In my last article, I discussed what Transformational Leadership is and how you can apply the first of the core attributes (influence), to your leadership style.
A quick review: Transformational Leadership centers on four core attributes that make a great leader: Influence, motivation, innovation and individualization.
To recap, the secret sauce to the attribute of influence is trust and respect. There are four tactics you can consider to move toward being an influential Transformational Leader.
- Be authentic: If you expect to build respect and trust, show them how its done.
- Be inclusive: Get your team involved in the decision process.
- Be collaborative: Don’t aim for compromise. Collaborate until you get to consensus.
- Be encouraging: Encourage and affirm their value, “to be clear is to be kind.”
In this article, let’s look at the next two: motivation and innovation. For motivation, do we focus on intrinsic or extrinsic motivation? For me, the answer is both. Intrinsic is self-motivation. What drives you internally, so you focus on those things that bring personal satisfaction. Extrinsic is external motivation. It’s about doing those things, regardless of whether its personally satisfying or not.
Leaders that effectively use the attribute of motivation use both of these types of motivators. How do you rally and inspire a team member around a shared vision? I’ll turn once again, to the authors of the book, “The Leadership Challenge,” Kouzes and Posner.
“Learning how to Inspire a Shared Vision might sound intimidating, but it starts with simple actions: describing what you want out of the future, asking others what they want, and talking about the similarities and differences.”
While the best of leaders can share a vision, it’s the act of listening to and helping others to understand why the vision, purpose or action is important to the work they are doing. It’s aligning their work, their purpose with the greater purpose.
Here’s an example that happened to me: A finance team leader approached me and said revenue is down, and expenses need to be releveled. What if my team can drive up revenue vs. relevel expense? I used the tactics of an influential leader to be a motivational leader. I shared the challenges, asked for input, collaboratively determined tactics and finally tied it all back to the team member’s purpose of engaging and improving member’s lives.
I asked the finance team to give me three months. If we hadn’t moved the needle, I’d take a different action. But we were able to align the team member’s purpose with the greater purpose. The result? A change in how we approach engagement. The outcome? Close to a million dollar increase in revenue, exceeding the initial request.
That leads me into the third core attribute, innovation. Our team couldn’t have achieved the outcome without thinking outside the box and being innovative. In order for this attribute to work well, a leader needs to create an environment where encouraging the sharing of innovative ideas is welcome.
I’ll go back again to the common thread throughout Transformational Leadership: an influential leader builds trust. If your team knows their input is valued, they will share ideas that enables the organization to continuously improve.