 Leadership Best
Practices Magazine
Motivational Leadership
By Brian Tracy
Published: September 2008
In life, it doesn’t matter
where you’re coming from. All that matters is where
you’re going. You cannot change the past, but you can
change the future by changing your actions today. And
one of the most important things you think about with
regard to the future is the person you want to be a
week, a month, a year and five years from now.
Where are you going and how
are you going to get there? Aside from what you want to
accomplish, what kind of a person do you want to become
as the result of all your work and effort? Men and women
who achieve great things in life are invariably those
who give a lot of thought to their own evolution and
growth. They become exceptional people by design, not by
accident. They are like master craftsmen, continually
shaping and polishing their characters and personalities
so that they evolve and grow into someone important and
worthwhile. And so should you.
The highest goal you can
have for yourself is to become a leader, to become an
outstanding man or woman who is looked up to, admired
and respected by the people around you. In this segment
on motivational leadership, I’m going to share some
ideas with you that will help you in your evolution
toward personal leadership.
Motivational leadership is
the ability to uplift and inspire others to perform at
their best. Personal leadership, on the other hand, is
the ability to motivate yourself to do the things and be
the kind of person that makes you into a motivational
leader. Both are necessary for maximum performance. They
are flip sides of the same coin.
These are practical, proven
ideas based on many years of research and experience,
and any one of them may contain the key that turns on
the engine of your own potential. It’s been said that,
“Leadership is not what you do, but who you are.” This,
however, is only partially true. Leadership is very much
who you are, but it cannot be divorced from what you do.
Who you are represents the inner person and what you do
represents the outer person. Each is dependent on the
other for maximum effectiveness.
The starting point of
personal leadership, motivational leadership, is to
begin seeing yourself as a role model, seeing yourself
as an example to others. See yourself as a person who
sets the standards that others follow. A key
characteristic of leaders is that they set high
standards of accountability for themselves and for their
behaviors. They assume that others are watching them and
then setting their own standards by what they do. They,
in fact, lead by example just exactly as though someone
were following them around, secretly taking notes and
photographs of their daily actions for others to see and
act upon.
Motivational leadership is
based on the law of indirect effort. According to this
law, most things in human life are achieved more easily
by indirect means rather than by direct means. You more
easily become a leader to others by demonstrating that
you have the qualities of leadership, than you do by
ordering others to follow your directions.
Instead of trying to get
people to emulate you, you instead concentrate on living
a life that is so admirable that others want to be like
you without your saying a word. In business, for
example, there are several kinds of power. Two of these
are ascribed power and position power. Position power is
the power that comes with a job title or a position in
any organization. If you become a manager in a company,
you automatically have certain powers and privileges
that go along with your rank. You can order people about
and make certain decisions. You can be a leader whether
anyone likes you or not.
Ascribed power is the power
you attract to yourself just by the kind of person you
are. In every organization, there are people who are
inordinately influential and looked up to by others,
even though their positions may not be high up on the
organizational chart. These are the men and women who
are genuine leaders because of the quality of the people
they have become, because of their characters and their
personalities.
Perhaps the most powerful of
motivational leaders is the person who practices what’s
called “servant leadership.” Confucius said, “He who
would be master must be servant of all.” The person who
sees himself or herself as a servant, and who does
everything possible to help others to perform at their
best is practicing the highest form of “servant
leadership.”
We have been led to believe,
over the years, that leaders are those who stride
boldly, exude power and confidence, give orders and make
decisions for others to carry out. However, that’s old
school. The leader of today is the one who asks
questions, listens carefully, plans diligently and then
builds consensus among all those necessary for achieving
the goals. A leader does not try to do it by himself or
herself. A leader is a person who gets things done by
helping others to help themselves.
Brian Tracy is the
bestselling author of more than 42 books, published in
40 countries and translated into dozens of languages.
Brian is a world renowned speaker and seminar leader,
addressing more than 250,000 people each year throughout
the US, Canada and in 40 other countries.
Brian is Chairman and CEO
of Brian Tracy International, and President of Brian
Tracy University, a private on-line University for Sales
and Entrepreneurship. He can be reached at
www.briantracy.com,
www.briantracyu.com or 858-481-2977.
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