When I was a community organizer, we emphasized listening to identify people’s self-interests.  We would then be able to leverage those self-interests to build power, since most people’s self-interests couldn’t be achieved on their own – they needed allies.

Often times, the self-interests were obvious – people needed affordable child care, or better neighborhood safety, or a stop sign on their dangerous street corner.

We were looking for self-interests, but we were really looking for leaders – people who had a network of people who respected them OR people who wanted to build that kind of network.

We could often identify those people by eliciting from them their visions for their selves  – what did they want to accomplish in their lives, what did they want friends and family to say about them, what skills did they want to develop?

That’s when organizing moved from being transactional to being transformational.

I had similar experiences as a teacher, which drove my interest in creating the conditions for intrinsic motivation.

I was always on the lookout for students who wanted to be mentors not just for the extra credit points, but because they wanted to help other students, for example,  And I constantly tried to cultivate those “transformational” qualities, through encouraging students to join class leadership teams, or be Lead Peer Tutors, or have other leadership roles in class.

A new study, Beyond Pay: The Effects of Interviewers’ Emphasis on Pay and Career Growth on Attracting Highly Qualified Applicants (it’s open access) demonstrates that this kind of perspective works across the board. As the textbox above shows, researchers found that higher qualified job candidates were more interested in growth potential over pay.

Obviously, this isn’t always going to be the case – some people are in personal situations that might require a focus on salary.

But the bigger point stands – we shouldn’t always have a narrow definition about what people view as their self interest.

I’m adding this info to A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES ON LEARNING ABOUT LEADERSHIP – SHARE YOUR OWN.