How Courageous Leaders Create and Sustain Inspiring, Motivating Cultures and Families Self-motivation and true self-accountability come from understanding what motivates others and articulating the organization’s mission, vision and strategy in the language of team members. These attributes will be a huge factor in determining the success or failure of the organization’s goals and initiatives. How do Courageous Leaders create and sustain inspiring, motivating cultures and families? Sustained inspiration doesn’t come from motivational speeches and feel-good initiatives. It comes from people finding ways to align the purpose of the work they do with their personal purpose for being on earth, including their natural interests, talents and capabilities. When team members understand how their work not only helps the organization deliver on its mission and vision, but also on their own personal mission and vision, a motivating and empowering environment is created and self-alignment is achieved. We believe that when a person’s personal mission is aligned with their organization’s mission, the most powerful energy for improving the world is created. To understand what motivates those on our teams takes curiosity, time and constant work. To build and nurture these relationships, teams cannot be so large (ideally 8-12 people per team) or they will likely have difficulty having enough airtime and space to fully contribute. When team size is less than five, there may Courageous Leaders Create Inspiring, Motivating Environments not be enough diversity of views and opinions to challenge one another for innovation which we believe is the lifeblood of any organization. More than 12 can function more like a committee than a team. Functioning like a committee means some voices are dominant and others are crowded out with little airtime and dissipating energy. It has been said that, to lead the many, we must lead the few. We often cite the example of Jesus, not as a religious figure, but as a leader who exemplifies leading the many by leading the few. By working with a dozen disciples, he reached the many. Take Action: Some questions to ask yourself: Are you multilingual, understanding the different languages (thought patterns) of those on your team? Does your language invite/require different perspectives and points of view? Does your language help relate team member’s comments to one another? Does your language recognize and reinforce the value of divergent thinking? Does your language give credit to the ideas and solutions offered? THE POWER OF HOWTM • Do team members think, feel and realize from their collective intelligence that they are smart and capable, so they want to and do participate? Lifting those on our teams by developing, coaching and encouraging them, while providing available resources and removing barriers will empower them to lift the few on their teams and so on, eventually lifting and empowering all the people in the organization from one Peak Performance to the next. We often discuss research that repeatedly shows the top two attributes team members say they desire in a leader: The leader is positive. The leader creates a motivating, inspiring work environment. How can leaders create positive, motivating work environments? We know that energy is contagious. We always think about it as human glue. Is the leader... Exuding human-glue relationships and positivity? Excited about the shared vision they created with their organization? Courageous Leaders Create Inspiring, Motivating Environments In love with the organization’s mission and vision? Excited about the organization’s winning proposition (promise to the customers they serve)? Committed to by living into the organization’s values, not just espousing them? The leaders described above are absolutely positive because they are serving the mission of their organization or company. They want all the team members to serve the mission. It’s all about the mission while pursuing the vision. Leaders come and go, and they will over time. But if the consistent message is, “We are all here to serve the mission!” (and it’s a really good one), then the environment will be an exciting and worthy place where they deliver products and services. We can hardly talk about that without getting quite excited! Every action is strategic: Living according to shared values. Pursuing a shared mission every day. Delivering on a shared winning proposition as the promise to customers or clients. THE POWER OF HOWTM • Pursuing a shared vision, where we want to be in the next 3 to 5 years. That’s really exciting because we all want to feel accomplished and successful. We can all make a good day, week, month, year and life! Next, we begin asking questions about what we have to accomplish. What are our key objectives to get to the vision? What needs to be accomplished in the following strategic perspectives: Financial stability and community impacts. Customer or client services and products. Friendly, lean, effective and efficient work processes. Diversity, equity and inclusion in a culture that is inspiring and invigoratingly healthy. When leaders are really focused on what’s important (a few things and not everything), they begin to let go of what is really not very important. Work is prioritized and not just a pile that strains teams. A “stretch” is far different from a “strain.” Leaders help employees know exactly what’s important. Everyone is linked and aligned. Everyone understands that saying no to a number of things enables them to say yes to where they want to go, how they’re going to be with each other getting there, and what they will be delivering to their customers and clients. Courageous Leaders Create Inspiring, Motivating Environments With this kind of mission-driven, vision-pulled, values-based culture and an inspiring winning proposition, Courageous Leaders have the opportunity to create a motivating, inspiring environment that will really excite team members. When people make a mistake, they understand it’s just a learning opportunity. Shared values lived daily, help guide us in our decision making and gets us back on track if we slip up. If someone falls off the truck one day they know how to get right back on with the advantage of their learnings. When team members are doing new work for the first time or taking smart risks, there are always important learnings. In fact, life is one big experiment. When we do something that does not work, we learn to do it a better way. People know what it takes to do well in this environment. There is synergy between the leader and the employees. It’s just fantastic. That’s the job of the positive leader. There are so many choices in the world today. The positive leader says, Let’s get laser focused on the difference we can make with our employees to serve them better so they can serve our customers even better. We believe we can get choice-laden. It’s the job of the leader to not let that happen but to have the focus and excitement about where we are going and the things we must do to get there. Being clear and courageous does not leave team members guessing if they are doing the THE POWER OF HOWTM right thing. It is why real-time feedback, coaching and reinforcement requires intentional-attention from leaders. We often talk with groups about time mind travel. Most of the time, we are either worrying about something that may happen in the future or ruminating about something that happened in the past. Even when we are physically present, our minds are usually traveling to some other place in time! It's important for a leader to be vision-pulled. Setting a vision for the future is a key part of being a leader. But how does a leader, once that vision is set, stay in the present moment and not live in the future? It is also important for a leader to learn from and extrapolate lessons from past experiences, both good and bad. So, how does a leader take lessons from the past and not dwell in the past? When we focus on the future so much that it creates anxiety, it can take us out of the present. The same thing is true if we're focusing too much on the past. We may be associating guilt, regret or other negative feelings to a past event that can pull us out of the present. The question for the leader is: How can we stay in the present while bringing lessons learned from the past and be inspired by a compelling vision instead of feeling frustration from the past or anxiety about what might happen in the future? Courageous Leaders Create Inspiring, Motivating Environments Take Action: Three key actions that a leader can take are: Remembering past events, negative and positive, and how they shaped the person that leader is today. That way the leader can bring the lessons from the past that helped develop their strength forward without dragging the baggage along with them into the present. By setting a clear and inspiring vision, the leader can be pulled toward the vision, inspired and motivated by it, versus being stressed or anxious about an unknown future. The focus can be on the present moment and, what is that next step to work towards the vision and then the next, and the next...? Be aware of the running inner-narrative in our minds. We are telling ourselves an ongoing story of what happened in the past and what may happen in the future. If the leader is feeling anxious, guilty, or whatever that feeling is at a particular moment, it is good to be aware of the story they are telling themselves. That story determines the quality of our lives and how successful we will be. A helpful question is, “Am I safe and okay right now?” THE POWER OF HOWTM Science tells us it is impossible for our m
