Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders
Business:Management
Motivation is great, but only if people are motivated in the same direction. That’s where Inspiring comes in.
Transcript
Welcome to episode 156 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership.
Today we are continuing our series on essential leadership practices. Last time around we looked at Reflecting. This time we’re focusing on the leadership practice of Inspiring.
A leader’s role is to achieve results through people. The mechanism for doing this is aligned motivation. Importantly, there’s no point having one without the other.
Aligned people who aren’t motivated are clear about where we are headed, but just don’t care or can’t be bothered getting there.
Motivated people who aren’t aligned might be keen and active, but are often working in different directions and cross purposes.
What we need is both - for people to be aligned and motivated.
Inspiring is about taking our vision and plans, and translating them into what matters to people. The focus of Inspiring is on others’ needs and interests, and not on ourselves.
To do that we need to know what interests and motivates our people. The best way to find this out is through conversation. Get to know people - not just who they are at work, but who they are as a whole human being. That allows us to communicate the vision behind the work we do - why what we do matters in the content of their needs and interests. This helps us to align people to that vision around their interests and motivations. We can ensure that roles that are defined in the context of the vision - that there is a clear link back to the vision in all of the work that we do.
Inspiring as a leadership practice is particularly helpful when we have a new vision to communicate. It’s also useful when there have been failures and setbacks that have negatively impacted motivation. Change and uncertainty can result in people becoming mis-aligned with the broader purpose and vision, so Inspiring can be helpful here as well. As a leadership practice, Inspiring is not needed as much when things are stable, and the team is performing well - they’re already aligned and motivated.
Over the next few weeks we will explore four other effective leadership practices. It’s a great time to complete our brand new Leadership Practices Assessment. It’s completely free, and you will find a link to it in the show notes. Have a great week.
Access the Leadership Practices Assessment - https://leadership.today/lpa
Episode 49 - Accurate Self-Assessment
Episode 48 - Four Ways to Explore Your Untapped Potential
Episode 47 - Five Ways Busy Leaders Prioritise Treating People Well
Episode 46 - Saying 'No' Without Being a Jerk
Episode 45 - Overcoming a Fear of Delegation
Episode 44 - 10 Leadership Lessons From Year One of the Leadership Today Podcast
Episode 43 - How Thinking in the Third Person Makes You a Wiser Leader
Episode 42 - The Power of "I Don't Know"
Episode 41 - Is Putting Employees First Actually Better For Customers?
Episode 40 - Are Workaholics Bad for Business?
Episode 39 - Four Ways Leaders Build Trust
Episode 38 - Do People Really Shoot the Messenger?
Episode 37 - Why Everyone is a Born Leader
Episode 36 - Four Steps to Building a Legacy of Leaders
Episode 35 - Managing Your Time in an Infinite Job
Episode 34 - Moving from Stressed to Strong
Best of the Podcast Replay - Prisoners and Performance Ratings
Best of the Podcast Replay - Do Teams Still Form, Storm, Norm and Perform?
Episode 33 - The Problem with Solving Problems
Episode 32 - When Working Smarter Isn't The Smartest Way To Work
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