What does it take to transmit bold new ideas to people who don’t want to hear them?
How can the language you use facilitate enthusiastic, energetic action?
Transformational leaders may demonstrate some or all of the following behaviour/s:
Transformational leaders may demonstrate some or all of the following behaviour/s:
- Generate enduring enthusiasm for a common cause
- Present innovative solutions to solve significant problems
- Catalyze shifts in people’s values and ideologies
- Demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the greater good
- Help others get through crisis moments
- Inspire people to want to change, creating a positive energy that sustains the change
- Generate followers who will ultimately become leaders.
The what of transformational leadership is reasonably clear. It’s the how that’s usually obscure.
· How do leaders communicate complex ideas and spark others into enduringly enthusiastic action?
· What words do they use to inspire others to become new leaders?
· Why are some leaders able to accomplish the feat while others fail miserably?
Stephen Denning, a senior scholar at the University of Maryland’s - Burns Academy of Leadership, makes the case for transformational communications in his book “The Secret Language of Leadership” (Jossey-Bass, 2007).
More than anything, it’s what leaders say — and the way they say it — that generates sustained energy and exponential results.
While many experts proclaim that leadership is solely an issue of inner conviction: You must find the leader deep within yourself.
Other experts encourage you to:
- Become the person others will want to follow
- Discover your strengths
- Increase your self-awareness, self-regulation and authenticity
- Become emotionally and socially intelligent
- Visualise to materialize, and
- Be true to yourself, and change will happen.
If leaders’ own inner commitment to change is to have any effect at all, they must communicate it to those they aspire to lead.
Leaders’ actions speak louder than their words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say — or don’t say — that has an impact.
The right, well chosen word can create:
- A galvanising effect
- Enthusiasm
- Energy
- Momentum, and
- Sustainable motivation
The wrong words, or even words said in the wrong sequence, can undermine your best intentions and plans, killing an initiative on the spot.
Reference: Coach2Coach newsletter and Stephen Denning, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action through Narrative, Jossey-Bass 2007.
