Inspirational Leadership: Proven Ways to Inspire High Performance

Do You Have Enough Inspirational Leadership at Work?
Inspirational leadership is powerful — and surprisingly uncommon. Research from Bain & Company and the Economist Intelligence Unit found that fewer than half of employees view their leaders as inspiring and motivating. Even fewer believe their leaders consistently:

• Foster high levels of employee engagement.
• Model the desired company culture.
• Live the organization’s stated corporate values.

That matters because leaders do more than set direction. They set the emotional and performance tone for everyone around them.

What is Inspirational Leadership?
To inspire means to stimulate action, arouse possibility, or bring something to life. In fact, an archaic meaning of inspire is “to breathe life into.”

That captures the essence of inspirational leadership. Great leaders breathe life into a strategy, project, team, or organization by creating the clarity, alignment, commitment, and energy required to accomplish something meaningful.

Both workplace complacency and inspiration can be contagious. Inspired employees tend to invest more discretionary effort, persevere through setbacks, and raise expectations for those around them.

The classic parable of two bricklayers illustrates the difference. When asked what they were doing, the first replied, “I am laying bricks.” The second answered, “I am building a cathedral.”

Both were performing the same task. Only one saw the larger purpose.

Inspirational Leadership: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others

Helping employees connect their daily efforts to the strategic goals and vision of the organization is one of the foundational responsibilities of inspirational leadership.

Based on data from our leadership simulation assessments, the most inspirational leaders consistently do two things particularly well.

1. Actively Involve Stakeholders Early
   If you want people to commit to achieving something extraordinary, give them a meaningful role in shaping how to get there.
   
   Rather than dictating strategy from the top and expecting flawless execution, inspirational leaders actively involve employees in strategic planning early enough for their ideas, concerns, and experience to matter.
   
   Early involvement creates ownership. It also surfaces implementation barriers before they become expensive problems.
   
   The goal is to create enough strategic buy-in from the people responsible for execution to minimize resistance, inconsistency, and unnecessary delays.
2. Create Meaningful Connections to the Vision, Mission, and Values
   Effective corporate visions, company mission statements, and values should provide the purpose, direction, and cohesion required to make better decisions and collectively accomplish strategic priorities.
   
   Research by organizational psychologist Adam Grant underscores the performance implications of purpose. In a widely cited field experiment, employees who had direct contact with beneficiaries of their work subsequently increased their performance by more than 100%. The research illustrates how connecting everyday work to its human impact can dramatically increase motivation and persistence.
   
   Inspirational leaders make that connection tangible. They:
   
   — Learn what motivates each person and connect those motivations to meaningful work.
   — Help employees understand how their individual contributions support the larger mission.
   — Translate abstract strategies and values into concrete day-to-day priorities and behaviors.
   — Reconnect people to the larger purpose during setbacks, uncertainty, and periods of fatigue.
   — Recognize individual contributions that advance the vision, especially when those contributions might otherwise go unnoticed.
   
   The message is simple: people are more inspired when they understand not only what they are doing, but why it matters.

The Bottom Line
We sometimes describe someone with an overpowering personality as a person who “sucks all the air out of the room.” Inspirational leadership does the opposite. Inspirational leaders bring fresh air into the room. They expand what people believe is possible, connect everyday work to a meaningful purpose, and create the energy required to turn aspirations into results.

To become the kind of leader who inspires trust, creates alignment, and brings out the best in others, download The 4R Model of Transformational Leadership — How Great Leaders Build Trust, Alignment, and Results

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.