What’s in It for We?

Gary Burnison is CEO of Korn Ferry and the author of Love, Hope & Leadership: A Special Edition.

We never get out of sixth grade.

As adults, our toys are different, and our games have higher stakes. But we never really move beyond the playground—wanting to be liked, to be accepted, to stand out, to win.

As much as we might want to hide that self-interest, there is another way to look at it. Self-interest is simply part of our human drive to meet our needs—from the basics of food, water, and shelter to the comforts of modern life.

Self-interest is intrinsic in everything we do. Yet we must remember—even amid these natural instincts, self-interest alone without purpose is hopeless. And leadership without shared interest is pointless.

And it’s the leader’s job to meld it all together into a kinetic force for good—to advance the overarching goals of the organization, community, or even society as a whole.

Consider a kingdom, far, far away….

Devastated by drought, the crops failed, and the ground hardened and cracked. And so, the king ordered his advisors to hire the best digging crew in all the land. They arrived with picks and shovels and began digging—six feet, eight feet, ten feet.

Finally, they put down their tools. All this digging was absurd, they grumbled. Besides, it was hot, and they had nothing to drink.

The king was furious. He had been clear in his directives about what they needed to do—so why weren’t they doing it?

His wisest adviser suggested the king give the digging crew a tour of the kingdom—past fields that had turned to brown stubble, children sitting in the dust, cows chewing dry straw instead of green grass. “Now imagine,” the king said, “bringing life back to this kingdom.”

Immediately, the crew resumed their digging—day and night, until they struck water. When the king came to see the well, he asked the workers what had inspired them.

Their response: “Making a difference for others.”

Moral of the story—balancing between self-interest and shared interest means walking the tightrope between the need to survive and the desire to thrive.

In the same way, leadership isn’t about being in charge—giving people marching orders. Leadership is all about others—inspiring them to believe and enabling that belief to become reality.

Our firm’s research backs this up. Based on more than 108 million assessments of executives, we know that self-interested, directive leaders who simply give commands or focus on hitting targets can be effective—but mostly in the short term.

In fact, research also finds that when leaders are emotionally aware—able to step away from their own self-interest and focus on shared interest—more than 90% of them have teams with high energy and high performance. In sharp contrast, leaders who are low in emotional self-awareness create negative climates nearly 80% of the time.

No wonder Socrates called self-knowledge “the beginning of wisdom.”

So how do highly effective leaders coalesce self-interest into shared interest? They start with the why—the purpose. Then comes the what—the long-term direction and vision and what’s possible, even in the throes of disruption or contention. As people truly feel part of something bigger than themselves, an environment of outstanding performance is fostered.

Indeed, this is the essence of “we-dership.” It flips the script—from what’s in it for me to what’s in it for we.

Going from me to we is not just food for the leader’s soul—it also nourishes colleagues, teams, and the overall organization. Because when people are happy and understand the purpose, they are motivated. And when they are motivated, they will outperform.

This brings to mind a moving quote attributed to Albert Einstein, which a dear friend and one of our firm’s leaders shared with me earlier this year. “Brief is this existence, like a brief visit in a strange house. The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness whose center is the limiting and separating ‘I.’ When a group of individuals becomes a ‘we,’ a harmonious whole, they have reached as high as humans can reach.”

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