How to Motivate, Inspire, and Lead Your Team

WHY (you’ll see the irony in a bit): At some point or another, everyone is tasked with leading a team of some sort. If you’re an engineer, you might have a project you’re heading up with other engineers, if you’re a parent, you have a team of children you must lead. Even those without titles can be leaders by their actions. If you consider yourself a leader, or want to in the future, you probably want to be good at it. I believe everyone has the capacity for leadership in at least one area of their life, and we must learn to lead to reach their full potential in life.

WHERE I got this: Start with Why by Simon Sinek first inspired me to explore this aspect of leadership. You can find his TED Talk here. This lesson was reinforced by the Student Affairs staff at Lehigh University (credit to Carter Gilbert and Erin Wilensky).

WHAT’s the deal: Most leaders experience challenges motivating and engaging team members to either care or do the work they’re supposed to do. People are people, so they aren’t very easy, especially if you’re introverted like me (see this article for more on the subject). I personally found this very challenging and still often do, but far less often now that I learned about starting with WHY.

What does it mean to “start with WHY?” I believe that leads must start with WHY on both micro and macro levels. On a micro level, leaders must explain WHY the team is doing a certain task or WHY it is important to them. It is the leader’s job to explain the PURPOSE of the mission to the team. When people understand WHY it is important to both the team, and more importantly, to themselves, they are more motivated to finish their work and do it to the best of their ability.

An example of this is a team tasked with writing an annual report, summarizing the successes and challenges of the year and what the team learned. Being that it’s the end of the year, the team may not be focused on the project, instead thinking about New Year’s Eve plans. The leader must explain the purpose of the report: for the company to better understand it’s position and processes moving forward. He or she must also explain WHY the person writing a particular section will benefit from the process. The leader could explain that reflection of this sort sets the team member up for a better year, making them less likely to make mistakes, and thus increasing their chances of a promotion that year. After understanding these “micro” WHYs, team members are going to feel more “skin in the game” and want to contribute more.

Then there is starting with WHY on a macro level. This means having a unifying vision and/or purpose for your company or teams entire existence. And no, being the best company in x field is not a good macro WHY. Your vision of the future for the team must be compelling. It must energize you and excite you from the moment you get out of bed. One Percent Closer’s WHY is in our name, to get our readers one percent closer to any or all of their goals. Every project we work on, from writing posts to marketing on social media, has this WHY in mind. It brings us together to get bring the shared vision to life. This is so important in goal setting and fulfillment. You can’t set a goal if you don’t know where you’re going! And if you keep working on random projects with no unifying purpose, you won’t ever feel fulfilled. If you start with a macro WHY, your team members will know what to do and feel more fulfilled, inspiring them to come in and give their all.

Either of these two alone may be enough to satisfy your needs in the short term, but if you want long term success, you need both. You can use micro WHYs to get tasks done, but if they don’t relate to a macro WHY, your team may feel lost and unfulfilled. If you have a great macro WHY, but fail to remind your team members of the micro WHYs of each project, they might not see the connection to the macro, and will be less motivated to follow through. Micro WHYs motivate, macro WHYs inspire; you need both to LEAD.

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