In this time of change, your ability to create inspiration will draw people to you, motivate them to stay, and enthuse you all to deliver better results.
There is no one ‘right way’ of achieving this — but just as every inspiring piece of music is formed from the same basic notes, arranged in different ways, so every inspiring vision is formed from the same seven basic building blocks, arranged in different ways.
The second of these building blocks is to make your vision relevant to your audience.
You can achieve this partly by speaking the kind of language your audience understands. You can achieve it partly by appealing to the values and principles they believe in. And if you want these people to long for your project to succeed then you also need to do something more.
Henry Ford understood what this was. 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 into your objective. It is about helping your audience to understand why they have an objective that happens to align with yours.
You can achieve this when you empathise with your audience, both rationally and emotionally:
- Not only what are they thinking but what also are they feeling?
- Not only what are their priorities but also what are their hopes, their fears, their dreams?
- Do they want a challenge? Do they want to feel heroic? Do they simply want to feel safe?
Martin Luther King achieved all this and gave people the inspiration they were longing for when he said:
“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.”
And Winston Churchill inspired his whole nation by describing a world filled with toil and struggle:
“We shall fight them…, we shall fight them…, we shall fight them… We shall never surrender.”
At first glance these two visions might seem to be completely different. But they both inspired their audiences because they both communicated exactly what their audiences were longing to hear, both rationally and emotionally, and in language their audiences understood.
When you talk to the people who matter in your life, do you tailor your message to make it relevant for each audience? Do you help them to understand why they have an objective that aligns with yours? Do you appeal to both their logic and their emotions? Would changing your approach bring you better results?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and a set of tools for building inspiration in a time of change.
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Photo By The U.S. National Archives via StockPholio.net