In this time of change, your ability to create inspiration will draw people to you, motivate them to stay, and encourage you all to deliver better results.
There is no ‘one right way’ of doing this — but just as every inspiring piece of music is formed from the same basic notes, so every inspiring vision is formed from the same basic building blocks, arranged in different ways.
The second of these ingredients is to make your vision relevant to your audience.
You can achieve this, partly, by speaking in the type of language your audience understands. You can achieve it partly by appealing to the values and principles they believe in. But if you want these people to long for your project to succeed then you also need to do something more.
Henry Ford understood this. He said:
“Nobody at work is apathetic except those who are in pursuit of someone else’s objective.”
So this building block is not simply about getting your audience to understand and buy in to your objective. It’s about helping them to understand why they have an objective that aligns with yours.
You can achieve this by empathising with your audience, both rationally and emotionally:
- Not only what are they thinking but what are they feeling?
- What are their hopes, their fears, their dreams and priorities?
- Do they want a challenge? Do they want to feel heroic? Do they simply want to feel safe?
Martin Luther King gave people the inspiration they needed when he told them:
“I have a dream…, I have a dream…, I have a dream…”
He didn’t say, “I have a problem I need you to fix.”
But Winston Churchill also inspired people when he described a world filled with endless struggle and toil:
“We shall fight them…, we shall fight them…, we shall fight them… We shall never surrender.”
These two visions seem to be saying opposite things. But they both succeeded because they both communicated what their audiences were longing to hear at the time: rationally and emotionally, and in a language they understood.
When you talk to the people who matter in your life, do you tailor your message to make it relevant for each particular audience? Do you help them to understand why they have an objective that just happens to align with yours? Would changing your approach bring better results?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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Photo By The U.S. National Archives via StockPholio.net