Foreword by Ken Blanchard

I am a fan of cutting-edge leadership. Over thirty years ago, we introduced Situational Leadership II (SLII), which revolutionized the way managers lead. In this book, Susan Fowler introduces the Spectrum of Motivation, a model that will revolutionize the way leaders think about motivation and evolve their leadership.

I am proud of the quality of thinking in this book. Susan has pursued the study and application of motivation science for almost twenty years. Together with David Facer and Drea Zigarmi, she developed the innovative Optimal Motivation training experience with the Ken Blanchard Companies and then field-tested it with trailblazing leaders and thousands of people from business, government, and nonprofit organizations around the world. What really excites me are the real-world stories and examples that show how this groundbreaking approach to motivation works.

I think you will be as excited about these ideas as I am, so I need to warn you about something we learned years ago. In the early years of teaching SLII, leaders would leave the training session eager to put their new skills to work. We were surprised by how they immediately applied the concepts without conversations with their employees to explain what they were doing. They followed the SLII model, backing off on direction and support for the self-reliant achiever, leaving her alone to do her thing. They provided direction and close supervision to an employee who was an inexperienced enthusiastic beginner. But when the two employees got together in the lunchroom, the experienced employee commented on how she had not seen her manager for weeks. The inexperienced employee said, “No wonder—he's constantly in my office. I don't know what I did wrong.”

We learned over the years to remind leaders that leadership is not something you do to people; it is something you do with people. I am fascinated how the ideas Susan writes about in this book and SLII complement one another. One model, the Spectrum of Motivation, is on the cutting edge of new science—the other is now the most used management model in the world. Both models provide leaders with specific actions and language for helping people grow, learn, produce, and thrive. They both require conversation and direct communication with the individuals you lead.

I am both amused and saddened when leaders tell me they don't have time to have meaningful conversations with their people. It makes me wonder what being a leader means to them. I'll catch you on the back end of the book in the afterword with the hope that between now and then you might reconsider what leadership means to you—and the people you lead.