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The
One Nugget Report from The Project Management Advisor™
Issue 2009-15 - Challenge Minus Inspiration Equals
Mediocrity
Recently I made a very interesting observation of one of the leaders at a non-profit organization I work with. This leader is relatively new to the organization and is very passionate about his area of responsibility. He is very focused on increasing the number of members within his organization and wants each of the existing members to actively invite people to meetings. "Get out there and bring your friends and colleagues! The room needs to standing room only!" he would bark to the members. Yet week after week the numbers were flat. He had a small number of faithful attenders, but the group wasn't growing like he wanted it to grow.
As I thought about this dilemma, one thing clearly occurred to me. The leader clearly laid out a challenge to the existing members, but missed one crucial component: he didn't inspire them to want to invite other people. Because he didn't inspire them, they blew him off.
I've seen way too many leaders that challenge their organization to excel in some fashion. They'll stand in front of the group and demand that the group meet some lofty stretch goal, then get frustrated when no one rises to the challenge. The faulty assumption is that everyone is as excited and passionate about the goal as the leader is; as if through some magic osmosis everyone was supposed to see the importance of the goal.
As a leader, you simply can't assume your team is inspired, you need to foster inspiration amongst the team. Fostering inspiration means you need to do the following:
- Clearly articulate the goal in quantifiable terms
- Ensure the goal is realistic and not something akin to solving world hunger
- Crisply explain why the goal is important in terms of benefits of performance or consequences of non-performance
- Allow the team to grasp the "why" behind the goal and to ask questions about the rationale
- Allow the team to weigh in on how the goal is to be achieved and empower them to drive the activities
- Help them achieve the goal by removing barriers, ensuring they are appropriately equipped, and keeping the goal front and center through regular communications on the goal and progress toward achieving
- Be the example; if you are expecting the team to be passionate about a goal then be passionate yourself. Delegating passion simply doesn't cut it and is a sure-fire recipe for failure.
By all means challenge your team to do things better, faster and cheaper. Inspiration must be fostered, not assumed. Don't miss out on the inspiration step. Do so and you'll guarantee mediocre performance at best.
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