Seven Disciplines of A Leader

15Practice 4: Motivate and Inspire People

Leaders and cheerleaders share a common goal: to inspire your team to do well without getting in their way. Successful leaders devote themselves to a bold ideal and channel their teams to fulfilling it.

Inspiration requires you to be a great role model. Members of your team will recall how you led them in previous tasks, and they will often adopt your style. If, however, you have previously failed to command team members' respect, your team may take a more Wild West approach, thereby inviting chaos. Your encouragement and support will help inspire your team to victory, and rewarding team members for a job well done reinforces their achievements. If a project hits a bump in the road, you need to maintain your optimism, according to Marshall Goldsmith, PhD, author of Mojo and What Got you Here Won't Get You There.

Being the executive optimist means you have to view challenges or problems as opportunities for growth and improvement. As Goldsmith writes: “If we can take the positive spirit inside us toward what we are doing now and extend it to what other people are doing—in other words, make our optimism contagious—then each of us has a better chance of becoming a person who can rise from a setback that might crumble others.”

Don't allow a bad apple to spoil your team's motivation. A firmly entrenched pessimist can drag down everyone's spirits, so meet with this team member for an attitude adjustment. If negative behavior continues, you ...