Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John H. Zenger, D.B.A., is CEO of Zenger Folkman, a firm that helps organizations and individuals improve leadership effectiveness that, in turn, drives business results. These results include increasing employee engagement, retention, productivity, and bottom-line profitability. He is a member of the HRD Hall of Fame and has authored or coauthored eight books and 50 articles on leadership, productivity, and teams.

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The highly anticipated follow-up to thebestselling The Extraordinary Leader

The result of extensive research conducted over a four-year period, this breakthrough leadershipbook reveals the principles and behaviors top leaders use to build an emotional connection betweenthemselves and their teams.

“While providing the same practical ‘hard science’ approach to bring focus and value,this writing advances the practice of leadership development with new insight,new advice, and new inspiration for all of us to grow.”
–Kevin D. Wilde, Vice President and Chief Learning Officer,(2007 CLO of the Year), General Mills, Inc.

“The Inspiring Leader provides new insights into how leaders can improve the resultsof their organization through inspiration.”
–Bill Blase, Senior Executive Vice President, Human Resources, AT&T Corp.

“The real importance of this book is the clear and simple road mapit provides on how to lead in ways that release the seldom fully tappedperformance power in our organizations.”
–Michael A. Peel, Vice President,Human Resources and Administration, Yale University

“Finally a book that provides empirical evidence that inspirationalleaders consistently produce superior results.”
–Kevin Rhein, Group Executive Vice President,Card Services and Consumer Lending, Wells Fargo Bank

“Following the steps recommended by the authors will enhance leadership skills,influence employee engagement, and impact business results. A real winner.”
–Pam Poggi, Vice President,Corporate Human Resources Development, Safeway, Inc.

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THE INSPIRING LEADER

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

The essence of leadership is that you can't blow an uncertain trumpet. —Theodore M. Hesburgh

Leadership is based on a spiritual quality, the power to inspire others to follow. —Vince Lombardi

Anyone who has worked in an organization for even a few years has witnessed a similar event. A group whose performance was flat and lackluster gets a new leader. Suddenly there's an excitement in the air. People are smiling. Productivity soars. What exactly makes this happen? Can more leaders learn to do this?

This book explains to leaders what they must do in order to bring about extraordinary performance by those they manage. It explains what is required to move a group that has been rather ho-hum to a state of being gung-ho. It tells what leaders do that breaks through the barrier of "just-get-by" mediocrity and enables them to lead their team to newfound heights of higher performance and profitability. It does this by focusing on an ingredient of leadership that has, for a variety of reasons, largely been ignored.

Books on leadership have invariably made the assumption that somehow leaders were able to influence the performance of their subordinates. However, depending on which book you read, the underlying reasons for that influence have been extremely varied. For example, each book would attribute the result to a different factor, such as these:

• Brilliant strategic thinking

• Superb execution

• The leader's passion and strong drive for results

• Technical brilliance and innovation

• Strong interpersonal skills

• Nobility of character

• Being a good problem solver

The list goes on and on, given the thousands of books on the subject.

Yet, always in the background has been the recognition that part of the results that the leader produced may be coming from some poorly defined and described "secret sauce." In the past this has frequently been identified as "charisma." Somehow this ingredient was always recognized as being in the equation, but by its very nature, it seemed impossible to describe.

HOW IS THIS BOOK DIFFERENT?

Thousands of books have been written on the topic of leadership, and much of what is said comes from an opinion that gains popularity or the success stories of a single successful leader. This book is neither. We approach the topic of inspiration and motivation from an analytical perspective, using research methods with statistically significant data and objective empirical evidence regarding what makes a leader inspiring. As a result, this book is not a creation of ideas for how leaders inspire. Rather, it provides you with a discovery of what the best leaders around the world do to inspire and motivate others.

After all, what are leaders to do when they consider that their job requirements are to achieve financial objectives, meet organizational or divisional goals, implement changes, and manage teams of people, and while they are doing that, their bosses tell them to be sure to be inspirational and motivating?

The message of this book can be summed up this way. Leadership is very complex. It is made up of many components, several of which we've just noted. Like a wonderful dish served by a world-class chef, it has many ingredients that make it so delicious. While much has been written about many of the key ingredients, there is one that has received little attention, and yet it is the one that our research suggests is the most important.

The question, "What makes an outstanding leader?" has been asked many times. Our approach to attempting to find a valuable answer to that question came from having an extensive database that consisted of more than 200,000 multirater or 360-degree feedback instruments that described 20,000 managers. For several data sets inside that large database, we had company performance measures. This enabled us to identify those who received the highest aggregate scores and compare them with those who scored less well. By doing this, we were able to identify those competencies that most powerfully differentiated these different groups. Thus, our approach was empirical rather than clinical.

As time went on, we were frequently asked to identify which of these competencies was the "silver bullet" that made the greatest difference. It became increasingly clear that one of them, "inspires and motivates to high performance," was the single most important quality or competency for the leader to possess. But let us reiterate: this does not mean that the other elements of leadership are not important. They can't be ignored.

This book will focus on the ingredient that has mostly been brushed over and forgotten. We'll attempt to explain why that may have happened, but beyond that, we will attempt to analyze it in a way that makes sense to the intelligent layman. Our most important objective, however, is to provide specific suggestions about how every leader can acquire more of this attribute.

This book is not completely unique in its focus on inspiration or charisma. Others have alluded to this ingredient, but we come at this topic from a different perspective. We bring an empirical, analytical approach to this subject that would seem more likely to be applied by a poet or novelist. Our objective will be to demystify it and take it from the realm of an intangible, indefinable quality to something that can be studied and then put into practice. Our desire is to help leaders understand how they can better develop this quality and immediately put it to work in their daily leadership behavior.

WHY WE CHOSE THIS TOPIC

First, why did we choose this topic? The short answer is that after doing research for our earlier book, The Extraordinary Leader, we continued to analyze those competencies that were most powerful in separating extraordinary leaders from all the others. We had often been asked, "So if I have to choose one thing to work on, what should it be?" For a considerable time we avoided answering that question, because there were many leadership competencies that our research showed to be important. The easiest answer was the classic, "It depends." What people choose to work on should depend on their job, the company culture, the organization's strategic direction, their passion, and their interests.

As time went on, however, our research revealed that there was one leadership competency that deserved some special attention. It was "inspires and motivates to high performance." Three distinct pathways each led to this same conclusion.

1. First, our research showed "inspires and motivates to high performance" to be the most powerful predictor of someone's being seen as an extraordinary leader. From a field of 16 such competencies, this one clearly stood out.

The specific measures that we used to describe this characteristic and that most powerfully made that separation of best and worst leaders were the following:

a. "Inspires others to high levels of effort and performance."

b. "Energizes people to achieve exceptional results."

2. Next, when the subordinates of tens of thousands of leaders were directly asked what leadership...