Attributes of inspirational leadership

In a recent survey of more than 1500 managers, people were asked what they would most like to see in their leaders. The most popular answer, mentioned by over 55% of people, was ‘inspiration’. When asked if they would describe their current leader as ‘inspiring’, only 11% said yes.”

Inspirational leadership is the purest expression of leadership because it creates a sense of intrinsic motivation within the follower. Being inspirational is more than just a vision, speech, or event. It’s more of an attitude, a mindset, and a process that needs to be honed and committed to with everything you do. Author John C Maxwell suggests there are five key attributes of an inspirational leader:

1. Attitude of service To be an inspirational leader, you must adopt an attitude of service toward those you lead. This requires laying aside selfish interests to add value to another person. When you serve, you awaken something magnetic inside of you. People are drawn to follow you because they know you’ll find ways to make them better.

2. Affirmation To inspire means to have a positive view of others. If we’re not careful, we become fault-finders, magnifying the flaws in everyone around us. Instead, leaders ought to search for the best traits within a person and commit to uncovering them.

3. Attentiveness Great inspirers know the desires of those they lead. As much as people respect the knowledge and ability of their leaders, these are secondary concerns for them. They don’t care how much their leaders know until they know how much their leaders care. When leaders attend to the deeply felt needs of their team, the determination and commitment of each team member is unleashed.

4. Availability Leaders inspire by intentionally investing time in the people they lead. They make themselves available. People cannot be nurtured from a distance or by infrequent spurts of attention. They need a leader to spend time with them - planned time, not just a conversation in passing.

5. Authenticity To inspire, leaders have to be genuine. More than anything else, followers want to believe in and trust their leaders. However, when leaders break promises or fail to honor commitments, they reveal themselves as being inauthentic, and they lose credibility. Trust rests upon a foundation of authenticity. To gain trust, a leader must consistently align words and deeds, while showing a degree of transparency.

I think these key attributes serve as a great self-check and framework for personal development in this area.

Technical vs Adaptive Leadership

In a recent presentation, Ron Heifetz (Harvard University) argued that the most common source of failure in leadership is that people diagnose adaptive problems as if they are technical problems. In other words, leaders too often see the difficult problems facing them as problems that can be solved using the techniques we have used in the past. He argues that leaders need to identify those parts of a problem that can be solved with the ‘technical’ knowledge we have built up in the past and those that need them to be adaptive, to admit that they they do not have all the answers.

Heifetz believes that many of the issues and challenges we are faced with on a daily basis sit beyond our technical knowledge and training - they require us to work in partnership with other professionals. However, we’re under pressure to restore equilibrium quickly, to treat the difficult problems as things that can be handled managerially. Heifetz contends that so much of leadership is really about holding people together in these situations where no individual knows the way forward.

Heifetz concluded by suggesting that “the best thing I can do for all of us is to bless our incompetence”. There is no way, he argued, that any of us as individuals can do justice to every problem we face or every child we have to teach. We need to get over the shame of our incompetence and engage much more collaboratively with our colleagues. We need a culture of taking risks, learning in an ongoing way about how to do what we do better. We need to ease up a little bit with ourselves and acknowledge more quickly when we are having difficulty. That way we would take corrective action more quickly and invite others in to help more quickly.

Finding time for mindfulness

In 2002, a personal mastery teacher named Gita Bellin taught me a mediation practice called the ‘Dynamic Mind Practice’, which is definitely one of the best things I do for myself each day. There are so many benefits including relaxation, rejuvenation, being more present, managing emotions, clarity of thought, creativity, intuition, ability to focus the mind, as well as getting a good night’s sleep. The DMP App is free and explains it all, including Gita leading you in and out of the mindfulness practice. Enjoy!

Creating High Performance 
leaders. Teams. culture.