Episode 7. Drive: The Engine

What causes a person to be considered driven. And what constitutes drive?

I’ve talked about character, curiosity and a few other traits that I believe make a great leader. But without drive, these components may make the individual a great person, but they don’t convert into achieving something that is considered to be great.

Why? Because there’s nothing bringing those components together and pushing them forward, irrespective of the path they need to take to achieve it. Drive is the engine of success, and like any engine, you can't see it working, but you know when it's there and when it isn’t.

I believe drive is inherent. It’s present in everyone, just in different states. I call these Active, Dormant and Latent drive.

Some people find their drive early when they discover something they love and want to do more of it. This is active drive. The engine has kicked in and it’s pushing you forward to find out more about the thing you love.

You may have active drive but then fall out of love with the thing you were pursuing, so you become less driven until something else piques your interest. That’s dormant drive. It’s temporarily offline, but you know it’s there, waiting to be woken back up when the time is right.

Then you have latent drive. It’s there, as yet undeveloped, but has the potential to activate when something sparks it. It’s latent drive that fires when you first begin to realise who you are and what you could be capable of.

But it only kicks in if you want to realise that capability. And not everyone wants to realise it.

All leaders, by their very definition, have active drive. There are no easy routes to the top, and no matter how accomplished you are at anything, something has to keep pushing you forward to help you scale the peak of your own potential.

Some may say it’s ambition that gets you to the top. I disagree. Ambition is a conscious want. Drive is an unconscious urge. Ambition is about the destination you want to end up at. Without drive, it remains an unrealised ambition.

Drive is the momentum that keeps you moving forward regardless of where you're headed and the twists and turns in the road to get there.

So how does drive make a good leader a great leader? When it’s controlled.

When drive is uncontrolled, it consumes your character and takes control of your compass. Decisions are then taken to satisfy the drive instinct, rather than the destination coordinates.

At its most extreme, uncontrolled drive isn't leadership at all, as there are no guardrails of experience and humanity to keep it on the right path. It’s then just about domination. The pursuit of more power, more control, more wealth, regardless of the human cost. We can all see how that’s playing out…

Great leaders don’t use their drive to dominate.

They use it to move forward, to build something worth building.

Great leaders raise all boats as they realise their own potential.