Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM, ACC  

Despite all the research that has taken place about the nature of leadership, practitioners and scholars have long acknowledged that many aspects of leadership remain a mystery. One such aspect is the concept of “charisma.” Charisma has been described as a quality that enables leaders to influence others, to attract followers, and achieve remarkable outcomes.

But how is charisma defined? What impact does it really have? Can it be learned or acquired? Read on to find out!

Here’s this month’s feature ...

Unlocking the Mystery of Inspiring Leadership by Jack Zenger, Joe Folkman, and Scott Edinger

From the online Zenger Folkman Leadership Resource Center

Highlights from the article:

• “Charisma” is defined as the ability to inspire and motivate.  Why is it important?

1. The author’s research with roughly 14,500 leaders confirms that being “inspiring and motivating”  is the single most important leadership competency.

2. It is the leadership competency on which leaders overall receive the lowest scores from their manager, peers and those who report to them.

• The authors identified the behaviors that differentiated leaders who received the highest scores on the item, “inspires and motivates to high performance.” They found ten behaviors and qualities that set inspiring and motivating leaders apart from all the rest. These ten fall into three areas.
    

• Area One: Attributes. The first was a set of attributes or somewhat broad and general qualities.

1. Role Model – Inspiring and motivating leaders are excellent examples of what they want otners to do.

2. Change Champion – Inspiring leaders are constantly challenging the organization to change.

3. Initiative – These leaders are a constant and driving force to make things happen for the better. If status quo is the goal then there is not a great deal of inspiration required.

• Area Two: Behaviors. There are six discrete, actionable behaviors used by inspiring leaders.

4. Stretch Goals

5. Clear Vision and Direction

6. Communication

7. Developing People

8. Teamwork

9. Innovation

• Area Three: Emotion. Being inspirational hinges on the ability of the leader to evoke a positive emotional response in others.

10. Emotion - Much research is currently showing the highly contagious nature of emotion and leaders are in a particularly powerful position to have their emotions infect those about them. Their position acts as an accelerant to any normal emotional contagion that occurs. Inspiration and motivation are the energy source for leadership. Powerful, positive emotions turn the energy on. And as you can imagine, negative emotions shut down the flow of energy

• The authors suggest that leaders focus on developing one of the behaviors or attributes listed above and infuse it with positive emotion with the people around them. By doing so, a leader will become more inspirational and, in turn, more productive and profitable.

  
For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.zfco.com/media/articles/ZFA-Unlocking-Inspiring-Leadership.pdf

   
25 Methods for Inspiring Others

Inspiring leaders utilize a variety of ways to connect with those around them. Zenger Folkman analyzed their database to generate the following list of behaviors that make people inspiring.

The good news: you won’t likely find any surprises. The ability to inspire and motivate comes down to doing a lot of the “simple” things well. Simple - but not easy. All too often, many of these ideas, while they may be common sense, are anything but common practice.

Read these comments about the strengths of these “inspiring” leaders …

1. Follows through on commitments. Keeps promises.

2. Treats people fairly. Maybe not always equally, but fairly.

3. Focuses on achieving most important goals without getting distracted.

4. Displays enthusiasm and energy for what we are doing.

5. Helps us understand the “why’s” behind big decisions.

6. Exhibits genuine concern for the people [they] work with.

7. Has high standards and holds us to them.

8. Generates excitement about major initiatives.

9. Provides clarity in all communication.

10. Considers the needs of the entire company in addition to our team.

11. Promotes our creative and strategic thinking.

12. Maintains [his/her] focus; does not multi-task. No “email voice” when we are on the phone.

13. Dedicated to our team’s growth and development. Spends a lot of time on focused coaching.

14. Treats everyone with respect and dignity.

15. Ties our teams objectives to the overall business strategy.

16. A real team orientation. Works to dissolve the separate camps.

17. Takes time to celebrate our success and encourages us to stay on the path.

18. High energy; seems like it never ends. Positive thinker.

19. Really understands what our customers want and need and makes sure all company decisions stem from that.

20. Shares ideas and actively seeks input.

21. Challenges ideas respectfully. Encourages others to speak up.

22. Has done a great job of aligning us around a vision.

23. Anything [he/she] asks us to do, [he/she] has already done or is willing to do.

24. Pro-activeness.

25. Very candid; straight shooter. Does not sugar coat or equivocate in order to be popular or liked. As a result [he/she] is deeply trusted.

Source: http://www.zfco.com/media/articles/ZFA-25-Methods-to-Inspire.pdf

Next Month

Over the past hundred years, business thinkers have been largely divided between rationalists (symbolized most visibly by Frederick Winslow Taylor, the 19th-century “father of scientific management”) and humanists (symbolized by Douglas McGregor, author of The Human Side of Enterprise [McGraw-Hill, 1960]). Researchers have rarely sought to integrate the two perspectives. Next month’s article makes the case that neither approach should stand alone.

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