Leadership Skills – Inspiring the Team to Achieve Goals

InBusiness, Leadership is about inspiring followers to achieve Team orOrganizational goals. You may be a Team Leader or Manager in a Business, andyou may have built the respect of your Team. Your next challenge is to get themfocused in the right direction, the direction that will achieve theirorganizational goals.

How does aTeam Leader persuade the Team to do this – to see the goals and to want to getthere? How does a Leader inspire the Team? The ability to be inspirational is akey Leadership competency that can be practiced and learnt. There two criticalkeys to work on to provide inspirational leadership – selling the vision andpersuading the Team that this is worth doing.

People wantto know where they are going and why they should bother going there – what isin it for them. A poor Leader will state the targets and the objectives –figures this week, figures this month. An effective Leader can get higherfigures and more committed followers by selling a positive outcome in a waythat inspires.

Step 1 isto paint a positive picture of what exactly the end goal is.

The goal must bepositive, rather than negative. It should be what we will do rather than whatwe should avoid doing. The art of always using positive language rather thannegative is essential to leadership. For example, we do not tell a Team Memberwhat NOT to do. We tell a Team Member what to do, or ask them to suggest a goodway of doing something.  The reason issimple, the negative way does not work! If the waiter puts a very hot plate downin front of you and says “Do not touch that plate, it is very hot”, what willwe do? Yes, we touch it!

When we areselling the goal, we paint the picture of the positive outcome – where we aregoing rather than not going. ‘I want us to be the highest performing Team inthe business’ – rather than ‘We can’t be in the middle of the league thisyear’. 

Paint avery clear picture of the end goal – the follower can see it and clearly visualizeit. Make it really attractive and relevant for your particular group. ‘We aregoing to achieve so much that every new hire will want to come on this Team’.

Step 2 isto have a plan.

How are we going to get there? You don’t have to have the wholeplan – but you need step 1 and step 2 – and both of these must make sense tothe Team. Identify quick wins – preferably generated from the Team itself, andpresent those as the first steps.

Step 3 isto sell it

Persuade them that it is worth doing and gain their buy-in. Thelanguage we use in effective leadership is real ‘selling’ language – allpositive language and very relevant to your Team members. We state the‘benefits’ of the end goal and the ‘benefits’ of the effort. First prepare alist of the benefits, then choose 2-3 under each heading, and then work out howto word these in a way that will come across well to your Team.

Whenidentifying benefits,  cover 5 areas –

1. TheCompany – what are the benefits to the Company of us achieving this goal? Whatis in it for them?

2. TheCustomer – what are the benefits for the Customer?

3. The Team– if we achieve this goal, in what way will the Team benefit?

4. The TeamLeader / Manager – how will I benefit if the Team achieves achieve this goal?

5. The TeamMember – what is in it for this Team Member / each Team Member?

Paint thepicture of the goal first – what it is. Next comes the benefits, in the orderlisted above. Then bottom line the success vision and the ‘can do’ element.

Practicethis and sell it well – you will definitely be on a path to providing effectiveleadership and to inspiring your Team.