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The formula for being an inspirational driver
- Know your "noble cause." Jobs understood that if teams don’t find their work meaningful, they perceive challenging directives from a leader as arbitrary demands rather than a call to sacrifice for a higher purpose.
- Tell your story early and often. If you can’t weave your ideas into a clear, compelling story, those ideas remain abstract words likely to be forgotten.
- Push, but within boundaries. Make sure you have a clear end point and time line in mind before you go into "push" mode. Intense work with no clear end in sight is demoralizing.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
He inspired team members first so that they were driven to live up to his exacting standards when the situation called for it.
Get this equation backwards and you will wonder why your employees disengage or drop out when you present tough challenges.
RELATED IDEAS
- Do what you love. Passion is everything.
- Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. Don't lose sight of the big vision.
- Make connections. People with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. Connect ideas from different fields.
- Say no to 1,000 things. Say no to quantity, and focus on the quality of your best products.
- Create insanely different experiences. The motive is to enrich lives, not just to move products.
- Master the message. Instead of simply delivering a presentation, inform, educate, inspire and entertain.
- Sell dreams, not products. Customers don't care about your product. They care about themselves. If you help your customers reach their dreams, you'll win them over.
- Empathy. Give trusted co-workers the benefit of the doubt by assuming the good in them. It goes a long way toward instilling loyalty and trust in you from your team.
- Awareness. Care deeply about the welfare of the team members. Don't view them only as cogs in a machine.
- Building community. Build community where both employees and customers can thrive.
- Persuasion. Rely on persuasion rather than coercion to create internal motivation required to complete the task effectively.
- Conceptualization. Servant-leading entrepreneurs focus on the big picture and don't get overly distracted by daily operations and short-term goals.
- Growth. Care passionately about the personal and professional growth of each member of the team.
- Follow your passions. Without it, any rational person would give up.
- Find your noble cause. For Jobs, making computers accessible to the average person wasn't just a business strategy; it was a calling.
- Simplify everything and focus on the gems. You have only so much energy and attention to give to projects or projects.
- Unleash your creativity. Creativity doesn't just happen. Expose yourself to ideas outside the field you're working in.
- Create "insanely great" customer experiences. Hire for personality and culture fit first.
- Don't introduce products; tell a story.
- Sell dreams, not products. Your audiences don't care about your product, company or idea. They care about themselves, their hopes and their dreams.