Qualities of an Inspirational Leader
Effective leaders have great inspirational qualities. True leaders are gifted with exceptional influencing and charismatic qualities, which can drive others for delivering their best or demonstrate excellence in performance for exceeding expectations. Managers ensure smooth organizational functioning by merely taking care of the policy related matters, strategies, system, structure, technologies, and people issues. On the other hand, inspirational leaders play a crucial role in inspiring their teams and motivating teams for achieving superior performance benchmarks through continuous learning and improvement.
Inspirational leaders must have the following qualities: Ability to motivate others and own self, competence, honesty and a progressive approach. Let’s look at each of them individually:
Ability to Motivate Others and Own Self: A real inspirational leader must be able to motivate or excite others for delivering their best performance by adopting an enthusiastic and a positive approach.
Inspirational leaders should be able to build a passionate environment for their teams by communicating the vision in a way which can excite and encourage others for delivering their best performances. Such leaders are just not impressive communicators who are gifted with the exceptional ability to articulate the vision, but they communicate with a passion which can stimulate action and record-breaking performances. Inspirational leaders are experts in presenting the big picture before the teams and in making people understand their role in the realization of superordinate goals or the organizational vision.
Competence: For being acceptable by others as a leader you should be able to foster trust and confidence in others that you have the right competence or experience in providing direction and guidance to the teams. The team members should be convinced about your leadership capabilities and the strategic direction which you will provide as a leader.
Inspirational leaders should have an exceptional capability of demonstrating their professional and personal competence as a leader to gain acceptance from the followers. This can be done by sharing success stories or real case studies for capturing the attention of others or making people believe in your extraordinary capabilities. But one should be careful, as there is a subtle line of difference in experience sharing and being boastful about the achievements.
Honesty: This is one of the very important qualities of inspirational leaders. It’s because, for gaining acceptance as leaders others should be rest assured that their ideal leader is strongly principled, ethical and most importantly can be trusted as well. Honesty is a way of life, and this gets demonstrated in the day to day conduct and the behaviour of a person. Mere claims of being honest or superficial talks cannot help in winning the trust of others, but honesty should be proven by their deeds or should be demonstrated in practice whenever it is required.
A Progressive Approach: Inspirational leaders should have a progressive outlook or are required to be futuristic in their approach with respect to the interest of the organization. A leader who is progressive or maintains a forward-looking approach will be accepted by others and will definitely gain other’s acceptance because they will have expectations of the fulfilment of their personal goals and ambitions. By progressive outlook, it also means that an inspirational leader should be visionary and equally be deft in articulating the vision across to the team members. A charismatic leader should have expertise in developing a futuristic or a progressive plan of action which will propel the organizational growth and enhance opportunities for development of the team members.
Let’s understand the qualities of an inspirational leader with the help of an example of an organization. In a Health Care organization, the inspirational leaders are primarily assessed on the basis of 7 parameters or qualities:
Their visionary capabilities and strengths in articulating the visions to the teams
Strategic capabilities and expertise in developing a mission or an action plan for the organization
How good are they in setting a direction for the teams and leading the teams towards that direction with the acceptance of the team members.
How best they can demonstrate their personal qualities and strengths
Their effectiveness in working along with others
How smoothly and efficiently are they able to manage the services
Their contributions towards service improvement and enhancement in the quality of services for achieving superior service standards
Benefits of Inspirational Leadership
Inspirational leaders not only benefit others but also gain personally by achieving higher echelons professionally and achieving personal excellence.
Inspirational leaders have exceptional motivational qualities, the outcome of which will be the development of high performance and motivated teams having the willingness to achieve superior professional standards for their leader.
Due to the charisma of the inspirational leader, the team members are energized and will more likely be able to exploit or utilize their potential to the fullest.
Inspirational leaders acquire a strong sense of self-awareness and act with integrity by behaving ethically & honestly at work.
Inspirational leaders can manage themselves in a much better manner while at the same time they pay equal attention to the needs and requirements of others.
In the end, we may conclude that inspirational leaders are gifted with charismatic qualities and are exceptional motivators who can drive organizational excellence by influencing people and motivating them to utilize their talent optimally.
Inspirational leaders should be able to demonstrate their leadership capabilities effectively and be able to influence people with their special qualities such as honesty, progressive outlook, competence and the right kind of attitude. Inspirational leaders set the direction for their teams, optimize the performance of their teams by aligning organizational with individual goals and provide ample challenges and opportunities to the team members who will help them in using their talent optimally.