Have you ever been arrested?

Yes? Great, then you’ll easily understand my message today. If not, how about being pulled over while driving?

“No” to that too? Have you done anything wrong in life?

Conviction

-a formal declaration that someone is guilty of a criminal offense

I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand the laws here in the United States, people accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty. In other words, there must be proof that they committed a crime and when they are convicted, it’s about as absolute as it can be.

Let me be clear that there are plenty of people who have been wrongly convicted. Organizations like Innocence Project and Wrongly Convicted are dedicated to righting these injustices.

The wrongful convictions are less about a belief that people aren’t innocent than it is about misinformation, corruption, systems, and human error.

The most important thing to understand is that there is a strong, if not, absolute, sense of something.

An Alternate Defintion

-a firmly held belief or opinion

Conviction can also be something you use as fuel for success.

Think about the things that you think most strongly about in life. Those are convictions. Some examples could be:

• values

• faith

• family traditions

• business processes

• interpersonal practices

Your list is likely short. You can’t have conviction on too many things. Otherwise, do you really have conviction?

That short list drives the actions that you take every day. It provides you with your own unique decision-making filter. You may not realize it but your convictions are what determine your character. One of the most powerful things you can do is write down your convictions and figure out how to describe them briefly. The resulting description is somewhat of a mission statement.

Try sharing your mission statement with others. You’ll find out quickly with whom you see eye-to-eye.

My Close Call

I will need to stretch the definition of criminal conviction for illustration here, but let me tell you about the time I got pulled over in Michigan.

I like to consider myself a safe driver. I’ve never had any problems on the road despite having seen and maneuvered around some horrible moves by other people on the road. Those stories will be for another time.

Here, I am concentrating on the first time I ever drove on I-75 in MI. Ironically, I grew up in South Florida and lived in a house about a mile away from this well-known highway. My wife also grew up a short distance from the road - only 1,400 miles away. It’s a long one. I know.

It was pretty early in our relationship and we were on our way home to her parent's house driving North on 75. It was dark and pretty late - around two o’clock in the morning. I was driving the speed limit and safely, but for some reason, as I pulled off the highway onto the exit ramp to the house, a cop turned on his lights and came up behind me.

I was unsure of what to do and continued down the ramp a bit and stopped. The officer stopped his car and came up beside me. I tried to stay calm but was a bit panicked as a result of the unusual circumstances. He had a bunch of questions.

“Where are you going?”

“Where are you coming from?”

“Are you from around here?”

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

There were more but I don’t even remember them all. It was as if he was fishing for a reason to arrest me.

I’ve heard that policemen are required to write a certain amount of tickets per month. I’m not sure how that works but looking back, I definitely think this guy was trying to hit a quota. He was a state trooper so I imagine he spent most of his time on the highway handling traffic offenses.

I liken his mindset to those times when you are hoping something is true and even trying to will it to be but you just can’t make it happen. In reality, the cop couldn’t make me to have done anything wrong. He could only try to find something.

Eventually, he gave me back my license and let us go. I have to respect him to some degree. He was convicted enough to accuse me of anything and write a ticket. I was not a risk of being convicted of anything as a result.

I wasn’t used to getting questioned that much as I was a pretty good kid in my life up to that point. I was subsequently pulled over in my own neighborhood exiting 75 again years later. I also made it out of that situation unscathed. They say three strikes you’re out though…

Lessons

I learned two things from that experience.

1. Obey the traffic laws, especially in the middle of the night.

2. Incentives only provide so much motivation

Motivation

I’ve worked in my share of sales roles over the years. Some of them formal, others informal, some of them professional, others volunteer.

We are all salespeople in one way or another. You might have that title at a software company or you might be leading a charitable cause trying to gather attention for a good cause. You have to sell people what you have and believe.

This is where conviction comes in. It’s the ultimate motivator.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few motivational imposters. The most popular one is money and perhaps the next is recognition.

We were given incentives in some of my more formal sales roles. They were either each of those things and their close relatives, possessions, and desirable experiences. Truthfully, I am still waiting to experience some of them due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I must stress that incentives are fleeting, short-term ways for leaders to motivate their teams when they’ve failed or can’t think of other methods.

Good leaders are able to find the right people who are motivated by the right things and provide conviction for a cause.

Proactive > Reactive

Conviction is proactive and consequently, a better driver of success. Self-improvement resources will tell you to control what you can control. Think about inputs instead of outputs.

Salespeople should measure their sales calls and not their sales. There are many variables that can affect whether or not someone buys from you but making the call is a simple product of effort. Call more to sell more.

In relation to motivation and success, incentives are to sales as conviction is to calls.

If you are deeply convicted about something, it’s a lot easier to make more calls. You believe in the product or service. If you need an additional incentive to do it, the motivation will fail at some point. You’ll either find early struggle and lack the connection between the action and the reward or you’ll find the reward and be satisfied leading to no additional success.

Default to proactive work and you’ll be much more likely to find sustained success.

Convicted Leadership

I could have easily been upset with the cop that early morning in Michigan but I’m thankful he had the integrity to let us go. Had he given me a ticket it may have been an even more powerful story but what he gave was enough.

The basic lesson is that leaders should operate with integrity in all places. It should be noted that the policeman was acting as a leader in his own right. He likely wasn’t the deputy sheriff but everyone with a role can be a leader. There are other cops that could learn from him and I learned a lot despite never having a career in law enforcement.

Convicted leadership starts with a specific belief in something that is firm. It’s beyond a reasonable doubt. You are effectively “proven guilty” in your thoughts.

Have you ever been led by someone who believed so strongly in something they’d do just about anything to make it happen?

There is something special and contagious about this type of leadership. They don’t have to force things on you and you don’t often need a pep talk to be successful. The day-to-day work is a pep talk in its own right.

This is coming from a former athlete who lived for those few moments before a game when the team would pump itself up to battle an opponent. See E-Impact 119 for another of the many lessons I learned from football.

Success

Success can easily get lost in our pursuit of greatness. The entry above also mentioned the concept of “mission drift”. It’s when the day-to-day work leads you in a different direction ever so slightly that you don’t realize it. It’s a phenomenon that plagues many large organizations because they have so much going on that they lose track of the original focus.

It is vitally important to have a clear definition of success so as to easily correct drifting. It’s almost inevitable when you work hard, which is a result of having conviction.

Interestingly, I’ve found that the upfront work to define success often leads to a deeper conviction. I believe it is because of the extra time dedicated to thinking about what could be and how the world can benefit.

You might say you are putting yourself at a bigger risk of drifting by having a clear vision of success. I think it’s a worthwhile risk and part of being a good leader.

Here’s to you convicted leader, with a unique role that only you can satisfy. The jury is out and it’s unanimous. You are guilty.

There’s no doubt as to what you believe and tremendous success will come from your conviction.