Last week’s blog discussed the importance of getting the right employees working for your organization and keeping it free from negative personalities.  Doing so helps to build an engaged workforce that’s committed to success.  But once you’ve got the right team together, what can you do as a leader to foster their best work?

For some CEOs, inspirational speeches come naturally.  If you aren’t a member of that small group, don’t worry – most people aren’t inspired by speeches anyway.  The bad news is that there’s no one factor that can inspire everyone in your office to deliver their best work every day.

Inspiration is complicated enough that Bain & Company spent three years studying the topic.  Bain identified 33 leadership traits that inspire employees.  Like most consulting work, however, they didn’t reduce those 33 traits to the nine more expansive ones that matter the most.  Here they are:

• • Being fully present in the task at hand
• • Believing that the organization is greater than yourself and demonstrating that belief every day
• • Building a plan and executing it in the face of challenges
• • Knowing your weaknesses, and willingly supplementing your weaknesses by empowering others
• • Understanding what things matter to you, and expressing those things to your employees
• • Valuing the perspectives of others even when they conflict with your own
• • Enforcing the organization’s standards and recognizing exemplary actions of upholding them
• • Learning employees’ professional goals and empowering them to advance towards them
• • Respecting employees’ lives outside of work, and allowing them the space to make them fulfilling

 
If this is the job description of an inspirational leader, how do your company’s leaders fare?  Improving on those where you are the weakest will do more than keep your employees happier; it will also lead them to want to be more productive for the benefit of the company!

To learn how WingSwept can help your company ensure your employees have the technology they need to be most productive, call us at 919-779-0954 or email us at Team_WingSwept@WingSwept.com.