On Becoming an Inspirational Leader – Part 2: When motivation isn’t enough, you need to inspire

Carrots and sticks. These are the tools typically used to motivate people. You perform and get a bonus, or you don’t and get the boot. Simple as that. So, what happens when motivation dips, when people lose their mojo or companies go through tough times when we cannot reward people with carrots? Often the stick is seen as the only remaining option – “leaders” using fear and threats to get their people to go above and beyond. Good luck with that…

Surely there is another option? Great leaders take a different route. They don’t rely on external factors like carrots or sticks to get people to follow them. Rather, they focus on igniting what’s already on the inside of people: our natural tendency to contribute to something worth while and bigger than ourselves. In a word it’s called inspiration. After all, we expect inspiring leaders to be inspirational.

Bain did a study in 2016 to identify the characteristics of inspiring leaders and the results were fantastic. They asked 2 000 of their employees what their managers and leaders did to inspire them and they came up with 33 different characteristics of inspiring leaders. This is great news for all of us! We don’t need to fit a specific mold to be considered inspirational. They found that none of these characteristics were more important than any other – if you currently have 4 of the following in your repertoire, you have a 91% chance of being inspiring (pretty good odds):

One type of inspirational leader that many mentioned sits at the middle of the picture and is known as a Centered Leader. What sets Centered Leaders apart from the rest of the crowd is the following:

• They know their values and are guided by them, continuously

• They are driven by a bigger purpose and are obsessed with their mission (refer to what we shared last week: their purpose and mission is not selfish, it’s not about them)

• They are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, are secure and consistent

• They exude a calm confidence and are resolute in their convictions

• They are fully engaged in what they do and are authentic enough to be fully human, warts and all.

The really cool thing is all these skills and traits can be taught and developed. When you look at the picture above, you should be able to identify at least one or two characteristics you already have down. Focus on using these more often and pick one or two others you would like to develop.

Inspiring leaders are not inspirational by accident – they do things differently on purpose. And so can you. But it is up to you to take up the challenge: will you become a leader that people would love to follow?

The Takeaway

Anybody can become an inspirational leader if you know what to focus on. One way of doing this is aiming to inspire, rather than just motivate.

PurposeWorks offers a 10-week in-depth leadership coaching course that is aimed at developing inspiring leaders that people love to follow. If you are interested and want to know more talk to us at info@purposeworks.co.za.

At PurposeWorks we are all about Making You and Your Work Rock. Our focus is on Organisational Health and Design, Employee Centered Culture, Leadership Development and Performance Coaching. For more information on how we can help you create a work environment that rocks, develop a great team, become an inspiring leader or unlock your personal excellence talk to us at info@purposeworks.co.za.