 20 high-flyers to receive special coaching from me. Among even this super-talented and ambitious group, one of them stood out. When the firm’s official coaching programme ended, Adam decided to carry on. He wanted extra coaching, paying for it out of his own pocket.

Whenever he was up for promotion, he asked for help in preparing for the interview panel. We worked on his leadership skills, his presence, demeanour with clients, everything – because he yearned to be word perfect and a superb leader.

He worked hard. Oh, so hard. On top of whatever was required of him, he took on countless additional projects to get noticed by the senior partners. He ran graduate recruitment fairs, organised client parties, arranged management away-days, spoke at business forums, trained junior lawyers. That meant he usually worked 80 or 90 hours a week. Just so you know, a 90-hour week means working 8 a.m. till midnight, six days a week.

And he has made it. In his mid-thirties, he’s not only one of the youngest partners but also the chief operating officer – second-in-command to the managing partner at one of the country’s fastest-growing law firms. Earning somewhere in the mid-six figures a year, his experience and profile ensure that he can take his pick of law jobs probably anywhere in the world.

Contrast High-Drive Adam with William. A long-standing friend, William is a talented graphic designer. He has been told on more than one occasion that he should apply for an internal promotion, but he doesn’t want to manage other people. He’s been offered jobs elsewhere, but he hates interviews and doesn’t like taking risks. That frustrates me and a lot of his friends. We believe in him and know he could achieve more, but he’s not bothered. Yes, he’d like to earn more, but he’s mostly content with his lot. Ultimately, he’s happy to be a part of the team rather than the boss of one.

Drive is the personality dimension that taps into your desire to succeed. It’s the extent to which you need to compete, win, achieve, take charge, claw your way up the career ladder and get ahead. So how about you? Whether you’re a go-getting Adam or a happy-go-lucky William – or somewhere in between – let’s explore how you can get more out of your life.

What kind of person are you?

All of us are driven to a certain extent. Some are highly driven and others a little less so. Whatever your level of Drive, you face both challenges and opportunities. Let’s explore how you can get more out of life and find your own brand of fulfilment.

The Low-Drive person: at ease with your life and career

You’re someone who understands the need for a balance between work and life. To you, having a good life is about more than status, job titles and climbing the greasy pole of career success. You’re more interested in enjoying your time on this planet, in being laid-back and having fun. Or at least in making work as little of an inconvenience to the rest of your life as possible.

You don’t need to be number one to feel good about yourself. Winning and coming out on top simply aren’t that important. Others may need to be in charge, to put themselves forward and seek the limelight. They may chase the challenging projects and tough assignments, all the while hoping for the boss’s job. You probably know people like that, who are willing to claw and fight, back-stab and do whatever it takes to get ahead. In meetings they talk purely for the sake of talking, to get noticed and score points. But that’s not you.

You prefer to sit back and watch everyone else compete for attention, avoiding the office politics and dramas. You’re happy to be a part of the team, to follow rather than lead and be content that your real life is outside of work.

Life is too short to spend it all at the office. Sure, you may want to be more successful – you wouldn’t say no to a salary hike – but you’re definitely not willing to sacrifice everything to get it.

The High-Drive person: striving, always aiming to achieve more

You have an unabashed need to achieve. You crave a direction, a destination, a target, something to focus your energies on. You set and accomplish goals. You push yourself to hit ambitious, sometimes scarily audacious goals. And the moment you think you’re close to hitting a goal, you move the goalposts. You make it harder for yourself because you know you’re capable of even more.

Given your gung-ho pace and kick-ass energy, you probably hate having nothing to do. You’d rather be busy and rushed off your feet than told to take it easy.

You don’t push yourself for the fun of participating – you compete to win. You have high expectations and, deep down, you know that you don’t want to settle for second place. While others may hate having their performance measured, you don’t mind – you may even enjoy it. How can you tell how you’re doing unless you’re measured and can compare yourself to other people?

You find it especially maddening when people moan about a situation but aren’t willing to do anything about it. When you’re not happy, you take control. You take charge and you’re pleased to tell others what they should be doing, how they can make a difference and contribute to the team. In fact, being in the driving seat is where you feel at your best. Truth is, you don’t like being told what to do.

Neither do you believe in luck. Others may wait for an opportunity to come their way, to win big on the lottery or have that plum job fall into their lap. But you know that successful people make their own luck. You take the initiative, work hard and make things happen.

Make the most of yourself – for Low-Drive people

I can understand if you see your work as only one aspect of your life. You have family, friends and interests that you want to put first. But are you really happy or merely resigned to your lot in life?

Many of the Low-Drive people I meet feel at least occasionally that they’re adrift in life. That they are merely going through the motions of life without accomplishing much. I don’t want to presume that’s you. But if you’ve ever wished you could take more control over your life and career, you’re in the right place to discover how.

Take a cold hard look at your job

You probably have to work for a living, to put a roof over your head and food on the table. So let me ask you a question: How happy are you in your job? Do you see it as an interesting challenge or something to be endured?

You spend more of your waking hours at work than doing anything else. Even a fair amount of the time you spend at home seems to be about getting ready to go to work or trying to recover from bad days at work. But isn’t life too short to put up with a job that you don’t like that much?

Work shouldn’t be a hardship to be endured. However, I’ve worked with some people who seem to be having a contest as to who is the most miserable about their work.

‘I hate my job.’

‘No, I hate mine more.’

‘But my boss treats me really badly.’

‘Oh, if you think that’s bad, wait till you hear this.’

You probably know people like that. Perhaps they think it’s cool to be cynical, negative and grumpy. To me it’s a waste of a life. Surely it’s better to change your circumstances than moan? To find a new job than settle for an awful one?

That’s probably not you though. Perhaps you’re more like the people I meet who put up with their work because they tell themselves, ‘One day I’ll do what I love – I just need to earn enough to put a deposit on a house/put the kids through university/pay off that loan …’ Of course, you might keel over dead tomorrow. If you keep putting off the life you want to be living, you might never get there.

If you only had a year to live, would you go to work, doing the same job every day? Probably not. What if you only had five years to live? Suppose a doctor who has never been wrong tells you that you will drop dead in exactly five years’ time. Would you carry on doing what you currently do? That’s a tougher question, but perhaps you’re thinking, ‘Possibly not.’ What if the doctor said that you have exactly ten years to live. What then?

Well, I can tell you for a fact that you will die. Hopefully not for many years, but there are no guarantees as to how much time any of us have on the planet. So why waste any more time doing something that you don’t love?

Find your flow

Work doesn’t have to be hard work. Some people discover work that they enjoy or even love. And when you love your work, you can’t help but achieve and succeed.

‘When you’re in a job that you enjoy and you’re good at, you’re not just a better worker, you’re a better spouse, a better parent, a better citizen,’ advises Nooruddin ‘Rudy’ Karsan, CEO and boss of over 1000 employees at Kenexa, the human resources consultancy he founded.

So what do you love doing? What gets you stoked up, excited?

Psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi observes that people are happiest when they are completely engaged in the task that they’re doing. When you immerse yourself in an activity so totally that you lose track of time, your brain suddenly fires on all cylinders. You feel carefree and alive. When you’re completely absorbed in what you’re doing, you experience a perfect moment that athletes call ‘being in the zone’ and which Czikszentmihalyi calls a state of ‘flow’.

People experience flow in different ways. Perhaps you feel flow when you play a favourite sport, write computer code, dance to your favourite song, fix your car, complete a task, work in the garden. Or talk to your best buddy, repair a household appliance, play an instrument, write a letter, seal a business deal, make gifts for friends.

If you’re lucky, you may already experience flow in some aspects of your work. A colleague gets into this state when he coaches people to solve their problems. A friend who works for an airline can chat quite effortlessly to passengers for hours. But many people have engaging and involving hobbies and interests that have little to do with their work. A client of mine who works in human resources gets the biggest buzz from tinkering around with components and building her own computers. Another loses himself for hours reading design magazines or programming the features on his iPod and mobile phone.

When you find something that you love doing, you’ll end up succeeding – quite by accident. I discovered ten years ago that I enjoyed writing. But I was working as a business analyst at the time, entering numbers into spreadsheets and cranking out the results. I had no opportunity to write more than a few sentences at a time, let alone a book. Still I knew that I wanted to write. I approached a publisher and persuaded them to let me write a slim book – barely bigger than a pamphlet really. When I got my first royalty cheque, I realised that I would have earned more per hour scrubbing toilets or washing dishes. But I didn’t care – I loved writing. More than a dozen books later, my last book, Confidence (Prentice Hall, 2008) was chosen by WH Smith to be its August ‘Book of the month’. Almost without intending to, I have succeeded – because I’m doing something that I love.

When you identify what you love to do, you’ll succeed, without having to try. So let me ask you the question again: What do you love to do?

Tweak, change, modify – or move on

Once you’ve identified the tasks and moments that help you to experience flow, think about how you could pursue work that allows you to experience more of it. Look for similarities between what you enjoy and what you could be doing at work. Ask your boss for assignments that allow you more moments of flow. Rather than wait for your boss to give you work that you don’t enjoy, propose projects that not only benefit the organisation but also give you pleasure.

Look for ways to speed up or eliminate the dull bits of your job so you can linger on the tasks you like. Tell your colleagues what you enjoy most and volunteer when the right opportunities arise. See if you can swap duties with a colleague. For example, if someone doesn’t like spreadsheets but you do, then offer to do her number crunching in exchange for something that you don’t enjoy but she does. Or delegate if you have the luxury of a team or assistant to depend on.

Even if you can’t change whole chunks of your work, look for small ways to tweak your job and create more moments that you enjoy. If one of your favourite flow activities is chatting to friends, see if you can spend more time talking to customers or colleagues in meetings. If you experience flow when playing computer games, ask for projects that allow you to immerse yourself in technology.

Another option is to look for a new job. Perhaps a move to a different team or department within your organisation. Or a switch to an entirely new kind of work elsewhere.

I coach Mariel, the creative head at a large and prestigious advertising agency. When I first met her, she was in charge of a team of over 20 creative types. But when she wrote down all of the things that made her happy, that helped her to experience flow, she realised that managing people wasn’t one of them. She most missed shooting and editing videos, being hands-on and doing the work that her team was doing. So she decided to quit her job to set up her own business. Moving away from managing a large team, she could get stuck into all of the tasks that made her come alive again.

Here’s another example. Antoni Porras used to work as a sales and marketing manager for a technology company in Girona, Spain. But he had another passion: putting people in touch with other people. He couldn’t find a job that allowed him to spend all of his time collaborating with other people, so he started his own business – a networking club. He puts people in touch with each other, acting as a broker for people who want to franchise their restaurant chain in the Middle East or find investors to launch a fashion line. He told me, ‘Networking is my style of life, not just my work. I’m working for my dream.’ With the dream has come success. Only two years after starting up his business, he is already running regular events in London, Barcelona and Dubai.

Get fired up – before you get fired

Perhaps you’re thinking that having a job you enjoy is merely a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. But let’s look at it another way. Organisations aren’t known for their caring, sharing treatment of people. If your organisation were to restructure, who do you think they would keep – the people who seem at least a little motivated about their work or the ones who seem to be putting up with it?

Sorry to be blunt, but I want you to be clear: rekindling your motivation and having a job you enjoy isn’t a luxury – it’s a necessity.

Follow your personal sat nav for success

Know any successful people? Probably. Take a moment to summon a few of them to mind.

Now, let me ask you: do any of them flail around, not knowing what they want from life? Do they sit around, waiting for opportunity to come their way? No, didn’t think so.

Successful people have goals to strive for. They decide what they want and take steps to achieve it. They have a direction, a purpose, a vision. Only by having such a destination can they know whether they’re making progress or not. Otherwise it’s like getting into your car and deciding simply to follow the car in front. ‘Well, I don’t know where I want to go, so I’ll do what everyone else seems to be doing.’

People who have a vision feel more fulfilled. You can do whatever you want, but you have to know what you want! You can use a picture of a bright, sunshiny future to motivate you through the here and now. Then, even when you’re bogged down in a bad day, you can look forward to a better future. You can take comfort that a day’s drudgery might be an important piece of that bigger picture.

Peter Fennah at Cranfield School of Management, one of the country’s top business schools, tells me:

You can shape your life to make it more exciting. So many people go through life feeling that work is something that is done to them. But you can create your own dynamic, peppy environment. Work out an agenda, a goal, a target and then work towards it.

Honestly, bucketloads of research have proven that high achievers have goals in life. Successful people don’t let their bosses and co-workers or family and friends dictate what they should be doing in their lives. They take charge. They identify what they want and set out to find or craft their perfect lives and careers.

Now it’s your turn.

Put pen to paper – your future self will thank you for it

Have you written down your vision? If you have, well done. If you haven’t, please, please go and do it. There’s a big difference – huge difference – between understanding an idea and doing it. We all understand the point of getting fitter, but how many of us actually do it? The same goes for creating a vision. Of course you understand what it’s about. But actually, the key to success comes from doing, not comprehending.

Once you’ve got your vision, you know what you want to achieve. Next, start scribbling down all the steps you must take to make it happen.

I coached a manager whose vision was to work as a vet. She needed to study to get A levels in biology and chemistry – doing it part-time took her two years. Plus, she needed to put aside enough money to take a further six years off to go to university – she’s partway through her studies now. A daunting challenge to most people, but it’s been her dream and she’s making it happen.

Now is as good a time as any. So list all the actions you’ll need to take to achieve your vision. Think about who you’ll need to involve, what money you’ll have to set aside, what training you may need. Consider which people to talk to for advice, which books to consult, what research to do. Scribble down every step that comes to mind. Some of the steps may be bigger than others, but just get it all down.

Then make a start. Pick an easy action from your list and do today what you could so very easily put off until tomorrow. Doesn’t matter how small that action is – get started and you will soon build your momentum, creating your new future one step at a time.

Make the most of yourself – for High-Drive people

High-Drive people like you can be admired for taking the initiative. You’re willing to push yourself to Herculean levels to get things done. You see even the biggest predicaments as challenges to be overcome rather than obstacles to be avoided. Your desire to win and get ahead means that you put in long hours and do whatever it takes to succeed. Perhaps you empathise with Michael Phelps, winner of eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, who said, ‘I don’t like to lose – not in swimming, not in Monopoly – ever.’

All of that’s great when it comes to delivering on your promises. People know that they can give you a task and you’ll complete it no matter what. But it can also cause problems. I work with many gifted, determined individuals – people who’ve been picked out of the crowd for their high potential. And I see a certain pattern over and over again: the problems come when you have to work with people who don’t have the same levels of Drive.

You are happy to push yourself to heroic lengths and do whatever it takes, but not everyone else is happy to be pushed, to work as hard as you’re willing to work. When a High-Drive person like you has to work with people who may be average or even low on Drive, that’s when sparks may fly.

Delegate and coach, train and explain

Being a High-Drive person, you get things done much faster than most of the people you know. Why delegate a task to someone else when it’s faster to do it yourself?

But imagine that a four-year-old boy – perhaps your son or nephew – comes to you, shoes in his tiny hands. He can’t do his shoelaces up. Would you simply tie his shoelaces for him or try to teach him how to do it?

If you tie his shoelaces for him today, are you going to tie them tomorrow, and the next day, and the year after that? Imagine tying them for him, day in, day out, for the next dozen or more years.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to think of an 18-year-old who can’t tie his shoelaces. But say a member of your team comes to you with a problem. He doesn’t know what to do and wants your opinion. You tell him how you’d handle it, sorting the situation out for your employee. He goes away happy, but what has he learned? Not a lot. If anything, he’s learned that he can always rely on you to do his thinking for him.

That’s the risk that comes with solving people’s problems rather than giving them the skills and confidence to do it themselves. Whether it’s in the workplace or the home, you need to develop the people around you, to coach and guide them until they can do it as well as you.

Coach by telling people what you want rather than how you want it

You probably find it difficult to watch others perform tasks less effectively than you could yourself. But the trap of doing it all yourself is that you will always be overworked, overstretched and picking up the pieces. How can people ever learn and get better if you’re always doing it for them?

Coaching people is essentially very straightforward. You don’t need to read a hefty tome or go on a course to learn it. In fact, I would say that there’s only one key principle: tell people what you want them to do rather than how to do it.

Say you want a colleague, Tanya, to arrange the annual Christmas dinner for the team. You could explain what you want her to achieve – to book a mid-priced restaurant that can seat 12 people on 15 December. Alternatively, you could explain how you want her to do it – to pick up the telephone directory and call at least 20 restaurants, asking them to fax their menus over.

Think about it though. In terms of how the task could be done, there are many ways to do it. She could search online instead of using a telephone directory. She could telephone friends for recommendations. Or she could send an email to all the members of the team, asking for ideas.

Over-eager managers often fall into the trap of telling people how the work should be done rather than what the work should achieve. They focus on the approach rather than the outcome. But by asking others to do a task the same way you do it, you cut off any chance of them finding an even better way to do it. You inadvertently force them to go through the motions, following instructions like a trained monkey, rather than engaging their brains.

Telling people how to achieve a task gives them insufficient freedom in terms of approach – you assume they’re stupid and can’t be trusted. Telling people what you want them to achieve gives them greater scope to use their initiative.

So whenever you want people to learn and grow, you need to concentrate on the results you want them to achieve, the outcome, the end goal, the finished result. Only then can they learn to think for themselves, become more confident and, ultimately, take some of the workload off your shoulders.

Ask more questions

Say you want a colleague to manage a large and complicated project, but he’s stuck. He doesn’t know where to begin. What then?

Telling people what you want them to achieve is a start. But if you walk away now, you’re not coaching – you’re merely dumping, leaving them up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Coaching means giving people the opportunity to think through how they might achieve the result you want. And that happens by asking questions.

When someone doesn’t know what to do, you’re probably dying to share your thoughts, to explain how you’d do it. Your best bet, however, is to ask questions:

• ‘What have you considered so far?’
• ‘What other options do you have?’
• ‘Which option do you think would be the most effective?’
• ‘Why?’

Your colleague may come up with the same solution that you would have suggested or a completely different one. Either way, it is his idea. He has a vested interest in making it succeed. He feels in control, empowered, responsible.

Just be sure to ask open-ended questions that make people think. Avoid closed questions that are merely statements with a question mark at the end, such as:

• ‘Wouldn’t it be better to do it like this?’
• ‘Don’t you think it would be stupid to do it that way?’
• ‘Surely those numbers don’t add up?’

If your question can be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, it’s not an open-ended question – it’s a statement posing (badly) as a question.

Anyone can give advice and tell people what to do. But taking the time to ask intelligent questions – that’s something only the very best do. That’s what you will do from now on too.

Unleash the potential of others through praise

High-Drive people like you are great at getting the job done, no matter what. When someone asks you to do something, you do it. You get on with it, no matter how much grief and hard work it entails.

Regrettably, not everyone is like you. The world would be a much more productive place if they were, but most people lack your level of determination, your grit and self-motivation.

I worked with someone I’ll call Julian, a self-made mogul and co-owner of a chain of golf and leisure clubs. He had been sent to me for coaching by his business partner. His issue: he refused to praise anyone. He explained:

If I see a waitress has laid 39 tables in the dining room but forgotten one, she has failed to do her job. If I see that the groundskeeper has mown the lawn perfectly apart from even one small patch, that’s not a job well done.

He argued that the pay they received should be more than ample incentive to do a perfect job. I told him that he’d missed the point. I talked to his team members and they felt ignored, forgotten, neglected. He was depriving his employees, his suppliers and even his business partner of the emotional pay-off of doing good work.

Julian didn’t want to give praise when he didn’t believe that it was warranted. He said that he didn’t want to pretend to be pleased when he wasn’t. But I explained that wasn’t what I was asking him to do. I wanted him to simply ignore the less-than-perfect results and praise the genuinely good results.

Surely there must be the occasional day when the waitress lays all of the dining room tables correctly? Tell her on those rare occasions that she’s done a great job and she may do it again. With the groundskeeper, praise the areas that look beautiful. If the lawn outside reception looks great but the area out the back looks untidy, only mention how good the front looks.

Over several months, Julian conceded that it was paying off. Praising the occasional successes was encouraging his team to work harder. The business partner who had sent him for coaching also reported that the improvements in morale and productivity in the team were enormous.

People bring an enormous amount of discretionary effort to the work they do. Whether it’s the cleaner who comes to your home once a week, your partner who makes dinner when you’re too tired to cook or a colleague who covers for you in a meeting. They can go through the motions and do as little as they can get away with or put their hearts and souls into it. The difference? A few words of praise delivered sincerely.

Mike Kraus has managed people for over 15 years, in businesses ranging from retailers and design firms to the Walt Disney Company. Currently principal at StoreTouch Inc., he never underestimates the power of praise:

People go to work for an individual, not an organisation. Most employees look to gratify their managers like kids look to please their parents or teachers. You’d be hard pushed to overpraise.

Science backs up the power of praise too. Researcher Paulette McCarty, at Northeastern University, asked a group of business school students to work on a creative problem-solving task. She gave a third of the students positive feedback, another third of the students negative feedback and the final third no feedback.

As you’d expect, positive feedback helped people to feel more positive about their efforts. However, receiving no feedback was as devastating to their self-confidence as receiving outright criticism.

To spell it out: most people find it as crushing to hear nothing about their performance as to be told off. So never assume that the people around you know they’re doing a good job. Quite the opposite, they probably think that your silence means they’re doing a bad job.

So stay quiet if you want people to believe the worst and let their performance slip. Praise sincerely if you want them to feel good and work hard. The choice is yours.

Many High-Drive individuals shy away from giving praise. They don’t want to come across as fake by giving too much of it. That’s rarely an issue, though. I’m sure you’ve heard people grumbling that people never say ‘Thank you’ or acknowledge the work they’ve done. But when was the last time you heard people complain they’re sick of working for bosses who are too grateful for their hard work and efforts? That they’re being appreciated or applauded too much?

Didn’t think so.

Do the tombstone test

Hunger and ambition can have personal costs too.

I met a manager I’ll call Matt at an assessment centre that I was running at an international bank. The bank employs hundreds of international executives (IEs) who act as an elite troubleshooting team. When a subsidiary of the bank is struggling anywhere in the world, the bank parachutes an IE in to sort it out. In his late twenties and already earning six figures, Matt was being evaluated for an even bigger promotion. He passed the gruelling tests at the assessment centre.

So why did the senior bosses at the bank turn him down?

They were concerned about his ability to sustain his pace. They discussed the fact that he worked too hard. He worked 16 or 18 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week and had no personal life. His wife had divorced him. He had put his son into boarding school so he could take on international assignments. He had few friends outside of work.

So despite the fact that he was doing a great job, the big bosses decided not to promote him. He was already running at 99 per cent, unwilling or unable to slow down. He was burning through his body’s fuel, close to running on empty. Would an even bigger job tip him over the edge?

When I gave Matt the bad news about the promotion, he was surprisingly composed. He said that he’d been thinking about his life recently anyway. On a flight, he had watched The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminal patients who decide to make a list of everything they want to do in life before they ‘kick the bucket’. Matt was almost grateful for his wake-up call.

Little in life is guaranteed, but I can promise you this: you will die. No one on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’ Or, ‘Hey, at least I got good performance reviews.’ What would you say in your final moments?

Some High-Drive people prefer to disregard such thoughts. They live in the moment and want to ignore the inevitable. But they’re often the ones who succumb most spectacularly to a midlife crisis.

Buying a sports car, dressing like a teenager, having an affair and taking up a dangerous sport – all of those are often desperate attempts by people caught in midlife crises to find meaning in their lives. Don’t let that be you.

Actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist Paul Newman (he gave over $250 million to charity made from sales of his Newman’s Own salad dressings) once said in an interview, ‘Life is whimsical. Longevity is an incredible gift, and some people don’t get to enjoy it.’

I hope that you have a long life, but more than that, I hope you enjoy it.

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Drive reflects people’s natural desire to take charge, get ahead and achieve. Some people thirst for success. Others are more laid-back about it. Here’s a summary of how the two ends of the range broadly differ.

Low-Drive	High-Drive
Tend to be laid-back, unassuming.	Tend to be determined, ambitious.
Happy to follow, let others take charge.	Prefer to be in charge, the boss, the leader.
Tend to put up with their circumstances.	Tend to want to change their circumstances.
Enjoy living for the moment, in the present.	Enjoy setting and achieving difficult goals.
Could come across as lazy or uncaring.	Could come across as pushy or intimidating.
Could perhaps push self harder.	May push themselves too much, work too hard.

If you scored lower on Drive:

• Recognise the nature of your personality. Avoid situations and organisations in which you are expected to compete and clamber over other people to get to the top. Don’t try to be something you’re not.
• Be careful not to settle for a job or any other situation that isn’t good enough. Rather than just accept what you’ve got, why not decide what you want?
• Spend some time identifying the passions in your life, the stuff you enjoy doing so much that you lose track of time. Then look for ways to blend your passions with your work – either in your current job or a new one.
• Invest a little time in creating a vision of the ideal life you’d like to be leading. No matter how daunting it may seem, you can make progress by taking even small steps, one day at a time.

If you scored higher on Drive:

• To achieve personal fulfilment and career success, recognise that you feel at your best when you are given clear feedback on your performance, how you’re doing and what you could be doing better.
• Realise that leaders only succeed by building both the skills and confidence of their teams. Resist the urge to take everything on yourself. Delegate tasks and coach people so that they can take on more responsibility.
• Learn that you are in the minority of people who are willing to work hard no matter what. Other people’s willingness to work hard can depend on how much praise and recognition they receive. Remember, few people complain that they’re appreciated too much.
• Consider that few people in their latter years wish they’d worked harder. Of course your work is a big part of who you are. But don’t focus so intently on your career that you neglect the rest of your life.