November 7, 2009
Leadership Without Inspiration is Management
Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist, wrote recently about President Obama's Nobel win. The reason for the win is that he, essentially, inspires people like no one else in history. (First, I'm happy for him. That's a huge honor and he should be proud. Second, inspiration alone should not win someone a Nobel Prize of any kind.)
However, the discussion brings up a great point; namely, that the greatest leaders are also the greatest inspirers. To be sure, leadership (true leadership) can't happen without inspiration. Leading without inspiring is management (and possibly poor management).
Inspiration comes in as many forms as there are people leading through it, but the results are usually similar: happy people and forward progress. During the reign of Jack Welch, General Electric was an innovation leader because of his inspirational leadership. Joel Osteen has led Lakewood Church to be the largest church in America (50k+ people) purely out of inspiration. Obama was elected based on inspiration alone (Well, it certainly wasn't his tenure.)
If you want to lead, you'll need to figure out how you can inspire people. If you can't inspire other people, you'll never succeed as a leader.
