Leaders never lose their focus. They keep their eyes on the big picture.
—Dale Carnegie
By now it should be clear that an inspirational leader is a kind of poet. Inspirational leaders don’t usually like routine. They want to keep opening up new territories. They can be impatient with details and are often not very good at small talk. They tend to see themselves as the lead roles in a great drama that they’re enacting with the other members of the organization. If they give themselves the best lines, it’s only because they genuinely believe those lines will bring out the best in everyone.
Clearly this style of leadership blends well with historic conquest and with America’s Cup sailboat racing. It also fits with building Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills and running multibillion-dollar companies.
For those of us not engaged in enterprises on that scale, inspirational leadership presents a special challenge. You may be in the children’s furniture business, or you may run a pet store in a suburban shopping mall. Whatever your endeavors, you must be able to see yourself on a grand scale if you aspire to be an inspirational leader.
The single biggest challenge of inspirational leadership mastery is the ability to play the hero. If you want to inspire, you want to have the ball in your mitt at the last second of the game. You believe that you are a rock star, even if you’re on a telephone instead of a stage. Hold on to that vision.
Harvey Mackay’s book Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive has sold well over two million copies worldwide. From the title you might expect the book to be a memoir about an underwater demolition team or the recovery of sunken treasure. Instead it’s lessons learned by running an envelope business in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s not about locating Spanish galleons. It’s about retaining customers when a competitor undercuts your unit price. Mackay’s genius lies in making the envelope business sound like the Normandy invasion. He is able to do this on the printed page because he does it in his everyday life as well. He can communicate it to others because he truly believes it himself.
The core of inspirational leadership is the sense that things are happening on a scale larger than life. You have the ability to see your experiences in this way. What is really exciting about your work, your organization, and the people who comprise it? What are some of the really dramatic things that have taken place under your leadership? Who were the heroes of those stories, and who were the villains? When you begin to think of your world in this way, you’re beginning to think like an inspirational leader.
Paul Messner owns a small graphic design company in Sacramento, California. Most of his business is with local companies who run display ads in newspapers and magazines. For its size, Paul’s company is very successful. However, he has never worked on a national ad campaign, nor has his work ever run in a nationally distributed publication. Nonetheless, Paul has mastered the art of inspirational leadership. Regardless of the number of employees he has or his gross income at the end of the year, Paul’s business is big because he sees it as big.
Whenever Paul hires someone, he takes half an hour with the new employee for a private conversation. The meeting is always pretty much the same, but it has such meaning for Paul that the experience seems entirely new. This is because Paul tells a story that defines what his company intends to be. On the surface it’s not particularly earthshaking. There was a convention taking place in San Diego. Paul’s firm had designed some brochures and booklets that would be made available at the door and during the scheduled presentations. The work had gone smoothly and everything had gone to the printer well before the convention was scheduled to begin on a Saturday morning.
It was quite a shock, therefore, when a phone call came on Friday afternoon from the convention organizers. Where were all the brochures and booklets? Paul quickly ascertained that the printer had completed the job on schedule, but had mistakenly shipped it by regular surface mail and not by express. There was no way the material would get to San Diego by the time the doors opened in the morning. All the advertising and the printed material would go to waste. If anything in this line of work could be called a genuine catastrophe, this was it.
Strictly speaking, the fault lay with the printer, but Paul felt personally responsible for it. It was now after closing time on a Friday evening, but Paul insisted that the printer stay open. He demanded that the entire job be reprinted immediately. Despite the fact that it had taken more than a week to print the job in the first place, Paul kept things moving throughout the night. Moreover, when the materials were ready, Paul put everything in the back of his truck and hit the road for San Diego. Dawn was just breaking by the time he arrived.
After hearing Paul tell this story, despite the fact that he’s told it dozens of times, every new employee feels as if they are joining a company that can alter the course of world history. That’s the way an inspirational leader can make people feel. It’s not a matter of technique; it’s passion, commitment, and high drama. It’s taking something like graphic design and turning it into something like emergency heart surgery.
The hope is that even in reading this you’re beginning to feel some of the excitement that comes with being an inspirational leader.
In addition to everything inspirational leaders must give to other people, they must also be prepared to take on even more. Psychologically speaking, inspirational leaders can become like surrogate parents to their team members. And as every parent knows, this means being the focal point for all kinds of hopes, dreams, fears, and irrational hostilities. An inspirational leader can never hold this dynamic against people or punish them for their emotional investment. Nothing must be done to discourage them from making this investment, because this kind of obligation is the foundation of a leader’s effectiveness. Under this kind of pressure and scrutiny, it’s really no surprise that many inspirational leaders eventually leave that role.
Throughout history inspirational leadership has often been understood as a highly perishable and transitory quality. When military or political crises occurred in ancient Rome, a highly charismatic individual would be given almost dictatorial powers. They would be given this power, however, only for the duration of the problem. Similarly, American Indian tribes of the Great Plains appointed special leaders to deal with particular situations. They seemed to recognize that inspirational leaders could be expected to burn brightly, but not for long. It’s important to be aware of the many pressures that this kind of mastery demands. Be sure you’re ready to accept them and to live up to them.
Leaders have many ways to communicate ideas to team members. The possibilities range from simply telling people what to do to much more collaborative approaches. A number of these possibilities are described by the Tannenbaum-Schmidt Continuum, named after two researchers who worked in the ’70s.
When looking over the Tannenbaum-Schmidt principles, it’s important to remember a key fact: Regardless of how much responsibility and latitude a leader may delegate to a team, the leader must remain accountable for any major problems that result. Delegating freedom and decision making does not relieve the leader of accountability. For this reason, the process of delegation requires a very mature leader free from ego-based needs. If everything goes well, the team must get the credit. But if it all goes wrong, the leader has to take the blame.
Here are the Tannenbaum-Schmidt levels of delegated freedom and decision making:
Here, after reviewing options in light of priorities, resources, and time frame, the leader decides what to do and simply informs the team of the decision. While the leader may have factored the team’s reaction into the decision-making process, the team has no active role in actually making the decision. In fact, the team may know and accept the fact that the team’s welfare is a relatively minor consideration in deciding the overall outcome. This may be the case, for instance, in military organizations, particularly in combat situations.
As in level one, the leader alone makes the decision—but now an explanation is added. The leader shares reasons for the direction to be taken, focusing on the benefits to the organization and its clients, and for the team members themselves, As a result, team members see the leader as someone who recognizes their importance and is concerned about their well-being.
Here the team is invited to ask questions and discuss with the manager the rationale behind the decision. This enables the team to understand and accept or agree with the decision more easily than in levels one and two. The hope is for the team to appreciate the issues and reasons for the decision, and the implications of all the various options. The result should be a higher level of motivation because of greater involvement and discussion by the team.
The leader discusses and reviews the provisional decision with the team. It is understood that the leader will consider the team’s views before a final decision is made. This enables the team to have some degree of real influence over the shape of the final outcome. Level four acknowledges the principle that the team can make valuable contributions to the decision-making process.
Here the team is encouraged and expected to offer ideas and options right from the beginning, and to discuss the implications of each possible course of action. The leader then decides which option to take. This level is most appropriate when the team has more detailed knowledge or experience of the issues than the leader.
At this level the leader has effectively delegated responsibility for the decision to the team, although within certain clearly stated limits. The leader may or may not choose to be a part of the team that makes the decision. While this level appears to gives a huge responsibility to the team, the leader still controls the risk and outcomes to some extent. This level requires a mature team with a deep commitment to the leader and the success of the organization as a whole.
This is the highest level of freedom for the team. The team is first given responsibility for identifying and analyzing the situation or problem. Then the team explores options and implements a course of action. The leader also states in advance that he or she will support the team’s decision and will help to bring it about. If the leader takes part in discussions with the team, he or she has no more authority than anyone else during the discussion process. Here the team must be mature and competent, and capable of thinking and acting at a strategic level.
Ian McDonald of Johannesburg, South Africa, was the general manager of a small manufacturing plant specializing in precision machine parts. When he had the opportunity to accept a very large order, he was convinced that he would not meet the promised delivery date. Work was already scheduled in the shop, and the short completion time needed for this order made it seem impossible for him to accept the order.
Instead of pushing his people to accelerate their work and rush the order through, he called everybody together. He explained the situation and told them how much it would mean to the company, and to them personally, if they could produce the order on time.
Then he started asking questions. Is there anything we can do to handle this order? Can anyone think of a different way to process it through the shop that will make it possible to take the order? Is there any way to adjust our hours or personnel assignments that would help? The employees came up with many ideas and insisted that he take the order. They approached it with a “we can do it” attitude, and the order was accepted, produced, and delivered on time.
Asking questions stimulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision and in devising a solution.
Ian McDonald inspired his staff to find solutions to an apparently impossible situation. He had an uncanny ability to draw magical solutions from his employees. Earlier we saw how Ted Turner coped with sudden changes in his leadership fortunes. When the magic deserted him in a particular undertaking, Turner simply unplugged and moved onto something new. While this may have left people feeling abandoned, for a leader like Turner it’s probably necessary to his survival. In any case, it may not be completely his choice. By its very nature, the life of an inspirational leader is like a roller-coaster ride. So are the lives of the people they lead.
In the next chapter we’ll look at a very different kind of leader, and one that may be much more common at the dawn of the twenty-first century. When Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., for example, took leadership of IBM, the company was in a prolonged downward slide. There was talk of breaking up IBM. It was simply too big and unwieldy. Amid the talk of a breakup, Gerstner was asked to describe his vision of the company. His reply would make an inspirational leader cringe. “I don’t have a vision,” Gerstner said. “The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.” Instead of inspiring the troops with high-minded rhetoric, one of Gerstner’s first acts was to ban the use of projectors in staff meetings. This proved to be an effective move, but it was hardly inspirational. Instead, it was organizational. Organizational leadership mastery is the topic of our next chapter.
1. Based on the examples provided, make a list of both the positive and negative aspects of inspirational leadership.
2. Make a list of the individuals in your life whom you feel you can inspire. Then create an action plan to do so.
3. Take at least five minutes each day for the next week and visualize yourself as an inspirational leader. See yourself in that role, including as much detail as possible. Write about any ideas or insights you gain while doing this exercise.