About this episode

Peter Arthur Smith discusses his leadership philosophy that emphasizes intrinsic motivation over traditional management practices.

Most organizations are running on the wrong fuel — and they don't know it. The tools leaders reach for most instinctively — competition, incentives, fear, measurement — may be the very things quietly killing the culture they're trying to build. Peter Arthur Smith has spent more than five decades studying, practicing, and quietly refining a theory of leadership that cuts against nearly everything business schools teach. A former British Army captain turned organizational consultant, Smith founded Leadership Solutions in Manhattan in 1994 and has advised leaders across nearly ninety countries. In this episode of A Podcast About Leadership, host Jonathan Kirschner, CEO of AIIR Consulting, sits down with Smith to explore the ideas behind his forthcoming book, The Enlightened Leader. Have To vs. Want To — Smith's central argument: most organizations operate on extrinsic pressure (his SIGFAM model — competition, incentives, goals, fear, accountability, measurement), when the highest-performing cultures are built on intrinsic motivators like purpose, camaraderie, and autonomy. The Five Curses of Conventional Management — Bureaucracy, hierarchy, efficiency obsession, negative messaging…

People in this episode

Host: Jonathan Kirschner

Guest: Peter Arthur Smith

Topics covered

• leadership
• organizational culture
• intrinsic motivation
• management practices
• performance improvement

Keywords

• leadership
• culture
• motivation
• management
• organizational behavior
• performance
• accountability

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AIIR Consulting

Books & works: The Enlightened Leader

Places: Manhattan, British Army

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