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Culture Shift: Is Inspirational Leadership a Dying Art?
June 23, 2008
Name your five favorite "inspiring boss" movies. Not easy, is it?
By Paul Levesque
In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, actress Meryl Streep chillingly portrays "the boss from hell." In Working Girl, a similar role went to Sigourney Weaver. In Office Space, Gary Cole. Steve Carell handles the role in the TV series The Office. The list goes on. But where's the list of actors who have portrayed an inspiring boss everyone admires?
We've seen lots of stories about inspiring teachers who win over problem students by imparting a sense of direction and self-worth. There are countless tales of inspiring athletes, coaches, political figures, artists, explorers, victims of tragedy—but where are the stories about inspiring leaders in the workplace?
While it's true there are non-fiction accounts of a number of legendary real-life business figures (often told by the subjects themselves), there's a lot to be learned from the kinds of fictional tales a society likes to tell and retell. In our society, fictional bosses are almost always depicted as obsessed with self-interest to a degree that's villainous, laughable…or both.
What does that say about us at the cultural level?
Leaders in Name Only
Managers who rise into leadership positions do not magically acquire a talent for effective leadership as an automatic result. Most become leaders in name only—in terms of actual job function, they spend most (if not all) of their time managing the business. Leadership is by definition strategic in nature, while management is tactical. Not the same thing.
The "vision" most senior managers dangle in front of their workforce—if they even bother to articulate any strategic vision at all—is a picture of success that's really meaningful only to senior management. Employees are implored to work harder so that their rich and successful bosses can become richer and more successful. Not only is this uninspiring, but it can generate cynicism and apathy as well. It's where our fictional stereotype of the self-obsessed boss comes from.
Those few leaders who actually "lead" see their primary role very differently. They delegate more of the tactical management issues to their direct reports, and concentrate more of their own energies on strategy—and specifically, on "selling" the strategy to the workforce who will ultimately be responsible for achieving it.
Ambassadors of Change
The old saying among customer service champions was, if you have a Customer Service Department in your company, what's everyone else focusing on instead? My variant on this is, if you have one of more designated "change agents" in your company, what are the people at the top focusing on instead?
As discussed in an earlier column, entitled "Sins of No Mission," to be compelling, an organizational mission must articulate some kind of change. It's the leader's responsibility to get people excited about this change—to get them "on a mission"—and keep them fired up about it. It's a task that comprises three elements:
1. Never stop selling the change.
Can you think of any period in your life when there weren't ads for Coca-Cola everywhere you turned? No matter how well the message has gotten through, it must still be reinforced constantly, non-stop, all the time. Follow the old rule of thumb: just when you're sure everyone around you is sick to death of hearing how wonderful the change is going to be, that’s about when it's really only starting to sink in for the first time. You can vary the way the message is delivered, but you should never stop delivering it.
2. Link everything to the change.
Effective leaders don't only seize every opportunity to hammer home their sales pitch for the change—they create opportunities to do so in as many ways as they can dream up. Their goal is to clarify for all employees how everything that goes on during every hour of every day helps move the business closer to success. Workers easily and often lose sight of what a particular meeting has to do with anything, or the reason behind a particular procedure or policy. The leader constantly reminds everybody how it all connects, how it's all part of the exciting objective the company is pursuing.
3. Celebrate milestones loudly and often.
Incentives and recognition should never be handed out to mark "good work" or "a wonderful achievement" in the generic sense. It should always be made clear to recipients how their work or achievement has specifically moved the business closer to its objective. The more frequently such celebrations take place, the greater the sense among all employees that success is drawing nearer, which intensifies motivation and the shared desire to succeed.
And on the happy day when success is achieved, and someone asks the employees how they did it, their answer will finally sound something like this: "Our boss inspired us."
 Editor's Note: How do you create a strategic vision with the power to inspire? That's the subject of this week's "Culture Shift" podcast. Paul Levesque spells out the three qualities any corporate vision must have if it is to inspire and motivate employees at all levels. Visit www.incentivemag.com/cultureshift to listen to "Inspirational Leadership—A Dying Art."
INCENTIVE online "Culture Shift" columnist Paul Levesque is the author of five books, including "Customer Service Made Easy" and "Motivation," both from Entrepreneur Press. He's a seminar leader and public speaker with two decades' experience as an international business consultant specializing in the connection between employee motivation and customer satisfaction.
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