Nov
13
2014
Inspiring and motivating your team: three key leadership beliefs
Our beliefs drive our knowledge, understanding and our actions. What you do and the way you do it will reflect your beliefs. As team leader, you cast a big shadow – your team will adopt and mirror your beliefs and behaviours to some extent.
These three key leadership beliefs will help you to motivate and inspire your team, leading to improved performance.
1. Self belief
This is the assurance and conviction that you can deal with the situation and that you have the right and the ability to lead. It includes keeping cool under pressure and taking charge in a crisis. It’s also about mindfulness – learning all the time and using every challenge as an opportunity to grow. Many of us are not born with these beliefs – in which case, fake it until you make it!
2. Belief in others
This is about believing in your team’s ability to do the job both collectively and individually. Being sensitive to others’ needs and moods. Seeing good in others. Not ‘using’ those who depend on you. Oddly enough, this includes the ability to dismiss people who, after support and assistance, cannot do their jobs to the standards required by the team.
3. Belief in the work
It’s important that, no matter what kind of work your team does, you believe in the importance of doing it and doing it well. Cynicism, acceptance of low standards, belittling the work, the product, the services or the organisation will all lower your team’s morale and its performance. This is sometimes difficult when you are put in charge of a project which doesn’t necessarily fire you up. However, even in these circumstances, it’s important to find some enthusiasm for the task and for doing it well or you will be the victim of a self fulfilling prophecy!
Build a high performance team
This article is taken from our popular one-day course Team leader skills: building and leading a high performance team.
This management course looks at the role of the team leader - from building the perfect team through to dealing with difficult behaviour. You will come away from the training equipped to work with your team to enhance their performance and achieve their objectives.
Read a full course outline to see what’s covered during the training day or book a place today.
