The New Way Of Work Calls For Inspiring Leaders More Than Ever

By Hatem Azzam

While researching the topic and working firsthand with senior executives and leaders from different organizations (large and small), different cultures, and different industry segments, I found that Leaders vary in how they inspire others depending on many factors.

However, inspirational leaders have things in common. Reflecting on that, here are seven main findings I came to conclude about inspirational leaders:

1. Inspirational leaders have integrity of character. They walk their talk and do what they preach. This is how Inspirational leaders model the behavior they inspire their teams to live up to
2. Inspirational leaders are Emotional Intelligent: they are aware of their emotions, their teams’ emotions, and the organization’s emotional climate. They listen empathetically, ask questions, connect, build relationships at the human level with their teams, and demonstrate empathy, hope, and compassion.
3. Inspirational leaders create a sense of shared vision, purpose, and meaning beyond profits and more than the financial matrix. They arouse this sense of transcendence to something bigger than oneself in their team members. They repeatedly communicate with absolute clarity about the vision, purpose, and meaning in every possible situation and different means.
4. Inspirational leaders are humble, vulnerable, and courageous. They challenge the status quo while creating a psychologically safe culture where teams experiment and innovate. They invite participation and hold the space safe for it. The result is that their teams bring in their best.
5. Inspirational leaders advocate an outcome-based mindset, focus, and alignment when executing organizational goals. They practice and install the systems and processes required that reinforce this outcome-based (vs. output-based) mindset in their teams and organizations. They hold their team accountable while maintaining a sense of clarity, condor, and outcome-based thinking.
6. Inspirational leaders coach more than direct, ask the right questions, empower, and trust their teams. They are competent and ready to go into the details whenever needed, only for viable reasons to mentor, teach, or assure quality. However, they always keep their main zone in the coaching zone and the bigger picture to support the whole team.
7. Inspirational leaders are bold and set high standards for organizational performance. In doing so, they believe this is done with their people, not by themselves. They prioritize people before profits and emphasize trust and respect. They are people’s first leaders.

Are you working (or Have you worked) with a leader that made you feel inspired to perform to your best? I would like you to share your opinion on this: What are/were their attributes?

About the Author

Hatem Azzam, MBA

Hatem is the managing partner of Leadership Management® International in Switzerland. He is a highly accredited executive leadership, strategy, and transformation coach. He works with leaders, leadership teams, and organizations to enable them to reach new heights of sustainable success through facilitating, coaching, and consulting in leadership development, team & culture development, strategy and execution, and transformation.

Hatem combines science-based and time-tested human-centered coaching and development processes with 25 years of international B2B experience. He spent 10 years in different management and leadership corporate roles in global F500 companies before starting an entrepreneurial journey where he founded and led an SME group and led it to grow from 2 people to 250 people doing a 9-figure business in 13 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and an MBA in international business from ESLSCA Business School in Paris.