How to Ignite Energy and Creativity in Your Workforce
By Suzanne Bates
As a leader, the way you communicate with others is so important. What you say can ignite their energy and creativity. As the economy moves toward recovery, your company will encounter opportunities that may not have existed before. This is the time when you need a passionate, engaged workforce to be innovative and excited about the future.
Right now, while recovery is on the horizon, people may still feel stressed out. They are managing on smaller budgets. Even if they've been promoted, the opportunity is coupled with new challenges. If you want to retain your top people, it is especially important for you as a leader to be able to handle employees' stress while painting an exciting picture of the future.
Why do you need a motivated team? Motivation has a direct, undeniable impact on the bottom line. Motivated employees are far more inclined to overcome the obstacles to their success. If you can engage them not just one on one, but also as a group, and help them see how the next year or two could be your best years yet, imagine how excited they will be. It all starts with a big, exciting vision, and your ability as a leader to foster a positive, productive atmosphere while showing people how they can contribute.
To be successful, you must embrace this fact: most people who work in your organization want to find a worthy purpose for their work. We are all happiest when we are doing something important, when we are working toward a mission larger than ourselves. As a leader, when you understand that mission and purpose are tied to motivation, you can unlock great performance in your organization.
Imagine the power of having an entire organization of people who are working not just for a paycheck, but also to achieve their own potential. They are energized by the possibilities and are connected to each other through a common purpose. This is what is possible when you follow the principles of "motivating like a CEO."
How do you become the kind of leader who is known for motivating and inspiring others? Apply the following five key principles.
- Think of yourself as the CMO. Many leaders have told me how fulfilled they have felt when they aligned others with purpose and saw measurable business results. Aon Corporation CEO Greg Case visited over 500 Aon offices around the world, working to connect people with the mission of becoming one global company. Aon had grown by acquisition and had many brokers and consultants who preferred operating independently. As CEO, Case felt energized by the mission to change how these brokers and consultants saw themselves and their company, and he saw real and measurable financial results. "A global client is worth eight or nine times what a regional client is worth," says Case. "The economics are staggering: a $1 million client becomes a $10 million client."
- Understand that motivating others really begins with you. As the CMO, you must feel purpose and passion in order to ignite it in others. People long to work for passionate leaders who inspire them. To help you along, here are a few questions to ask yourself that may help you better connect to your own purpose and passion:
- What do I really enjoy about the work that I do?
- Why does this work matter to me?
- What are the outcomes or impact of this work on others?
- When do I feel the greatest sense of satisfaction?
- If I were talking to my best friend about what I love about my job, what would I say?
- What would our customers, clients and others say is the best thing about our company?
- Acknowledge that people have different motivations. Don't assume that what gets you out of bed in the morning is what motivates others. Commissions and bonuses, for example, might be a strong motivator for a sales person, while having the opportunity to work on innovative projects may be what drives an engineer. Once people's needs are met and they believe they are receiving a fair wage for their work, they are motivated by doing work that fulfills them.
- Make a personal connection. If you adopt the practice of walking around and engaging in conversations, you won't believe how much people appreciate it. People will go out of their way for any leader who treats them with respect and gets to know them as individuals. The best motivators praise, recognize, and reward their people. Praise is a precision tool in leadership that allows you to reinforce the exact behaviors and values that will make your organization successful.
- Walk your talk. Acting in a way that is consistent with your words is essential to your success as a leader and a motivator. People believe what they see, more than what they hear. If you say you want a culture of teamwork and respect, and then be sure your own leadership team demonstrates those values every day.
FINDING TIME TO COMMUNICATE
In times of crisis or stress, leaders tend to retreat, talk to each other and even hold back information. Now is the time to commit to communicating more often and more effectively than ever before. People need to be in the flow of information, and they need to hear from you, if they are going to do their best work. In difficult times as well as better ones, if they don't hear from you, they will fill that void with their own speculation. Even when you have bad news, it is far better to keep people up to date and focused on what they can do to create a better future.
Motivational communication isn't just about giving an inspiring presentation to a large group, although that's a great skill to have. It's what you bring to every interaction that connects people with purpose - and what moves them to act. Really see people, listen to them, respond to them, and engage in a meaningful exchange of ideas. Motivating people isn't so much a checklist as it is a mind-set.
BECOME A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER
As you move ahead in your career, and accept leadership roles, your role really changes. Many leaders say they shift from an inward focus to an external focus. This shift means you must become an ever-better, more motivating speaker. And you must embrace the speaking role. For example, a few years ago, Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com and Eons, started collecting all the name badges he wore that bore the title "speaker." He was on the road giving so many presentations that the collection quickly grew to fill several shoe boxes. He considered photographing them for the cover of a book to make a point about his role as "master sales person." He says, "I think that's my job. Speaking is my natural spot as a leader, and I probably crafted that role, even though I was a pretty shy kid in high school."
A very important skill in motivational speaking is telling compelling stories. Stories have impact. You can use them to communicate your leadership message, to share the lessons of successes and failures, as well as your vision and values, purpose and passion. People enjoy hearing stories, and when they remember the story, they remember the point. They remember what they see and feel. Stories are one of the most powerful tools a speaker has to connect people to an idea or concept. If you do not currently include stories in your presentations, begin experimenting to find your authentic voice and style. This will help you catapult your leadership communication style to a new level.
DELIVER THE MESSAGE THROUGH MANY CHANNELS
Today's technology offers countless ways to get the word out to employees and important audiences. Many people take in information by reading; others prefer to listen. E-mail and written communication should be powerful tools, used to drive your messages home. Be creative in your written communication; when appropriate, use humor, inspiring quotes, stories and other elements to bring it alive.
Some leaders use e-mail very effectively, knowing that it keeps them connected with every level of the organization. Bill Swanson, chairman and CEO of Raytheon, tries to answer all his e-mail within 24 hours, for a strategic reason. "They should have all the resources of the company available to them, and I am a resource," says Swanson. "If I can understand what is going on, I can often help. If someone knows of a problem and doesn't do anything, it can't be fixed. So I want them to believe [that] they can get in touch and communicate with me if they have a concern."
True, new modes and technologies like blogs and Twitter place new demands on leaders, so the key in deciding how to manage this is to understand your own goals and objectives. Podcasts and video also allow you to spread "good news" quickly, which is a tremendous asset in motivating people. Learn the art of brevity. You can strike a positive, warm tone and still keep your messages short. Don't be abrupt - be complete, but be efficient.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON BECOMING A MOTIVATIONAL LEADER
The most successful leaders are not just the hardest working leaders; they are the ones you remember. They don't direct people so much as rally others to get behind a vision, and drive forward with a powerful, common purpose. At any stage in your career, you can become this kind of leader, one who inspires people and brings them together to make exciting things happen.
Make the decision to work and live with passion every day. Communicate this passion to others. Look for ways to connect people to a common purpose, and be sure to tell them how important they are to the organization's success. Then, sit back and watch the transformation.
This article was adapted from Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act! by Suzanne Bates (McGraw Hill 2009). To read more about motivating and communicating, pick up your copy of the book by visiting amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com today!