by Rick Baker
On May 3, 2012
If you inspire people, you have the first ingredient for growing profits.
If you do not possess a magnetic personality, you can still inspire people and grow profits. You do that by developing your communication skills. Perhaps, Warren Bennis said it best1:
"successful leaders have an extraordinary, though not necessarily charismatic, ability to communicate their vision in a way that allows their people to make it their own and give it personal meaning."
Bennis boiled it down to 4 traits of leadership:
- Attention - the leader's intentions are clear, strong, and visible...successful leaders exhibit focus
- Meaning - followers understand and buy into the leader's vision
- Trust - the leader's actions are consistent with the leader's expressed vision [i.e., Integrity as Spirited Leaders defines it]
- Self - the leader has high self-regard and high regard for others...errors are seen as mistakes, a necessary opportunity to learn
These 4 traits of leadership empower people by:
- making them feel significant,
- focusing on their developing competence rather than failure,
- creating a shared sense of community, and
- making work exciting and worthy of dedicated commitment.
Making people feel significant: this matches the wisdom of Dale Carnegie who taught -
people want to feel important. Stated another way, people want to be recognized in a positive light. And this explains why
constructive criticism is an oxymoron. We all know this. We all forget this. Successful leaders forget it much less frequently.
Focusing on developing people's competence rather than failure: a great way to do this is to do strength assessments, embrace strengths-based learning, and provide your people
strengths-tools.
Creating a shared sense of community: community has taken on a whole new meaning with the explosive growth of social media...consider, for example, the impact of Facebook. So, it now takes much more thought and effort to create a meaningful sense of community. Creative thought must be applied.
Making work exciting and worthy of dedicated commitment: again, the pace of change makes this more complicated. The businesses that figure out and make workplaces more exciting will have a chance to survive. The rest will not.
Footnote:
- 'The Leader-Manager', (1986), edited by John N. Williamson