Let’s face it…most so called “Leaders” don’t really lead at all – they simply tell people what to do. Here’s a thought, what if you stopped telling and started inspiring.
The fact is without inspiration you can never truly achieve business or people transformation. Inspiration is the driving force behind any true transformation, so ask yourself this, “Why am I inspired to transform my business, people, and my leadership?” If the answer is, I don’t know, dig a little deeper.
Ask yourself 3 powerful questions:
- What will happen if my business, people and leadership stays stagnant?
- What will happen if my competitors figure it out and transform before my business?
- What will happen when my business, people and leadership transforms?
Think about increasing profitability, growing in new markets, what kind of new products or services can I be offering and how have my people/teams grown and developed.
By answering these 3 questions you will start to ignite the inspiration needed to move forward with your business, people and leadership transformation. Here is a great tip, if you find yourself struggling with the questions, try doing a little research, go online and search for other companies, people or leaders that you admire that have transformed. How did they do it? What were their needs? Ask people in your company to answer the same questions.
You see, without inspiration you are more likely to just be going through the motions. That will never work. The reason? It will just be another program or corporate initiative. You know the kind, the ones you always hated when you were an employee and your boss tried to stuff something down the ranks telling everyone how committed they are. But of course you and the rest of the team knew better. So you played along waiting for it to pass and within a few days/weeks/months you all were right back to where you were before – pretending everything was great.
This is why you, as the leader (boss, supervisor – insert our title or position here), must find true inspiration. It is only with your inspiration that you will be able to get others inspired too.
Let’s talk about how to find your inspiration. My first suggestion is to do some real soul searching to find your inspiration. There is a reason you are reading this article. What was it?
Is your business suffering from high turnover? Have you been losing market share in recent month? Are your employee engagement scores lower than expected? Are you hearing about changes in your industry? Whatever your reason, good for you, at least you are starting to think about the future.
However, all the doom and gloom doesn’t have to be the only motivator. Perhaps you are in the other camp, trying to think ahead of your competition. You’re already on top of your game, you just don’t want to lose it. You want to stay on top and you know transformation is the only way to ensure you don’t become complacent.
Determining why you feel the need to transform is the key, INSPIRATION is the engine! Now go and start your inspiration engine!
