SHAREB VISION:
BUILDING AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE
SELF-INTEREST IS NOT PARAMOUNT
In their book, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity,2 Badaracco and
Ellsworth write that "practitioners [of political leadership] believe that
people are motivated by self-interest and by a search for power and
wealth." As with many assumptions, this one can be self-fulfilling. If
people are assumed to be motivated only by self-interest, then an
organization automatically develops a highly political style, with the
result that people must continually look out for their self-interest in
order to survive.
An alternative assumption is that, over and above self-interest,
people truly want to be part of something larger than themselves.