What Sets Inspirational Leaders Apart

by Adam D. Galinsky

Summary.   

When people around the world are asked to reflect on both inspiring leaders and infuriating leaders, they point to three factors that distinguish the former from the latter. Inspiring leaders are visionary: They see the big picture and offer an optimistic, meaningful view of the future. This fulfills the human need for meaning and purpose. Inspiring leaders are exemplars of desired behavior: They are calm and courageous protectors, authentically passionate, extremely competent but also humble. This fulfills the human need for protection and passion. Finally, inspiring leaders are great mentors: They empower, encourage, and are empathetic toward others, but they also challenge others to be the best version of themselves. This fulfills the human need for support and status. Each of us can develop the capacity to be inspiring in all three dimensions of leadership. For example, to get into a visionary state of mind, use strategies that broaden your perspective: reflecting on your core values, considering your past and the winding road that led to your present, and vividly imagining the future. To prime the exemplar pump, think of a time when you had power, when you felt secure and in control, when you were your best self. And to shift into a mentor state of mind, work to learn from those below you in the hierarchy.

In the spring of 2009, as the global financial crisis continued to roil markets and businesses, the chief executive of a multinational consulting company called an all-hands teleconference. Revenues had plunged, and everyone was braced for downsizing.

As an outside adviser, I could feel the tension in the air. But when the CEO began to speak, his calm and steady voice clearly relaxed his audience. He started by acknowledging the stress everyone was feeling. “Like many of you,” he said, “I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about the future of our company and each of you.” He reminded everyone of the organization’s guiding principles: “Because one of our core values is empowering employees, I’ve creatively searched for solutions that would avoid layoffs.” And then he outlined a clear, values-driven plan of action. Everyone would take a temporary, three-month pay cut, with senior people experiencing steeper ones. For example, the pay of an entry-level employee would drop 15%, a VP’s would drop 40%, and the CEO himself would take no salary over that period.

While asking for this shared sacrifice, he also offered something in return: “Because we are heading into the summer months, when work is less intense, offices will close at noon on Fridays. Take your kids to the beach. Go for a long bike ride. Have a picnic.”

He emphasized that he would reevaluate the situation in August, with the hope of restoring full pay by September. He then ended with a plea for empathy: “This is a painful time for all of us. Please reach out and support your colleagues.” After those planned remarks, he patiently answered questions for 90 minutes.

In dire circumstances, while delivering bad news, this CEO had found a way to inspire his employees. And he left me inspired to study how leaders like him do that. In the decade and a half since, I’ve been investigating the science of inspiration—and its pernicious flip side—in the workplace.

In surveys of thousands of people around the world, I’ve asked respondents to tell me about their experiences with both inspiring and infuriating leaders. By analyzing their descriptions, I’ve uncovered three novel insights.

First, leaders move along a continuum from inspiring to infuriating, and where they land at any given time depends on how well they play three key roles: visionary, exemplar, and mentor. Whether in Australia, Thailand, Morocco, China, El Salvador, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Israel, or Germany, people want to see leaders embody that trifecta.

Second, those roles are universally valued because each one helps people meet fundamental human needs: Visionaries give us meaning and purpose; exemplars provide us with passion and protection; and mentors bring us belonging and status.

Finally, no one is inherently inspiring or infuriating; it is your current behavior that determines where you fall on the spectrum. For example, the inspiring CEO from the conference call was later accused of turning an infuriatingly blind eye to the abusive behavior of his executives.

But here’s the good news: Any leader perceived in a negative or a neutral light today can become more inspiring by building and honing capacities in each of the three key leadership areas. Here’s how.

Visionary

To be considered a visionary, you need to present the right message, in the right way, and at the right time. Let’s first address the what. Inspiring leaders offer a big-picture, values-based, optimistic vision of the future that propels people toward collective goals. Infuriating leaders, by contrast, are small-minded, valueless pessimists.

How you present the vision matters too. Inspiring leaders reduce an idea to its essence but then bring it to life with vivid language, as Drew Carton of Wharton and colleagues have shown in studies involving organizations, and my colleagues and I have found in political settings. For example, “Make our customers smile” is more persuasive and motivating than “Make our customers happy.” The combination of simplicity and vividness makes information easier to process, creating what psychologists call a sense of fluency, which increases retention and commitment.

Equally important is how often you present your vision, because repetition increases fluency, clarity, and understanding, as Blaine Horton and I have found by analyzing TED Talks and entrepreneurs’ investment pitches. When Frank Flynn of Stanford analyzed nearly 3,000 leadership assessments, he found that leaders were 10 times as likely to be criticized for undercommunicating as they were for overcommunicating.

How can you get into a more visionary frame of mind? Research shows that reflecting on your core values can both help you see the big picture and push you to achieve your goals. For example, in one of my recent studies, unemployed individuals who reflected on their values for 15 minutes were twice as likely to find a job over the next two months as those who didn’t.

Here’s a prompt you might find useful: List up to five values that are important to you. Now place them in a hierarchy, with the most important one at the top.

The CEO’s reflection on his company’s value of empowering employees helped him create and communicate a clear plan for managing fallout from the global recession. You can do something similar to create an inspiring vision for yourself and your organization.

I witnessed another example of this when I was a young assistant professor. One day the entire faculty at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management got an email from an anonymous sender that accused one of our colleagues of academic fraud. Angered by the shadowy nature of the claim, many of us rallied around our peer, while others called for an investigation. But our dean, Dipak Jain, calmed the uproar by focusing on our institutional principles. I remember that he said, “Although I am extremely upset by the accusation, and my first instinct is to vigorously defend our colleague against these claims, academic integrity is our core value; it animates everything we do. As a result, a thorough investigation is not only the right thing to do but ultimately is in the best interests of our colleague.” By reframing the situation around values, he inspired everyone to support his plan—and the professor was fortunately cleared of any wrongdoing.

Exemplar

Inspiring leaders are calm and courageous, facing danger and protecting others from it. They are also authentically passionate, espousing their ideas and principles with conviction while also embodying them. Those emotions and behaviors are infectious, encouraging others to be resolute, brave, excited, and driven.

Consider a study in which Jon Jachimowicz of Harvard, three others, and I analyzed the pitches of entrepreneurs appearing on the TV show Dragons’ Den (an international version of Shark Tank) and found that those rated as passionate were more likely to receive funding.

The emotions and behaviors of infuriating leaders are contagious too. They can make others anxious, cowardly, indifferent, and stagnant.

How can you be more exemplary? I and other scholars have shown in dozens of studies that recalling experiences when people felt powerful and in control or authentically passionate helps them embody those traits. Such reflections can make your voice more dynamic, your appeals more persuasive, and your ideas more creative, all while helping you be calmer.

Recalling times when you felt powerful can also help you see the big picture, as Pam Smith of UC San Diego and a coresearcher found, and infuse your visions with optimism, as Cameron Anderson and I have shown. Tapping into an experience of being super allows you to authentically become super in the moment.

Here’s a prompt: Think of a time when you felt powerful and in control. Describe the situation and why you felt that way.

Note that reflecting on your values can help you stay exemplary even in times of crisis or temptation. Otherwise you may become the most infuriating of leaders: a hypocrite.

On the companywide call, I saw the CEO’s calm tone reassure those around him. Similarly, Dipak’s response to the anonymous fraud claim expressed authentic, relatable passion while offering a thoughtful path forward. To find this same balance in critical moments, simply think about times in the past when you’ve found that balance.

Mentor

Infuriating leaders ignore, diminish, and control others. Inspiring leaders empower, elevate, and empathize with their teams. Confucius perfectly captures the positive effects of the latter approach to managing: “Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand.”

Inspiring leaders share leadership responsibilities—for example, by letting team members run or help run meetings. Sherry Wu of UCLA has done numerous field experiments comparing boss-led meetings with worker-led ones and has found that just 20 minutes a week of the latter boosts employee productivity and satisfaction and reduces turnover. I apply that in my doctoral seminars: Each week a different student helps guide the class discussion.

We all crave someone who values us, celebrates us, and guides us to be the best version of ourselves. Good mentoring requires understanding that different people have different needs at different times and really listening to what those needs are. It also involves sharing credit for successes and taking blame for failures, which makes us truly admired and respected.

How can you prepare to mentor? First, look to those below you in a hierarchy for new ideas and knowledge. Ting Zhang, Dan Wang, and I found that reflecting on a time when you learned from someone at a lower level can make you more engaged with others and more likely to offer thoughtful and well- calibrated advice, which enhances the mentee experience. Second, practice perspective taking, or looking at the world through the eyes of others, which has been shown to enhance empathy.

Here’s a prompt you might use: Look at the world from the vantage point of a colleague. What motivates and what challenges that person?

Empathy and the desire to keep his employees from enduring the hardship of job loss drove the CEO’s creative solution. He also displayed empathy in his plea that people support one another and by patiently answering dozens of questions. Similarly, Dipak showed compassion for our accused colleague and shared our anger at the anonymous allegation. He listened to our complaints but then helped us understand that a thorough investigation was in fact the best course of action for both the professor and the school.

How to Stay More Inspiring

Each of us has the potential to be more inspiring. We can all learn to be visionary, an exemplar, and an empathetic mentor.

But how can you stay inspiring or become more so over time? My research points to four key actions: reflect, emulate, intend, and practice, or REIP. The acronym is a homonym for “reap” because I believe that leadership, like sowing seed, produces either a good or a bad crop.

Let’s start with reflection. Once a month reflect on when you were inspiring—and when you may have been infuriating. When did you see, or fail to see, the big picture? When was your message simple and visual, and when was it confusing? When were you anxious and cowardly in crisis, or listless and inauthentic, rather than calm, courageous, and passionate? When did you empower, elevate, and empathize with others—or fail to do so?

Next, think about an inspiring leader from your own life and how you might emulate that person. Tap into that wellspring of hope and possibility. Then pinpoint exactly what it was about the person that motivated you. How might you replicate that behavior and inspire the same reaction?

Now turn your reflections and emulations into intentions. Make a commitment, even a small one, to a specific behavior you will adopt in the next month to be more visionary, a better exemplar, or a more effective mentor.

Finally, practice being inspiring in your everyday life. For example, whenever you’re speaking to a team you want to energize, think about how to simplify and visualize your message so that over time you come to do it naturally. Or engage in daily breathing exercises to help you stay calm even under duress.

Here is one daily practice that is guaranteed to inspire those around you: Every morning, reach out to at least one coworker and praise that person for a task done well or say thank you for making your life easier. A CEO told me that it takes him only minutes a day over his morning coffee to elevate someone in his orbit—and it brightens not only that person’s day but also his own. His missives receive effusive, grateful replies that put a spring in his step. That illustrates the virtuous circle of inspirational leadership.

Editor’s note: Adam D. Galinsky is the author of Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others (Harper Business, 2025), from which this article is adapted.

Fonte: hbr.org