The Four Secrets of Inspirational Leaders

Inspirational Leaders have been able to consistently influence their teams and others. They have been able to

1. Communicate their vision to others,
2. Convert it into executable plans of action,
3. Identify the right people for each task and finally
4. Review progress and monitor the plan till the attainment of the final goal.

What I have described above is the approach. Successful application of this approach requires the development of four crucial abilities. A manager who is taught the above approach (well, most of us know them already!) would assume that mechanically going through the motions of this approach should automatically result in success! Well, I wish it were that simple!

What great Inspirational Leaders bring to the table are four ingredients that make the difference. These are four abilities. These are essential in the same way that knowledge of Trigonometry is essential for engineering and Compounding is for Finance. These subjects, unfortunately, are not (yet!) being taught systematically in schools in the same way that math and basic science are being drilled into our children. Think about it… your son or daughter is going to need these abilities most after the age of twenty-five and what they are learning in school today is really doing nothing to help them then. Their employers are going to spend a huge amount of money teaching them and trainers like me are going to have to design newer and newer methods to help adult learners internalize these concepts which are easily taught and absorbed at the primary school level. What are these abilities?

• Fluency

o The ability to express concepts and abstract ideas in a way that makes it easier for the other person to understand them and talk about them. We are not talking about oratory or rhetoric here. This is about more mundane issues like clarity, brevity and using a pleasant tone of voice and (you are not going to believe this!) smiling.

• Listening
• Too much importance cannot be given to this ability which also one of the three crucial “skills” that managers do not learn but Leaders do. Listening demands a slowing down and cooling down that is seen in today’s aggressive world as a weakness. Possibly why managers easily forget their vital lessons on listening and slip back to their easier and obviously impressive “fast” approaches.”
• Feedback
• The ability to accept that we are not perfect and that there is always scope for improvement. The further realization that the best way to improve is to listen to what others have to say about us and, like the proverbial swan take the good suggestions for improvement and ignore, forget or forgive the rest. Finally, having the maturity to learn how to give effective, useful, non-emotive feedback to others thus helping them perform better.
• Empathy
• The ability to feel and understand the feelings of others. A sensitization to others feelings is a sign of leadership and also a condition for its attainment. Does this mean that we have to be “weak” and always concerned about others? No! This is NOT a way of living. This is a drill-down capability; a tool that you use on need basis. You use it to pause and understand totally what the other person is saying “from their point of view”. Thereafter you go ahead and use the other tool (Remember the first ability?) of Fluency to help them understand why what you are proposing is as better for them as it is for you.