Leadership today is about offering an answer to the great challenge of inspiring the employee. Mahatma Gandhi said: “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people”. As a leader, you must know how to encourage, motivate and involve your team in the achievement of common goals. Have a look at these 9 ideas to inspire your team:
1. Start with yourself
Leaders feel that true inspiration begins with themselves internally. In order to pay attention to the people you have around and help them grow and develop, you first have to analyze yourself and find your own motivation to share your energy and vision with others.
2. Motivate positively
The second step towards getting to inspire a whole team is to do it in a positive light. Avoid punishment, reprimands in front of other colleagues, coercion or putting the blame on particular individuals. Change your way of thinking, understand the value of your employees, congratulate them on their small achievements, find something to celebrate in order to maintain their motivation. Everything is key for your leadership to be beneficial for the entire organization.
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3. Share information
Share with your team the circumstances, challenges and opportunities surrounding the implementation of a project. Engaging them and sharing with them valuable information will inspire them to launch new initiatives and ensure the viability of the projects.
4. Be an example
Your leadership challenge can spread and develop the leaders of tomorrow. Watch your actions so you can set an example as a leader and transmit positive values to your team, because you will be the best inspiration for them.
5. Take care of your workplace
Leadership is, now more than ever, a skill that seeks the welfare of the whole organization. An easy and beneficial way to inspire others is to take care of the workplace. Make the office where you spend so many hours together be an appropriate and wellconditioned place, where creativity is fostered and employees feel comfortable.
Lighting, workstations, facilities and public areas, decor in line with the philosophy of the company: everything influences in improving the working environment and inspiring our team.
6. Share and divide responsibilities
As a leader, you have special responsibilities within the team. You also have the power to give control and assign tasks to other peers, so that all of them may contribute to the achievement of common objectives and there can be a shared responsibility. Getting our team to assume responsibilities is the secret to work motivation. Leaders of today are wondering what they can do for others and trying to provide new opportunities constantly.
7. Protect individuals
People who are part of your team are not all the same. Everyone is different, so you should treat them as individuals. Protect their differences. Leaders today must play a close role and show empathy with their peers (for example, some people prefer public recognition while others will prefer a private congratulation, some are motivated by money, others care more about flexible hours, etc.).
8. Choose the right person for the right job
Leaders today have the difficult job of deciding who does each task. It is not easy, but it is important to carefully choose the best person to perform each job, since not everyone has the same skills. You have the power to inspire the whole group if you know how to choose who can achieve the goal.
9. Organize brainstorming sessions
You will have surely heard of brainstorming. Organize meetings to share views and generate new opinions that might bring improvements to the whole team. You will make your team feel an active part of the decision making process and you will better define the responsibilities of each of them.