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How to Be an Inspirational Leader

Understanding the seven traits of inspirational leadership

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"Inspirational" as defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary is: "The action or power of moving the intellect or emotions." Inspirational leadership often involves both; inspirational leaders need to inspire through both emotional quotient (EQ) and intelligence quotient (IQ).

An adept inspirational leader can recognize the right ratio of EQ and IQ to bring into business decisions. Key to accomplishing that is understanding the seven essential traits of an inspirational leader

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Essential traits

As a leader, it’s critical to inspire across different types of organizations and workplace cultures. Fostering the seven essential traits of inspirational leaders, along with well-balanced EQ/IQ abilities, will help you ensure success.1

As you review these traits, honestly and diligently reflect on how you rate against them. Seek input and feedback from colleagues, mentors, and others to ensure you are properly “calibrated,” address areas of weakness, and become the best leader you can be.

Here are seven essential traits of an inspirational leader that I’ve learned over the years, bolstered by content from various sources1-9:

  1. Exhibits authenticity and trustworthiness: Such leaders continuously and diligently strive for authenticity every day, which means having emotional intelligence, confidence, and vulnerability. This will lead to a work environment of trust.
  2. Exudes positive energy: Of course, this is easier said than done, but maintaining positivity will lead to great outcomes. The positive energy you bring every day to the workplace will encourage those around you to be positive.
  3. Leads with deep listening: This is a difficult trait to develop as successful leaders have “proven track records” of their own, which may make them less apt to value others’ insight. But practicing this art faithfully—by putting aside your biases to prevent skewing conversations—will lead to even greater outcomes.
  4. Possesses self-awareness and “others-awareness”: This speaks directly to being humble and knowing your team’s blind spots. It also suggests you provide the best development tools for you and your team based on timely progress reviews and feedback.
  5. Recharges emotional batteries regularly: As successful leaders, it’s hard to let up on the accelerator. Research has shown that taking time for rest and relaxation will rejuvenate the mind, body, and soul, keeping your inspirational leadership sharp.
  6. Maintains centeredness: Bain & Co defines centeredness as “the ability, acquired through learned practice, to apply a set of physical and mental skills that help create a state of mindfulness.”11 In short, an inspired leader remains calm, listens, and stays true to self under pressure.
  7. States vision, core values, and team norms clearly: The inspirational leadership journey starts with these all-important and critical items. You are setting the expectations and path to great outcomes no matter the business scenario.

Now that you understand the seven essential traits of an inspirational leader, we’ll explore design principles to ensure organizational structure and effectiveness.

As a leader, it’s critical to inspire across different types of organizations and workplace cultures.”

Design principles

Designing an organization of inspired leaders is a data-driven approach built around robust feedback. According to Bain & Company, there are four distinct design principles10 for creating an inspirational leadership culture as described here:

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  1. Collect data: Create a set of inspirational leadership attributes that the team agrees to. Employ a 360-degree assessment tool, then rationally organize information on how inspirational leadership is viewed. Provide regular communication to maintain engagement.
  2. Ensure analytical rigor: From the information collected, use proven and validated statistical analytical tools to process the significant amounts of data that have been generated. This will allow for a more objective and accepted inspirational leadership program design.
  3. Make available to all: Once the data is collected, acting upon it to build an inspired team starts with giving everyone a voice in the process. Inspired organizations allow team members to have a reasonable level of autonomy over their work, and they help team members reach their career goals. Inspired leaders are vital in fostering such an environment.
  4. Democratization of inspiration: Inspiration is not the sole purview of the top leader. It is the duty of all involved since everyone has a voice in the design. Business is constantly changing, which leads to organizational membership changes, so a sustainable inspirational leadership program must be democratized.

There are several key steps needed prior to implementing these design principles at your organization. The first is to become deeply familiar with them and consider how they could work within your organization. Next, reach out to the department in your organization that facilitates organizational development to determine if they are familiar with the design principles. If so, ask how they are being used elsewhere in the company. If not, introduce that department to the principles, emphasizing their positive effects. Build a business case to implement the principles. Lastly, assemble your team for the program design and get to work. Consider questions such as how data should be collected, how you could incentivize others to offer data, what key information must be harvested from analysis, and how you’ll curate this information and make it easily available to all.

Now with the seven essential traits and four design principles as your foundation, you’re ready to influence your organization and colleagues toward a culture of inspirational leadership.

Applying the formula: A case study with Apple

We’ve established the factors for creating an inspired leadership organization and culture. Let’s explore a famous example of inspirational leadership at Apple, Inc., and how some of those elements were leveraged to drive innovation.

In the 2000s, Apple recognized that consumers were beginning to interact with technology differently due to more people adopting the internet and more computing power being packed into smaller devices. In response, Steve Jobs pivoted Apple to focus on a growing technology: the mobile phone. He accomplished this by exemplifying some of the key traits of inspirational leadership.

Discerning leaders understand that they can learn not only from the successes of others, but also from their peers' mistakes.

For instance, Jobs won trust and influence thanks to his skill in marketing and design and, perhaps just as importantly, his authenticity—the first hallmark of inspirational leadership. Jobs is also famous for the fierce passion and high standards with which he led Apple, emblematic of the second trait of inspirational leaders. Finally, Jobs was keenly aware of Apple’s unique strengths and customer profile, embodying trait number four. By leaning into those strengths, Apple flourished under Jobs and consistently gained market share dominance in new product categories, even if they were not the first to market—as was the case with the iPhone.

Of course, it’s important to note that Jobs did not exemplify every trait of inspirational leadership; the man was not known for his deep listening or giving everyone “a voice in the process,” as the third design principle encourages, but rather for being a temperamental perfectionist prone to outbursts.12 Discerning leaders understand that they can learn not only from the successes of others, but also from their peers' mistakes.

Inspirational leadership is one of the most important competencies a leader should possess. By fostering the seven traits of inspirational leadership and acting as the type of leader that their organization most needs, leaders will be well-equipped to navigate challenges and take their lab to success.

REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING

  1. https://www.initiativeone.com/post/inspirational-leaders-great-leaders-inspire-action
  2. https://leaders.com/articles/leadership/inspiring-leader/
  3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2020/02/29/7-powerful-characteristics-of-a-truly-inspirational-leader/?sh=3f7218c1a05d
  4. https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en
  5. https://www.imd.org/leadership/il/inspirational-leadership-course/
  6. https://www.apm.org.uk/media/12077/thales-whitepaper_inspirational-leadership.pdf
  7. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-inspirational-leadership-igniting-excellence-every-hemadri-v-b
  8. https://www.travis.af.mil/News/Commentaries/Display/Article/1755903/how-do-you-define-inspirational-leadership/
  9. https://itdworld.com/blog/leadership/inspirational-leadership/
  10. https://www.bain.com/bain-leadership/approach/
  11. https://www.bain.com/insights/the-science-of-centeredness/
  12. https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/pixars-founder-explains-how-steve-jobs-biggest-success-came-down-to-learning-this-1-important-skill.html

Chris Jock will present on the topic of change management at the 2025 Lab Manager Leadership Summit in Pittsburgh, PA, April 7-9. To learn more and register for this event, visit: summit.labmanager.com/leadership

About the Author

  • Chris started his science and business career over 40 years ago. Chris has held various roles in his career from bench scientist, to contract lab services manager, to global business executive. He has built high performance teams across the Americas, Europe, and APAC. These inspired teams have produced exceptional business results. As an inspired leader, Chris has applied the lessons learned over his career to help customers achieve improved business results, and he has implemented transformational changes leading to market expansion and growth.

    Chris is passionate about nurturing the next generation of talent and leaders in the STEM area. He has taught as an undergraduate chemistry lab instructor at Oakland University, and he has been invited as a guest chemistry lecturer at Michigan State University and Central Michigan University for environmental testing. Chris has written numerous articles and papers that can be found on his LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/christopherjock. Chris possesses a BSc and MSc in chemistry from the University of Utah and resides with his wife in the Rochester Hills, Michigan. 

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