A curator at a museum selects and organizes works of art using their expert knowledge for the purpose of sharing this collection with others. The collection of art is meant to inspire the audience. Likewise, an inspirational leader is curating the motivations of the individual members of their team. Like the museum curator, the inspirational leader takes inventory of what each person’s desires, goals, and motives are for work. Our artwork is our WHY.
• Mary is motivated to help seniors not feel marginalized
• John is motivated by being highly skilled in his craft
• Rory is motivated by financial rewards and career growth
• Cindy is motivated by changing the perception of dementia from hopelessness to joy
• Etc., etc., etc., etc.
Then, having assembled the right artists (who) onto the team, the inspirational leader simply gives them all a shared why, where, how, and when. What the team does is the final part of the equation.
INTERRELATED ACTIVITIES
The key to any great strategy is great execution. The inspirational leader – plain and simple – gets things done. They know what activities are important to the team. They know what skills each person brings to the team. They know what priorities to schedule.
Inspiring people to achieve great things is all about being an “achievement accountant”. You account for all the achievements on the team and you report it back to the team. When coaching individual members of the team, the inspirational leader personalizes the guidance based on that person’s motivations:
• Mary, your work last month really helped bring visibility to this cause about seniors who are marginalized. Look at the engagement we received on the blog post about how to help seniors be seen in their own care needs! How can we learn from this and keep the momentum?
• John, you had consistently been showing some serious skills improvement in SEO. I think this past quarter you said you felt
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a little static in bringing new skills to this area. How can I help you reignite the learning?
Inspiring people isn’t about motivating them. It’s about orchestrating the work that draws from what motivates them. A chef doesn’t try to motivate a line cook to love food. They orchestrate each person’s love of food to get the team’s work done.
CONCLUSION
If you are inspired by reading this article, consider this. I am not motivating you to do anything. I am simply drawing upon what I believe motivates you (inform, educate and influence the senior living industry) and offering insight as to how to be more effective in your desired work (leadership). Inspirational leadership is not about what you say; it is about what you see that others miss. Then, you must give clarity to those insights in a way that others can act upon them. Case in point, here are the insights from this article: • The 5 W’s and 1 H – Who, What, When, Where, Why and How
• Don’t create motivation; curate motivation
• Be an achievement accountant • Drive interrelated activities
The legacy of an inspirational leader is the pervasive feeling throughout the team or organization that each person was at the right place at the right time.
The truth is – you don’t catch lightning in a bottle the way you think you do. Picture someone literally trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Where are they standing? What the human eye sees as lightning is actually called the “return stroke”. The brilliant flash of light starts from the ground and travels up. (Look this up.) Want to catch lightning in a bottle? It isn’t someone standing on the ground waiting for lightning (inspiration) to strike them.
Lightning strikes from the ground up. The leader catches it; they don’t deliver it.
Listen to James Lee on the Contributor Wednesday Series
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