Smart Leaders and Self-Interest

The motivation of leaders depends on whether they operate predominantly from the blue or the red zone.

Leaders in the red zone tend to be driven by the strong desire to achieve fame and success in life. Adventurous by nature, they eschew routine projects and find greater motivation in challenging initiatives. They seem to value external validation more than inner satisfaction and tend to measure their happiness by tangible indicators of success: a big bank account, a large house, and perhaps media recognition. They could easily lose their motivation when they are not properly rewarded or recognized for their efforts. As a result, their energy level is highly variable: they feel elated when they are at the top of their game but deflated when they are bored, overwhelmed, or criticized. Competitive by nature, they get a thrill from winning new clients or gaining market share from their rivals. As leaders driven by high self-interest, they generally struggle to motivate others on their teams other than by traditional means such as financial rewards like bonuses.

In our research and experience, we often find that the biggest difficulty business smart leaders face in their journey toward wise leadership is in shifting their motivation from primarily self-interest to enlightened self-interest. Rajat Gupta is one such business smart leader who, having made great strides in becoming a wise leader, paid a heavy price when in one instance, his self-interest seemingly got the better of him and pulled him down.

Rajat Gupta was born in India in 1948 and grew up in modest circumstances. He quickly showed his intelligence and eventually studied for an M.B.A. at Harvard. After graduating, he worked for McKinsey & Company, where he facilitated multibillion-dollar mergers. At age forty-five, he became the firm’s first foreign-born managing director and stayed in that role for nine years; during that time, McKinsey opened offices in twenty countries and doubled its consultant base (from thirty-three hundred to seventy-seven hundred) and more than doubled its revenues (from $1.5 billion to $3.4 billion).¹⁵ Gupta was invited to join the boards of blue chip companies like Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble and influential foundations.

Throughout his career, Gupta leveraged his legendary smartness and large network of contacts to improve the well-being of others, especially in developing nations. He listened to others without interrupting for hours, and as BusinessWeek wrote, he appeared “egoless” in his responses. BusinessWeek quoted Joel Bleeke, Gupta’s former McKinsey colleague, in an article that his style had a “very Eastern orientation,” emphasizing “wisdom rather than pure intellect.” Alan G. Lafley, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, was quoted in the press comparing Gupta to the thirteenth-century philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas.¹⁶ So it came as a surprise to everyone when Gupta was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to serve two years in prison for divulging confidential information he gained from the boards of two Fortune 500 companies to the Galleon hedge fund. Gupta’s fall from grace was quick and complete when enlightened self-interest was overtaken by not-so-enlightened self-interest.

Blue zone leaders are generally risk averse and primarily motivated by operational excellence and high-quality execution. Getting a job done—whatever job that may be—efficiently with quality motivates them more than name and fame or financial gains. They are motivated by basic needs: taking care of their families, earning enough income to sustain a decent life, and having a stable job. When deciding on new projects or initiatives, they are motivated to pick ones that leverage their existing skill set rather than stretching and expanding their competencies. Once they pick a project, they are mainly interested in getting it done and moving on rather than going beyond the call of duty and outperforming themselves to meet new goals. When it comes to motivating others in their organization, leaders in the blue zone use the traditional followership model and show others how to bring about operational excellence to whatever they do. Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth-century British prime minister, summarized followership well: “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”¹⁷