How is it possible to be an inspirational leader when you are team leading in a 9 to 5 rule bound environment?
Not many of us work in dramatic situations that give rise to stirring calls to action.
Shakespeare’s Henry V puts it well:
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead.”
Stirring stuff indeed: however, I suspect only adrenalin junkies would find this acceptable all day long!
How can we bring the benefits of inspirational leadership without exhortation exhaustion?
Perhaps President John Kennedy gives us a better example.
JFK had this to say in a speech at Rice University, Houston in 1962:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
This speech led to the first Moon landing.
Inspiration embodied in the mission, and channelled through the goals, strategies, tactics, tasks and daily achievements will drive astounding levels of performance.
The difficulty is in designing the work content of jobs so that the daily achievements show progress toward that over-arching, inspiring, great mission.
How do you design your jobs? How do you build in inspiration?