The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part One)Learn Management Articles on management-info.biz. The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part One) article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Word count: 770 Summary: Motivation is a critical aspect of leadership. But most leaders fail to realize practical processes to motivate people consistently. Here is a motivational-leadership tool to greatly increase your leadership effectiveness. The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part One) by Brent Filson Decades ago, as a rifle platoon commander in the Marines, I saw leaders who could motivate troops to do extraordinary things -- and leaders who couldn't get the troops to do much at all. I wondered what was the difference between the successful and unsuccessful leaders; and if that difference be taught. Those two questions have stayed with me throughout my civilian life as I have worked with thousands of leaders worldwide for the past 21 years. Now, at last, I can say I've answered those questions. I've cracked the code. The difference between successful and unsuccessful leaders is the successful ones are able to engage in deep, human, emotional relationships with the people they lead, the unsuccessful ones don't. It's as simple as that, yet it's more complicated than you think. The power of those relationships has been demonstrated since the dawn of history. In all cultures, whenever people needed to do great things, one thing had to take place: A leader had to gather those people together and speak from the heart. In other words, deep, human, emotional relationships had to be constituted for great things to be accomplished. Look at it this way: Leaders themselves must be motivated, that's an absolute truth. If you're not motivated, you shouldn't be a leader. But the burning challenges in leadership are, Can you transfer your motivation to others so they are as motivated as you? And can you translate that motivation into great results? Great leaders successfully meet those challenges. There are three ways to transfer your motivation to others. Give them information, make sense, and make your experience their experience. The most powerful is the latter, having your experience become their experience. One way to make this happen is with the 'defining moment' technique. This entails having the leader's experience become the people's experience. It can be the most effective method of all, because when the speaker's experience becomes the audience's experience, a deep sharing of emotions and ideas, a communing, can take place. Generally, people learn in two ways — through the intellect and through experience. In our school system, the former predominates, but it's the latter that is most powerful in terms of inducing a deep sharing of emotions and ideas, because our experiences, which can be life's teachings, often lead us to profound awareness and purposeful action. Look back at your schooling. Which do you remember most, your book learning or your experiences, your interactions with teachers and students? In most cases, people say their experiences made the strongest impressions on them; they remembered them long after book knowledge had faded. This is where the defining moment comes in. Its function is simple: to provide a communion of experience with you and the people you lead, so those people will be as motivated as you are to meet the challenges you face. The process of developing a defining moment is simple, too: put a particular experience of yours, a defining moment, into sharp focus, and then transmit that focused experience into the hearts of the audience so they feel the experience as theirs. Out of that shared feeling they can be ardently motivated to take action for results. It's easy, and it's a game changer. But if you don't get the defining moment right, it can backfire. In fact, you could wind up having people motivated against you. So follow carefully as I show you the precise steps in developing and transmitting defining moments. Take the first step in mastering the defining moment. Review experiences from your past. Don't try to figure out how to use them or how they relate to developing and communicating a defining moment. They needn't be wrenching, shattering experiences; everyday experiences will do. They don't need to have taken place recently; you might want to look back upon experiences from your youth. Finally, they don't need to have taken place in an organizational context. Look at every aspect of your life. Any of your experiences, at any time, anywhere, can make a good defining moment. Make sure, however, that it is your experience (I'll say more about this in Part Two.) and be aware of the difference between personal and private experiences. Usually, our personal experiences are those we can share with others, and our private experiences are those we want to keep to ourselves. The dividing line between personal and private is embarrassment. If you would in any way be embarrassed talking about the experience with others — don't use it. In Part Two, I will show you how to put together a defining moment to communicate.
|
More Articles:1. Innovation Management and Brainstorming Management – why people hate to brainstorm! By Kal Bishop Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Whilst there is no sure fire route to commercial success, these processes improve the probability that good ideas will be generated and selected and that in… 2. Give Yourself a Boss' Day Gift, Part 2: Are You the Position or the Person? By Linda LaPointe Are you the position or the person?Bosses can lose their own identity sometimes. It’s easy. It happens a lot. The results are devastating to both the workers and to the supervisor.When we are the boss, there are many dangers in becoming you the ‘position’ instead of you the ‘person’. There are many reasons why supervisors morph into being the serious, alienated, distracted, unapproachable boss. One is that we want so badly to do a good job, and we think one way to do that is to take the job ve… 3. CEO's Are Great, Top CEO's Are Greater By Charlie Lang People in leading positions are often in a dilemma: on one hand they are supposed to give great performances, make the right decisions and so forth; on the other hand, they have to fill the role of a very confident and self-assured manager. This may be considered a dilemma because CEOs are expected to be almost supernatural, and asking for assistance in what is supposed to be their core competence (leadership!) simply does not fit the picture, no matter how necessary it may be.It is interestin… 4. Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 5, Dominant Participants While dominant participants contribute significantly to the success of a meeting, they can also overwhelm, intimidate, and exclude others. Thus, you want to control their energy without losing their support.Approach 1: Ask others to contributeAsking quiet participants to contribute indirectly moderates the more dominant participants. Say:'Before we continue, I want to hear from the rest of the group.''This is great. And I wonder what else we could do.' (Look at the quiet participants when you sa… |
||||
