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 103 - Empathy in Leadership - Underrated? Overrated?
Replay - Five Tips to Level Up Your Listening
Replay - Confidence in Action
Episode 102 - Cooperation Works Best When People Need Each Other
Episode 101 - Five Reasons Why You Still Need an Office
Episode 100 - In the Mood to Procrastinate
Episode 99 - How to Create Meaningful Work
Episode 98 - Making Virtual Team Feedback Real
Episode 97 - Shocking - Decisions Improve When We Consider Others
Episode 96 - Does Being a Jerk Get You Ahead at Work?
Episode 95 - Just Pick Up The Phone
Episode 94 - Addicted to Insights?
Episode 93 - Is the Problem Worth Tackling?
Episode 92 - Five Ways to Stop Zoom Killing Your Focus
Episode 91 - Team Meetings That Bring Out The Best In People
Episode 90 - Monthly One-On-One Meetings
Episode 89 - Better (and Fewer) Meetings Now!
Episode 88 - To Impress, Do Less
Episode 87 - Take a Break!
Episode 86 - Don't Be So Hard On Yourself
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