Creating the environment for inspiration

Is your team tired or uninspired?

Leaders in businesses across numerous industries have to ask themselves this question regularly as they struggle to get the best performance from their teams and employees.

Traditional leadership methods prompt leaders to find ways to drive employees to meet required targets and metrics. It teaches them to wring the required levels of production from their team members.

But motivational speaker, attorney, entrepreneur and business consultant Raphael Saul, at the Lamp Caribbean conference at the Hyatt Regency on September 21 and 22, said – while showing leaders in the insurance and financial advisory industries how to get the best out of their workers – that one cannot squeeze performance out of workers.

Saul said employees need an environment in which they can be inspired not only to meet targets set by their employers and managers, but to go beyond even their own expectations.

People are not towels, people are seeds

Saul used a physical example to illustrate his point – he went onstage with a large bowl, a towel and a mug of water.

As he spoke about the traditional means some leaders use to get the most out of their teams, he put the towel in the bowl and poured water into the bowl.

“You might say to yourself, 'I’ve given my team targets, quotas, I run the numbers with my team every week, then we have our blast-off meetings where we talk about why it is so important to hit certain targets, and show the plan and close the sale…; Then the performance-appraisal time comes along and you take our nice and pristine team members and we throw them into the wringer.”

He took the soaked towel out of the bowl and wrung the water out of the towel as he spoke.

“You gave me ten cases last month, but I still want more,” he said. “I feel like their morale is low, I feel like they are not motivated. How can I get more?

“And you wonder how they show up on Monday morning looking like this,” he said, holding up a damp, crumpled towel.

“People are not towels, they are seeds.”

He said people squeezed beyond their breaking point will lose motivation, and will not buy into the vision required for both their own growth and the growth of the business.

Inspirational leadership, he said, encourages leaders to create an environment where workers are inspired and motivated.

“The focus is on getting people to see themselves as they could be. I don’t just want to drive you to reach a result that you think you can achieve, I want to create an environment that inspires you to produce a result that I see in you – and you can’t see in yourself yet.”

He said several common metrics can tell you whether your team is tired or uninspired. Several have to do with the team’s focus, the punctuality of its members and how well the team concentrates on producing at a high level on a consistent basis.

“What is the culture in the level of absenteeism in the team? When you have team meetings, how much input are you getting from your team, and how much are they giving you their free initiative on projects? Do you have a team that is committed to producing the bare minimum? What is the culture and climate of your team?”

He said it was easy to misdiagnose performance issues in employees.

“It may not have anything to do with their capacity. They might just not be inspired.”

Five ways to create an inspiring environment

Saul shared five ways to create that inspirational environment and get more out of your team than even they expected.

1– Fill your cup.

Saul said before one can inspire and motivate others, they themselves must have a high level of motivation that they can “pour” into their team.

“Inspired people inspire people,” he said. “It is impossible to pour into your team effectively if by Monday morning your cup is empty.

“The great dichotomy of leadership is that it has nothing to do with you, and yet it has everything to do with you.

"So the first responsibility as a leader is to fill your cup.”

He said that could come in the form of exercise or a change of scenery, but whatever it is, leaders have a responsibility to themselves to come into work inspired and motivated otherwise they will not be able to encourage others to do their best.

2 – Create meaningful connections.

Saul said team leaders need to establish connections with their team to know what to say and do for members who are showing signs of underperformance or lack of inspiration.

“I heard a story of a coach who was watching his star player have his worst performance...for the entire season.

"Just before the end of the game the coach pulls him aside and says: ‘You are a beast, you are talented, you are skilled. No one on this field can touch you if you just put your head down and go to work…. and your father is sitting right now in block C with all his other inmates, telling them how proud he is of his boy.

"'Now we are going back there on that field and make Daddy proud.’

“The player goes back on the field and scores for the rest of the game, and the team goes on to win the championship.

“The coach remembered that he had built a connection with this player. That allowed him to know what he needed to say to inspire him.”

3 – Be intentional about building trust

Saul said people do business with people they know, like and trust.

“People also serve with excellence in spaces where they are known, liked and trusted.”

He said leaders should make significant efforts to close the trust gap between the employee and the manager. He said if they want people to believe they are part of a group, leaders should trust their staff and ensure that staff trust their leaders as much as their leaders trust them.

4 – Create an enabling environment

Saul said far too often he sees leaders defaulting toward pinpointing the shortfalls of a team rather than highlighting their successes.

“People will be inspired to perform at levels they never had before when they see that you recognised the work that you put in to improve incrementally. Then they will be able to explore how they can go even further.”

5 – Be authentic

Saul said it would help if leaders approached their staff and their team with a level of "realness." Leaders should remember their own journeys and where they came from in order to connect with their staff on a human level.

“It will serve us very well, as leaders, to not allow ourselves to become so detached and removed from the members of our team that we cannot identify with them. I want us to be mindful of where we come from. I want us to remember what our journey looked like. For most of us, there was a journey.”

He added that being authentic also saves leaders from being seen simply as managers or bosses and not as people. A leader should not be afraid to tell their own story about their own journey and to be an authentic person.

“Your staff wants to know that you did the work even while your children were at school. They want to know that you did it while a family member was struggling with their health. They want to know that you did it despite the odds, and despite the challenges.

"Why? Because if they know you did it, they can draw inspiration from that – and think maybe they can do it too.”