The most effective leadership and motivation I have witnessed occurs every day with a parent teaching a child to ride a two wheeler.
- First, you can’t teach a child until they are ready and want to learn. While these vary in intensity and levels, the child must have the physical skills, the desire to learn and the confidence that they can learn before they are successful.
- Everything in the process is geared towards giving the child experience, confidence, support and success. The child and the process are usually the focus of the experience. The parent runs up and down the street, without worrying about getting tired, giving the child confidence and support.
- When the child falls, the parent takes the responsibility and supports another try.
- When success is finally achieved, the child gets all the credit and applause while the parents are trying to recover from doing much of the work.
Despite all the books and research, leadership and motivation are simple. As evidenced by the bicycle example they involve building support, experience and confidence. This has been supported from writings and research ranging from Pygmalion, to Rothlegberger, to McGregor, to Peters. What is difficult is the execution and some of that is even easy.
For some reason time, stress, pressure, priorities, etc. cause us to forget everyday decency. As a result, the simple impact of every day courtesy, politeness, concern, and understanding are vastly underestimated as ways to develop leadership and motivation. For example, some simple everyday phrases that are used infrequently could vastly improve organizational effectiveness:
- Please
- Thank you
- You did a good job
- How are you doing?
These simple phrases can do a lot to take the edge off a situation or simply demonstrate that human feelings are important. They provide a sense of support and caring. They also take the edge of the pressure of today’s stressful environment.
