On inspiring teams

I have recently been taking a course on inspiring people. This post is an attempt to synthesize those lectures, with annotations from my own experience.

Leaders have an outsized impact on the performance of their teams (a study of studies puts this as contributing to 31% of the team performance). Given this, it's important to understand what characteristics and behaviors of leaders are important. Three things that teams expect their leader to do:

• Ability to provide a clear vision and communicate it 
• Structuring the team: roles, responsibilities, interdependence
• Caring about the team members

Given the importance of articulating (substance) and communicating (style) a vision, here are some questions the vision should address:

• Why are we doing what we are doing? (Purpose in what we do motivates us)
• What does success look like? (Sony wanted to make "Made in Japan" a byword for quality)
• How must we act to ensure success? (Take J&J that recalled Tylenol; having a set of values help determine the choices we make)

What language should be used to communicate the content of such a vision? Here are some tips:

• Invoke the why; the fundamental values that motivate us. 
• Use stories, anecdotes from personal experience
• Ask rhetorical questions (for which there are no answers, but provoke thought) 
• Use 3-part lists (three things to say, go in depth, and summarize the three things again)
• The moral importance of the work; how it makes things better for the beneficiaries
• Using "we" over "I"
• Repeat the message multiple times

Apart from the language, non-verbal communication (body posture, voice etc.) is important as well. Here are some tips there:

• Change tone, volume, pitch of your voice
• Smile (it's infectious!)
• Don't fake it. People notice. 
• Open body postures (as opposed to closed ones like drooping)
• Research (from Amy Cuddy?) suggests 25% dip in cortisol (stress-causing), and 20% increase in testosterone (energy levels), when maintaining an open body posture for 1min. 
• People are more receptive to these body postures, demonstrates confidence. 

Charisma is also an important contributing factor to communicating well (all American Presidents considered charismatic were re-elected, for example). Charisma can be learnt; look at this research by Antonakis et. al.