Can Leaders Really Inspire People? (Guest Post)

This post was originally published on www.susanfowler.com on 2/2/2015.

Can Leaders Really Inspire People?

Are you as confounded by the idea of inspirational leadership as I am? After reading more than a dozen blogs, books, and articles on this topic, I am going to be highly presumptuous and propose a different approach to “inspirational leadership.” First, I ask you to consider typical recommendations for inspiring people culled from a variety of sources:

• Earn people’s trust
• Be enthusiastic
• Have and share a vision
• Know what excites you
• Clarify your values
• Have a unique point of view
• Focus on what others want
• Pull; don’t push
• Ask; don’t tell
• Have an uncommon composition of skill, experience, and time-proven personal perspective

I could keep going, but the items on this list have one or two things in common: they don’t tell you either how or why. How do you earn trust or be enthusiastic? Why does it matter if you clarify values or have a unique point of view? Why focus on what others want if they don’t really understand what they want? Writers pull together a commonsense list of nice-to-have leadership qualities, characteristics, behaviors, and best practices to describe inspirational leadership, but provide little, if any, understanding of how to do them or why they work.

What I find missing from the “10 Ways to Inspire People You Lead” attempts is an underlying framework of what we mean by “inspiring.” Dictionaries define “inspiring” or “inspirational” broadly as influencing, moving, animating, impelling, spurring, or motivating. All of this begs questions that don’t seem to be addressed in most attempts to describe inspirational leadership:

• What is it that people find stimulating and motivating?
• What is it that impels people to thrive?
• How do leaders tap into it?

There is a field of research that has asked these questions, conducting thousands of scientific studies to finally demonstrate why people are motivated and thrive. Self-Determination Theory has validated three fundamental and universal psychological needs shared by all human beings on the planet regardless of culture, generation, gender, or race. These needs are for Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence (ARC). When these psychological needs are satisfied, they lead to positive and sustainable energy, vitality, and well-being; when they are undermined, they result in less creative, innovative, productive, and mentally and physically healthy people.

When leaders understand the true nature of human motivation, they are better equipped to be inspirational. For example …

• Trust is a by-product of people’s needs for ARC being satisfied.
• A clearly articulated vision gives people the Autonomy to choose whether they want to share that vision.
• A noble purpose gives people a sense of contributing to the whole and serving the greater good—components of Relatedness.
• Both asking and telling are necessary depending on an individual’s development level—understanding how to be a situational leader who gives people the direction and support they need when they need it, builds Competence over time.

When individuals understand the true nature of their own motivation, they are better equipped to ask for what they really need. People can’t ask for what they don’t know they need. People interpret the longing they have into traditional and, unfortunately, less effective, “asks.” Thus, instead of asking for Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence, they ask for more money, power, and status as substitutes for what will really help them thrive.

My proposition is this: When leaders focus on helping people satisfy their three basic psychological needs, people will respond with, “That’s inspirational leadership.”

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Susan Fowler implores leaders to stop trying to motivate people. In her latest bestselling book, she explains WHY MOTIVATING PEOPLE DOESN’T WORK… AND WHAT DOES: The New Science of Leading, Engaging, and Energizing. She is the author of by-lined articles, peer-reviewed research, and six books, including the bestselling Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager with Ken Blanchard. Tens of thousands of people worldwide have learned from her ideas through training programs such as the Situational Self Leadership and Optimal Motivation product lines. For more resources, including a free Motivational Outlook Assessment with immediate results, visit www.susanfowler.com

Compassion is the Heart of Employess Engagement (Guest Post)

Monica C. Worline
Jane E. Dutton

Great organizations need great people. People who are actively involved in and enthusiastic about their work. People who will go the extra mile for a customer. People who will lend a hand when a coworker needs help. People who are respectful, trustworthy, and loyal. And that is the essence of employee engagement—great people working at their best on behalf of your organization.

Since the late 1990s, the Gallup organization has surveyed more than 25 million employees in 195 countries. They find that engaged employees are significant predictors of an organization’s overall profitability and productivity. Engaged employees also tend to create engaged customers. And as the Gallup’s researchers say: “Engaged employees create engaged customers, and those engaged customers spend more money, more often with their preferred brands.”

In discussing our research, we often point out that compassion is the hidden heart of employee engagement. Gallup uses 12 key questions to assess engagement, and one group of those questions relates directly to whether supervisors and others at work “care about me as a person.”

Caring relationships are a source of intrinsic motivation. Most people want to care about others at work. Often people will volunteer or seek out opportunities to do more at work if they are also opportunities to get to know others who care.

Compassion flows from care. Compassion is a crucial response to suffering when it strikes. In our book, Awakening Compassion at Work, we tell a story of employee we met, Isabel. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she told us she “was flooded with hugs, prayers, gifts, and tons of support” from people at work. The compassion for Isabel was sustained over time as she endured a number of surgeries and chemotherapy. As she describes it: “I was so overwhelmed when food was delivered to my house to feed my family by this group of very caring people from work. I have never felt so loved. This experience has given me a deeper commitment to my coworkers, and I find myself contributing to all other calls for sharing and giving.”

In Isabel’s story, we see how an experience of receiving compassion from coworkers translated into increased engagement at work. Isabel is more enthusiastic about her job and more likely to help out her colleagues. She cares about her customers and they care about her too.

Many organizations are working to build greater employee engagement. Not many are approaching it through the door of compassion. Is compassion the missing heart of your employee engagement strategy?

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Monica Worline, PhD, is CEO of EnlivenWork. She is a research scientist at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and Executive Director of CompassionLab, the world’s leading research collaboratory focused on compassion at work.

Jane Dutton, PhD, is the Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Business Administration and Psychology and cofounder of the Center for Positive Organizations at the Ross School of Business. She has written over 100 articles and published 13 books, including Energize Your Workplace and How to Be a Positive Leader. She is also a founding member of the CompassionLab.

Their new book, Awakening Compassion at Work, available now on Amazon, reveals why opening our eyes to the power of compassion is smart business. 

The Leader's Path (Guest Post)

Someone once asked me how the heart is connected to a leader’s path? Honestly, I hadn’t given much thought to a leader’s path. But I’ve now begun to do so.

I’m familiar with some work that others have done on the question regarding a leader’s path. However, I’ve reached a different conclusion – or at least a different way to describe it. Here’s my summary at this point:

I’ve long believed the hardest part of leadership is self-leadership. If you and I can’t figure out how to do this well, leading others will be difficult at best, if not impossible.

So, I guess the leaders’ path is a journey that begins with self-leadership and then moves to lead teams and perhaps organizations. However, I don’t think “path” is the right metaphor. Path implies a linear journey. One in which a point is crossed as you move to another. This is not my picture of a leader’s progression.

The picture that comes to mind for me is a Spirograph. Most of you are too young to remember this fascinating toy. I had one as a child. It was a device that helped you create amazing images – like the one featured on this post. Here’s why this picture works for me to describe a leader’s journey…

It always comes back to the center.

The same is true for our leadership. It always comes back to our center – our heart. You can think of each of the points furthest from the center of the image as a chance to lead. Maybe, we’ll have the opportunity to expand our influence and create an even larger more elaborate picture. Who knows, maybe we’ll even be given more colors to use. But even in those circumstances, the picture returns to the same pattern – our leadership influence revolves around who we are at our core – our heart.

Leadership, at the highest level, has two components: your leadership skills and your leadership character. If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills. Consider these five attributes of leadership character:

Hunger for Wisdom

Expect the Best

Accept Responsibility

Respond with Courage

Think Others First

The good news for all of us is that we can cultivate and nurture these behaviors in our daily lives.

In short, that’s my answer to how The Heart of Leadership impacts our “path.” Our leadership not only starts with our heart, it is at the center of all we do. If you and I can cultivate solid leadership character traits, we can literally change our heart and our leadership.

Where does the leader’s path begin and end? Everything you do as a leader is connected to your HEART.

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Mark Miller is the best-selling author of 6 books, an in-demand speaker and the Vice President of High-Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A. His latest book, Leaders Made Here, describes how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks and outlines a clear and replicable approach to creating the leadership bench every organization needs.