Inspire your team
“A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader; a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves” – Eleanor Roosevelt.
Inspiration comes from trust. The truth is we all want to be trusted. To be trusted is one of the most inspiring forms of human motivation. People who trust those they lead bring out the very best in them.
Similarly, people want to be inspired. It can feel as vital to our existence as air in our lungs. In fact the word “inspire” comes from the Latin root “inspare,” which means to breathe life.
Put another way, to inspire means to bring life into something that is lifeless. So, to inspire someone is to breathe life into them. As a manager, can you say with honesty that you do this with your team?
Unfortunately most people today are dangerously low on inspiration. In those precious moments when it touches us, it feels like a breath of fresh air.
To inspire is to take an experience and imbue it with purpose, to take a job and make it meaningful.
As a manager it is vital to encourage a worker to become a creator, an employee to become a colleague, a vendor to become a partner, or a group to become a winning team.
As leaders our job is to inspire the people around us. That is what your staff crave.
When we inspire people we rekindle inner spirit, both theirs and ours.
When we inspire other people, we breathe new life, purpose, and passion into them and us.
We offer a new perspective, not only of their work and world but also of them as humans. Because we genuinely see greatness within them, they begin to see the possibilities for themselves they hadn’t previously considered, or ever seen.
Inspiring others should be the most important task of any manager. If you don’t do it your competitors will.
Tony Delaney, CEO Brownie Points,
