Inspiring and Motivating Individuals
Coursera
In this course, you will learn how to create a shared vision for your team and effectively communicate it to your teammates. You will also learn how to set effective goals and expectations in a way that best enables your team to attain the shared vision. Finally, you will understand the most important needs and drivers of performance across cultures, and will learn to align rewards with desired behaviors so that your teammates are motivated to attain the team’s objectives. Motivation represents a crucial challenge for contemporary organizations: A recent Gallup poll revealed that only 13% of workers worldwide exhibit high levels of engagement and motivation. We will show you why these motivation problems are not simply due to a “bad” or “unmotivated” team member. Rather, motivation is very much driven by what work conditions we create for our teammates, how we structure goals and objectives, and how we reward people for the accomplishment of those goals. This course will help you diagnose and solve motivation problems so that you can bring out the best in your people.
More resources on Inspiring Others
Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence, hope, mindfulness, and compassion help a person reverse the damage of chronic stress and build great leadership relationships. The Positive and Negative Emotional Attractors inspire sustained, desired change and learning at many levels.
Why good leaders make you feel safe | Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek's 2014 TED talk arguing that effective leaders build a circle of safety, sacrificing for their teams so people trust one another and cooperate. Explains how that sense of security drives loyalty and discretionary effort inside organizations.
The Puzzle of Motivation - Dan Pink
TED talk in which Dan Pink contrasts behavioral science research on incentives with common business practice, arguing that contingent rewards can impair performance on creative tasks. Viewers understand why autonomy, mastery and purpose often motivate knowledge workers better than bonuses.
TED Talks Leadership Playlist
A TED-curated playlist of about a dozen talks on leading people, including Simon Sinek, Jacqueline Novogratz and Hamdi Ulukaya. Together they present contrasting approaches to empowering teams, handling fear, communicating a vision and using generosity as a leadership tool.
How Great Leaders Inspire Action
Simon Sinek's TEDx Puget Sound talk introducing the Golden Circle: why, how, what. Uses examples such as Apple and Martin Luther King Jr. to explain why communicating purpose first inspires people to follow, buy or commit more than listing features.
How great leaders inspire action
Simon Sinek's 2009 TEDx talk introducing the golden circle: why purpose precedes method and product in persuasion. As a model of presentation craft, it shows a single idea carried by repetition, drawing, and restraint.