Competencies

Review with the management duo revealed a few improvement areas. 1) Desire for excellence 2)Drive for results 3) organizational agility 4)cross-group leadership.

Are these really just competency issues? What's the relationship between competencies and motivation? How much of what one delivers is actually because one is highly motivated vs. actual skillsets?

One has to be motivated to achieve all those things. Can motivation be primarily self-driven? How much of one's movitation actually comes from the external affirmation vs. internal inherent confidence. Essentially, I believe these are just symptoms. Real drivers are your desire to succeed and the support you get from people that matter. Swimming upstream tends to be hard.

Harvard Biz Review once had an article talking about the ambivalent affirmation women professionals get from the society and how that has caused partially the lack of women execs.

This is just one more piece of evidencet.