Built to Grow

Chapter 3Inspirational Leadership

‘If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.’

—John Quincy Adams

There are many stories of inspirational leadership throughout this book, because it is such an integral part of building any high performing organization. Building winning strategies requires great leaders, who will create and define them, guide and shape their implementation, and win the hearts and minds of their people to deliver with passion and commitment, not because they have to, but because they want to.

So in this chapter, we're going to cover two key things: first, the correlation between leadership capability and building a high performing sustainable business, and second, the key traits of inspirational leaders.

Here's a positioning statement to get us started:

One of the single most competitive advantages for businesses today is their ability to grow, nurture, and develop leadership and management capability faster than the competition . . . future business success depends on it.

That's a bold statement to make, but I passionately believe in it, and more importantly, I have seen it have a profound impact in thousands of businesses of all shapes and sizes. If you want to accelerate and fast track the success of your business, and build sustained high performance, developing your leadership culture is among your biggest priorities.

Where are you on your journey in building leadership and management capability ...