Leadership

Effective Strategies to Inspire People

For years, leaders have asked me how to motivate people. And regardless of whether you’re talking about large teams or small teams, sales teams or project teams, the answer is the same.

You can’t motivate people. People are either self-motivated or they’re not.

The most effective means of getting people to take action is to inspire them.

There is a difference between motivation and inspiration. By definition, “to motivate” means “to provide with an incentive” while “to inspire” means “to exert a stimulating or beneficial effect upon, or to arouse with a particular emotion“. The implication is that people are motivated by what they want, but are inspired us – by who we are and what we do (or did). Therefore, for you to be able to inspire people, they need to know what kind of person you are and need to become aware of what you’re doing or have done in the past.

If you want to enhance your leadership effectiveness and achieve greater success, it is essential to become inspiring to others. An inspiring leader elicits an emotional response from people. This ability is essential to effective leadership. People are moved more often and more strongly by emotion than they are by logic.

An inspiring leader can spark the imagination of an entire organization. When a leader masters the ability to deliver an inspiring message, their message can become the catalyst for a new, innovative future. Inspiration causes people to align themselves with your vision, your passion, and your cause.

An inspiring leader creates belief, enthusiasm, and hope in people. When people are inspired by someone, they admire them, respect them, and often strive to emulate them. In turn, they will strive to gain your respect and admiration as well.

Because the ability to inspire people is so impactful, it’s important to understand how to become an inspiring leader. A good place to start is by thinking of people who you find inspiring and by reflecting on why they inspire you. These people may be historic figures, present day figures, or family members.

Some people I think many of us would consider to be inspiring include Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King.

So, the question is, what was it about them that made them inspiring? What causes us to feel that way about them? If you list all the things about them that cause you to feel that way, you’ll see that their character and/or their actions were admirable.

When someone has a vision, a passion, a purpose, or a philosophy and communicates it well, they draw people to them like a magnet. They inspire them to dream bigger and achieve more. Even more inspiring is when they act on that vision, passion, or purpose. We also are often inspired by and admire a leader who was willing to stand up for someone or something.

A leader who overcame adversity and succeeded in spite of everything will inspire us to achieve greater things. We all have challenges – sometimes we overcome them and sometimes they overwhelm us. An inspiring leader can make all the difference in someone’s life.

And finally, we are inspired by someone with integrity. Someone who not only does what he or she says they will do, but speaks and acts in alignment with those values they say matter to them. There are few things more powerful than a person who lives by their principles.

Let me offer some insights into what you can do right now to be more inspiring to the people around you. Most of us haven’t had to overcome extraordinary challenges and most of us haven’t made an impact on a global scale. But nevertheless, each of us can be an inspiring leader to our team, our company and our family.

The best way to start is to take time to reflect back on your life and take stock of how you’ve changed, who you’ve become, what you’ve overcome, what you’ve achieved, and what you believe in (your passions, philosophies and/or purpose).

We often tend to consider our past achievements and accomplishments as unremarkable. Unremarkable because either they came easily to us, because we feel that anyone could have accomplished what we did, or because we’re focused on (and are possibly embarrassed by) the challenges we faced rather than focusing on the fact that we overcame those challenges. Nothing could be further from the truth.

STRATEGY #1: Share what matters to you.

People are attracted to and inspired by someone who believes in something and is passionate. In truth, most people are not passionate about anything in their life. Having and expressing a vision can be impactful, but actually taking action on what we say matters to us is very powerful. After all, actions speak louder than words.

If you need a jump start towards gaining clarity about this for yourself, reflect on what advice you would give someone just starting out in business or in life. Never miss an opportunity to share what matters to you. Use stories to make your point and paint a picture with your words.

STRATEGY #2: Let others know about an adversity you overcame.

When people hear a story of how someone overcame adversity and succeeded in spite of it, they become inspired to overcome their own obstacles and challenges. It doesn’t have to be a “crushing” issue. It can be an attitude, a circumstance or a belief that we overcame that allowed us to achieve what we did and become the person we are today.

Share past challenges that you worked to overcome. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a major life-altering challenge to have an impact on someone. Once again, use stories to make your point and paint a picture.

STRATEGY #3: Be willing to stand up for what you believe.

People admire a person who stands up for what they believe in – even if they don’t agree with that person! They admire someone who is true to themselves and defends others.

Don’t compromise on the principles you believe in. Stand up for someone’s rights, even if you don’t agree with them.

STRATEGY #4: Act with integrity.

When someone does what they say they’re going to do, it creates an impression. When they go out of their way to do what they said they’d do, it creates an even stronger impression. Acting with integrity causes people to take notice of us. When we speak and act in alignment with the values we say matter to us, people notice.

Make a practice of doing what you say you are going to do, become clear on what values matter to you, and work to ensure your words and actions align with who you say you are as a person.

Put these ideas into action. People form opinions about us through our everyday actions, rather than as a result of our speeches and decisions. An associate of mine likes to refer to those everyday actions as “moments of apparent insignificance”. But of course, they are anything but insignificant. Start now to make a greater difference in people’s lives.

If you’d like help becoming a more inspiring leader, please contact me.Enter text here.

Successor Insights: The Need for a Sounding Board

There’s no question that a successful business owner knows his or her business better than anyone else. And as a consequence, there’s no one better to help a successor learn the business. But there are potentially several problems that occur when an owner is the only one to help a successor develop.

The first issue pertains to leadership. Learning the mechanics of a business doesn’t really help hone leadership skills. Although people generally do respect a leader’s knowledge and technical skills, that degree of respect only goes so far.

For people to fully trust and respect a leader, that leader needs to earn that trust and respect. Trust and respect aren’t automatically given because of someone’s title.

In order for a leader to earn trust, he or she needs to demonstrate that they have integrity. In other words, they do what they say they’re going to do and are the kind of person they claim to be. And, in order for a leader to earn respect, he or she needs to treat people with respect in both word and action. For example, a leader needs to treat people like people rather than like things. And they need to treat adults like adults instead of like children.

The second issue pertains to strategic thinking. Knowing how to do things really well simply means a successor has mastered the mechanics – the systems and tactics – of the business. If they don’t learn to think strategically, then several things tend to happen.

One result of not thinking strategically is that improvements will tend to be small, resulting in only modest gains. A second consequence is that a successor will tend to develop tactics that they feel are “strategies”. This also produces results that are mediocre. But the third consequence is the one that is most detrimental. They will develop strategies to address symptoms rather than underlying problems. The result of addressing symptoms instead of problems is that it almost always creates more challenges that cause a decline in revenues and profits.

The third issue pertains to blind spots. If a successor only gets guidance from an owner, they tend to end up with “group think” along with the blind spots that accompany it. Group think is what happens when people think “this is the way we do it around here”. The problem with having blind spots is that a successor can’t see what he or she is missing. Regardless of experience, intelligence or education, we all have these blind spots.

Typically, the only way to eliminate blind spots is to get outside perspective. Someone needs to point them out to us. If we don’t get past our blind spots, we miss opportunities and make poor decisions.

The solution to improving leadership competence, enhancing strategic thinking and eliminating blind spots is to have an unbiased sounding board. Someone who can offer outside perspective and help develop the needed competencies.

The Three Leadership Competencies That Matter Most in Times of Crisis

In times of crisis and uncertainty, people experience the gamut of emotions. Some are afraid (of both the known and the unknown). Some people get angry, others are frustrated. Some get depressed and some feel lonely. The list goes on…

It’s because of this wide range of negative emotions that leaders need to step up and play an important role. Leaders need to de-escalate anxiety and fear, and they need to offer hope for the future.

Although there are many traits and competencies a good leader must possess, three stand out as critical in times of crisis – Executive Presence, Empathy, and Effective Communication.

EXECUTIVE PRESENCE
Having executive presence is the ability to project mature self-confidence, to project a sense of being able to take control of difficult situations, and to project the ability to make tough decisions. There’s no one thing that gives a leader executive presence. Instead, it’s a combination of a number of factors:

Confidence: Especially during a crisis, a leader must display a strong level of confidence without being overly confident. It’s OK not to have all the answers. And it’s OK for people to know a leader doesn’t have all the answers. In fact, being open (transparent) and honest (vulnerable) act to build trust and respect. Be confident, but not casual or over-confident, in order to have executive presence.
Decisiveness: In business, postponing a decision until more facts are revealed or the future becomes clearer can be a smart course of action. But often, leaders must make decisions without all the facts and without certainty about the future. Even though the future may be cloudy, a leader with executive presence must make decisions in the face of that uncertainty.
Authoritative: How a leader leads should vary with circumstances (situational leadership). Under normal circumstances, it might be most effective to lead by getting buy-in for an idea or by coming to a decision by consensus. But in times of crisis, a leader must be strong and act in an authoritative manner in order to have executive presence.
Body Language: Our body language communicates a large amount of information. Body language includes how we hold ourselves when we sit, stand and walk. How a leader carries him or herself reflects their state of mind, so it’s important to sit and stand in a manner that projects and instills confidence. In addition, facial expressions matter. People often read others by their facial expressions. A leader’s expression shouldn’t reflect casualness, anger or fear if their intent is to instill confidence. A leader with executive presence is mindful of his or her body language.
Emotional Control: For leaders to instill confidence, earn trust and earn respect, they must stay in control of their emotions. Emotional outbursts are seen as a loss of control and people know that a leader who loses control is feeling overwhelmed. An overwhelmed leader lacks executive presence. Be mindful of emotions and the expression of those emotions in order to have executive presence.

In times of crisis, it’s important to have a strong executive presence.

EMPATHY
A leader who has empathy understands the feelings, needs and concerns of others. He or she is able to define, understand, and react to the concerns and needs that underlie people’s emotional responses and reactions.

The issue here is the importance of treating people like people rather than like “things”. When a leader regards people as people, he or she acknowledges that everyone – regardless of position or tenure – has hopes and dreams, fears and stresses.

Although it’s never productive to treat people like “assets” or “resources”, it’s especially true in times of crisis. If a leader communicates and deals with people as if they were “things”, it demonstrates that the leader doesn’t care about them. And a leader who doesn’t care about the people he or she leads loses the respect and trust of those people.

It’s not that a leader with empathy accepts mediocrity or doesn’t hold people accountable. Instead, having empathy is about HOW they hold people accountable and how they bring out the best in people. Most people want to do a good job – especially in times of crisis. By being understanding and helping people be productive given their specific circumstances, a leader will get more engagement, better results, and earn their loyalty.

In times of crisis, it’s important to have empathy and treat people like people.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Especially in times of crisis, how and what we say can have an enormous impact on people. People are quick to interpret (or misinterpret) messages. People are more sensitive to tone and languaging. And people are looking for reassurance and hope.

In times of uncertainty, it is essential for a leader to choose his or her words carefully. Leaders must make sure they say exactly what they mean to say. Read and then re-read each note and/or message. Try to read it from the point of view of the reader to ensure the message can’t be misconstrued. Make sure the wording has the right emotional “feel” as well. Remember, the reader can’t hear inflections or emphasis when they read the note.

Along those lines, often a phone call, conference call or video call/meeting can be a better solution for addressing issues than written communication. People can hear a leader’s tone and sincerity in their voice. If video is added to the equation, people also get to see a leader’s body language.

In times of crisis, it’s important to take time to craft each message and how it’s delivered.

If you’d like help with any of this, reach out to us. We specialize in helping leaders become more effective and help them bring out the best in people.

The Three Most Common Leadership Weaknesses

Over my 20+ years as an executive coach, I’ve worked with and assessed lots of smart, experienced senior leaders. And with each assessment I did, a pattern began to emerge. I noticed that there were several important competencies that almost always are among their weakest.

This pattern is interesting, because these leaders are very
smart, have many years of industry experience, and are responsible for many
millions of dollars of revenue and profit.
They’ve been CEO’s, presidents, owners, CFO’s, CTO’s, VP’s and
directors. And yet… these competencies
regularly show up as some of their weakest competencies. These three competencies are their ability to
coach & mentor, their ability to
influence others, and their ability
to resolve conflict.

Why are these competencies so often among the weakest? I believe it’s because the skills necessary
to excel at them don’t come naturally to most people – regardless of
intelligence or experience. Here’s why
these three competencies are so critical to a leader and how to go about
improving each one.

Coaching &
Mentoring

One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to
develop the people below him or her.
There is tremendous opportunity and satisfaction as a leader in
developing others. By effectively
developing the people around us, we elicit excellence in a number of impactful
and far-reaching ways.

Study after study has shown that an important factor in
driving engagement is having the opportunity for professional growth. When a person becomes stagnant, they become
bored and disengaged. As a leader helps
someone expand their skill set and knowledge base, they make them more valuable
and more versatile. In addition, when a
leader coaches and mentors someone, they demonstrate their belief in them,
their abilities, and their potential, which nurtures loyalty and
responsiveness. One additional benefit
of developing others is that it allows a leader to groom someone to take their
place, thereby paving the way for the leader’s promotion.

Given the impact and far-reaching implications of developing
others, it is critical to master this important function, and adopting a
“coach-like” attitude and manner is the fastest and most effective
means of accomplishing that.

What does a coaching style of leadership look like? Coaching embodies a number of competencies
and strategies. Many of us, in an effort
to help someone “get it right” (and in the name of expediency), tell
others what to do and how to do it. And
while this does get the work done, it does little to develop the other person,
their skill set, and their confidence.

The alternative – the coaching approach – is to ask rather
than tell. Instead of starting off by
telling them what to do, ask them what they would do and how they would do
it. This strategy serves a number of
very important functions. Firstly, it demonstrates
that you have an interest in what they have to say. When you listen to someone, it acts as a sign
of respect because it demonstrates that you value what they have to say. The next benefit of asking is that their
answers will give you a sense of how they think. The answers will reveal their level of
insight and judgment and will illustrate their problem-solving abilities. And lastly, listening to the answers to your
questions will provide clues as to how best to help them develop. It helps you understand which aspects of
development they need help and guidance with.

Influencing

Mastering the ability to influence others is critical to the
success and effectiveness of a leader. A
strategy, no matter how well thought out, will get mediocre results if there
isn’t strong buy-in. A leader will
always get compliance because of his or her authority. But compliance and commitment are two
different things.

If people are compliant, they will generally do just enough to
keep from getting fired. The consequence
is that a strategy will get results, but not nearly to the level of a strategy
executed by a committed team.

How do you influence people?
How do you change their perspective so you get buy-in? People “buy” emotionally. It’s true whether you’re selling TV’s, cars,
ideas or strategies. They buy
emotionally and then rationalize logically.
There are two tools to employ in order to change someone’s perspective. They are the use of question-asking and the
use of analogies.

Asking good questions is an art. It took me many years to master it, with lots
of practice and plenty of missed opportunities.
I’ve found that there are two sets of questions that need to be asked. The first set of questions are those that
give you insight. They are curiosity questions that help you
better understand why someone sees things the way they do, thereby allowing you
to effectively change or correct their perspective. The second set of questions are those give them insight. They are questions that help them rethink
things.

The second tool for influencing people is the use of
analogies. Analogies are an excellent
vehicle for bringing someone around to your way of seeing things. Generally, you’ve been giving the issue at
hand far more thought than they have and therefore have a deeper understanding
of the problem and/or solution. Using an
analogy helps people “see” and “feel” the concept you’re talking about and does
it in such a way as to keep them from becoming defensive with respect to their
position. Once you’ve come up with a
meaningful analogy, it’s much easier for someone to shift their thinking and
their perspective.

Resolving Conflict

The ability to resolve conflict is essential to a leader’s
effectiveness. If conflict is allowed to
fester, it erodes engagement and erodes the respect a team has for its leader.

Workplace conflict tends to arise from poor communication, unmet expectations, differing perspectives, and stress. Ultimately, these each can be minimized or eliminated by improving interpersonal skills, setting clear expectations, shifting people’s perspectives, and helping to reduce stress. But the stage has to be set before the issues can be resolved.

The blueprint for resolving conflict starts with acting to
avoid further escalation. The more
frustrated and upset a person is, the more difficult it is to resolve a
situation. The next step is to
de-escalate the situation. I’ve found
that an excellent way to begin that process is to “state the obvious”. “Stating the obvious” means simply to
acknowledge that the frustration and/or disagreement exists. It’s often the perfect way to open the door
to resolve conflict. Just by starting
with, “Look… we’re both frustrated by this,” sets the stage for a
resolution. It acknowledges that you
recognize the other person is frustrated, it doesn’t point a finger at them,
and it implies that you’d like to work things out.

Once the stage is set for coming to a resolution, the next
step is to understand the other person’s perspectives and or motivations. As discussed above, the most effective means
of accomplishing this is through the use of good questions. In this case, a “good” question is one of
curiosity about why they feel the way they do, phrased and asked in a manner
that keeps them from becoming defensive.
A simple example of what a good question might be is, “What am I doing
that frustrates you?”, followed by, “Why does that frustrate you?” In contrast, a question that would cause them
to become defensive would be, “Why do you have to get so angry?” Once you gain insight into the underlying issues,
you can work together to resolve the conflict.

If you’d like help improving your ability to coach &
mentor, influence others and/or resolve conflict, please give me a call.

Leadership Development is Key to Business Value

Our research suggests that the pace of exits and successions will begin to increase this year. This conclusion is due to several factors. Life expectancy in the U.S. has risen above 80 years old, up from 72 several decades ago. Accordingly, the expectation of retirement age has also risen. When life expectancy was 72 years old, retirement age was considered to be 65, but now, because people are living longer, owners are waiting until their 70’s to retire. And the final factor suggesting increased activity is that the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation turns 73 this year.

As I’ve written in another article, the number of businesses that will hit the market in the coming years will far outstrip the number of interested buyers. The consequence of this excess supply is that only the most attractive businesses will find a buyer.

Although there are several important factors that make one business more attractive than another, a key issue is the strength of the leadership team. The strength of a leadership team not only impacts the value of a business but affects the likelihood that the deal will close.

Ken Sanginario, founder of Corporate Value Metrics and creator of the “Value Opportunity Profile” is an expert at valuing companies. He helps them increase their value and improves the likelihood they will sell. According to Sanginario, the strength of the leadership of a company will influence the value of a company by as much as 15-20%. By way of example, if a company has a capitalization rate of 20%, strengthening the effectiveness of the leadership team can realistically increase its capitalization to an effective rate of 17% – a significant boost in sales price.

Additionally, if a business’ leadership team is weak, the likelihood that a deal will go through diminishes dramatically. Tom West, author and president of Business Brokerage Press has stated that businesses with a seven-figure sales price will only close 25-33% of the time.

Therefore, if you (or your client) want to maximize the likelihood of selling a business and selling it at full price, the strength of the leadership team must be addressed.

Here’s what has to happen. The leadership competencies of the team need to be assessed so their strengths and weaknesses can be identified. Once the assessments are done, a program of leadership development should be undertaken to ensure the team’s effectiveness. Although development can usually be accomplished in about six months, this initiative should be started 2-5 years in advance of a transition. Because, just as one good year of EBITDA won’t impact a business’ value very much, neither will one year of strong leadership. You must demonstrate a pattern. Don’t wait until a few months before you go to market to address leadership issues. Start now, establish leadership effectiveness, and boost buyer confidence.

If you’d like help assessing and developing your leadership team, please contact us. It’s our specialty and our passion.