Are You an Inspirational Leader?
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KPMG makes the difference by creating value, like developing strategic insights that help drive M&A success, or embedding AI solutions into your business to sustain competitive advantage. KPMG. Make the difference. Learn more at www.kpmg.us slash insights. Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.

Think about the people who most inspire you. Maybe it's a friend or family member who you've always looked up to, a coach or teacher who puts you to be your best, a boss who knew exactly how to motivate the team, or a successful CEO or politician who just always seems to do the right thing. What do they all have in common?

Today's guest has done some deep research into the specific attributes that make people inspirational leaders or not in a variety of contexts and all around the world. He says that the keys are vision, setting an example and mentoring and explains that any of us can improve in these areas to become more inspiring ourselves.

Adam Galinsky is a professor at Columbia Business School, and he wrote the book Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others, as well as the HBR article, What Sets Inspirational Leaders Apart? Adam, welcome. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Alison. I'm really excited to talk to you.

What people find inspiring seems like a really tricky thing to measure because it's so subjective, especially across different personalities and cultures. So how did you start to think about the best way to study it? It actually happened spontaneously in a classroom one day. I was teaching the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, about 60 agents. And one of them started talking about a leader that had inspired him to make better decisions. And I noticed something immediate about this person that

they somehow transformed in their body language, right? Their eyes sparkled and they described this person and you could almost see this like wellspring of hope and possibility emanating from them. So I ended up turning to the rest of the class and asking if anyone else could describe a leader that inspired them. And so there are a lot of different ways, right? You can study like what is a phenomenon. One way we can do that is through quantitative questionnaires, asking people to rate people on different dimensions. But what I chose a slightly different tact

which was a qualitative approach. So I just started to do what I did with the FBI agents and ask people all around the world to tell me about a leader that inspired them. Now, I also discovered pretty quickly that people also wanted to talk about the opposite type of leader, the leader that created the seething cauldron of rage and resentment inside of them. And so I started asking people all over the world two questions.

Tell me about a leader that inspired you. What was it about that person that gave you that energy and that feeling of inspiration? And also tell me about another leader that infuriated you. And so by asking people this qualitative question that

allow them to give spontaneous open-ended responses, I've been able to sort of capture what is the set of characteristics that define each of these different categories, the inspiring leader, the infuriating leader, and then through different types of

quantitative analysis, then I can start to put these into different types of groupings that came up with those three that you mentioned in the introduction. It's how people see the world, that's the vision, it's how people are in the world, that's their being an exemplar, and it's how they interact with others in the world, which is being a mentor. Well, I'd love to go through each of those. What exactly does an inspirational vision entail?

Well, there's a couple of different elements to it. One thing that is very, very clear is that it's optimistic, right? The vision sees a better tomorrow. And that's such an important part of it. The second thing is that it's based in or embedded in a core set of values, not too many values, a finite set, maybe three to five values, maybe even a single value that really drives forward the idea of this optimistic, better tomorrow. So that's the what.

It's this optimistic, values-based view of the future. This how is how we express or articulate that. The two dimensions that really matter are the first thing you do, you want to make your

visionary message as simple and easy to process as possible. Lots of research shows that when things are simple, straightforward, people understand it better but also see it as more true, which I think is incredibly valuable. I have a study with Blaine Horton here at Columbia where we looked at everything from TED Talks to

products on Apple Store, like apps, to even investments by angel investors. What we showed is that when you can create this sort of simple idea that you can repeat, people are much more likely to get on board. The second thing to the how is the visual. The visual is to make it as vivid as possible in people's minds. One of my favorite examples is the difference between our goal is to make our customers satisfied

versus our goal is to make our customers smile. That smile is more vivid and, therefore, more engaging. Some research that I have also with Blaine is we analyze convention speeches from Democrats and Republicans in the last century. We show that over above economic factors like GDP, unemployment, and inflation, over above even poll numbers at the time of the convention, we can predict the winners by how much

vivid metaphorical and visual language they use in their speeches. And the final is the when. You want to repeat it over and over and over again. It creates a sense of fluency, which increases understanding and truth value and validity.

I think a lot of people would say, well, all of that that you just described comes naturally to some people. You know, there are people who are sort of big thinkers, ideas people, effective communicators, charismatic, and that's not necessarily me. You know, I'm more of an executor. So what advice do you give those people about that?

first, why it's important for them to cultivate these visionary skills. And then second, how easy it might be for them to do when it doesn't come naturally. The first thing that I would say is that there's some things that we can all do in our own time and on our own

place. One of them is the importance of values reflection. Research shows that reflecting on your values periodically is unbelievably important for making you not only see the big picture, but also get that surge of optimism and energy. In one study, we found that just getting unemployed individuals to reflect on their values when they sign up for unemployment benefits dramatically increased their probability of finding a job in the next two months.

There's something about this reflection task that everyone can do. The second is, I think with especially the last one I mentioned, the simplicity, the vividness, and the repetition, you can come up with a message and you can ask ChatBeat.t to simplify it and visualize it so we can ask other people to help us do that. Even if we don't feel comfortable doing that ourselves, as a leader, we can use the talents of other people and even the technology that we have.

And the other one is repetition. And that really is about creating a habit. We can train ourselves to repeat that message over and over and over again. It's just like doing any type of exercise, like working out, right? I work out with a trainer. And the first time I do an exercise, it feels totally unnatural to me and sometimes impossible.

even that day. But over time, it becomes more possible the more that we work at it. One of the most difficult ones I think people find is to take their complex thoughts and make them simple. But that's one of the ones that I've worked with people on and really saying, okay, what's the essence of the idea? What's the most important thing? Let's get to that. And once they get there...

Right. It's like this unbelievable aha moment of epiphany, if you will. And so it's worth the effort. It's worth the work to get there. Leading by example also seems pretty intuitive. But who are some people that you would point to that do this really well?

There's a lot of people that lead by example by portraying strength or competence or brilliance. I think whether you feel strongly or negatively against President Trump, he certainly presents himself as a creative genius, as someone who's strong and powerful and protects people. I think that's the image that people want. One thing that I think is really important,

The reason why these are the three universal aspects of inspiring others is because each of these satisfy a fundamental human need. So that sense of vision satisfies the fundamental human need of meaning and understanding. Being an exemplar of desired behavior satisfies the human need for both protection and passion or energy. And one of the reasons why that's so important

is because as humans, all of our emotions are contagious.

But as leaders, our emotions are really powerfully infectious. I coined a phrase called the leader amplification effect to really demonstrate that when we're a leader, all of our signals that we express get amplified, even nonverbal signals, right, or ones that we don't intend to send, and therefore the reactions get intensified. So when we are calm and courageous in a crisis, right, other people around us feel calm.

But if we get anxious in a crisis, that ratchets up the panic in other people. And so how we behave is really, really important when we're a leader because all eyes are on us. Yeah. Okay, so let's turn to mentoring. First, what is the human need that that is?

that aspect of being an inspirational leader meets for all of us? We have two really fundamental needs as social beings. The first one is a sense of belonging, a sense that we're included in a group. And the second is not just that we belong to a community or group, but we're valued and respected by that group. So these two, what people call fundamental needs of belonging and status. And those are very clearly established as two fundamental human needs.

And mentoring is something that sort of people know is a good thing, but don't necessarily think is required if you don't have a direct report, or even if you do, but they're very senior people themselves. And sort of the thinking is maybe they can...

manage on their own. So why is it so important for all of us to keep doing it? One thing is we think about some leaders out there that we often think of as inspirational, right? We could go to Margaret Thatcher as one example, Steve Jobs. They seem to be high on the visionary elements, and they also seem to be very high on the super competence, right, if you will, or at least that's how they present themselves.

But all of them, I don't think, would be characterized as warm and fuzzy mentors. And that's probably OK from a distance. But how we treat people really matters. And I think that there's a couple of things that become really important for people. We are, again, social beings.

We want to be shown that people believe in us. They empower us. They give us responsibilities and opportunities. We're not micromanaged, but they also elevate us. They see us. They acknowledge our contributions. Some inspiring leaders and vision exemplar are absolutely infuriating and cruel as mentors because they steal success.

And they put blame on everyone else. It's me, me, me when things are going well. But it's you, you, you when things go badly. And that's a recipe of infuriation. And that's why people leave and don't stay at companies. Are all of these categories equally important if you want to be an inspirational leader? Because you have given examples of people who are inspirational, but are definitely higher in some of these areas than others.

Yeah, it's a great question. So the way that I would answer it is to go back to one of the things that I said earlier about why are these the three universal aspects. It's because they satisfy these fundamental needs. And so one of the things that we need to recognize is that if our actions today –

satisfy a need that we have today, we're going to see that person as more inspiring. But if that person is being inspired on one dimension but infuriating on a second dimension, but our core fundamental need of that moment in time is on that second dimension, we're going to find them more infuriating.

It's really not about that one is more important than the others. It really comes down to what do the people in my orbit really need at that moment in time. Sometimes people are just going to need a sense of, I know where I'm going. Other times, their feelings are going to be attended to.

And how can we get better at determining that? Just being more attentive to what people are saying and how they're behaving? Absolutely. I think one thing is that during times of uncertainty, people feel really lost. And so I think in times of uncertainty, the need for effective communication goes way up.

One of the things that Frank Flynn at Stanford has showed is that we are 10 times more likely to judge our leaders harshly if they under-communicate than they over-communicate. And when people under-communicate, we also...

think they don't care. So it gets to the mentor aspect. And if they over-communicate, we think they care. Anytime we're going to a period of turmoil, we just want to hear someone speak and give us a sense of understanding. It's why Rudy Giuliani became America's mayor after 9-11, because he just stood there every day. It's why people were talking about Andrew Cuomo maybe being president of the United States, because during COVID, he had a press conference every day.

And just let people know what he knew. He was communicating. In that moment in time, that's what we needed. What did you find about the attributes that make an infuriating leader? Is it just the opposite, sort of the lack of vision, lack of setting an example, lack of mentoring?

Yeah. So one of the things I discovered very quickly on is that they were really mirror images of each other, right? So someone would describe someone as, you know, this optimistic, big picture thinker, and someone else would describe someone, the inferior leader, you know, my inferior leader was this, you know, pessimistic pedantic, right? You know, or pedantic pessimist. Or they would say, you know, my inspiring leader was calm. You know, my inferior leader was anxious. My inspiring leader was courageous. My inferior leader was cowardly.

My inspiring leader had this passion. The other one just seemed almost without energy. Or my inspiring leader elevated me. They recognized my contribution. My infuriating leader diminished me. Or my inspiring leader shared success but took on burden. My infuriating leader stole success and put all the blame on me.

And so they really were mirror images of each other. And it sort of suggests that something about this continuum between inspiring and infuriating leaders is part of the fabric or tapestry of the human mind, but it's also practically important because every time we start to go towards the infuriating end of the continuum and life, right, hunger, sleeplessness, pressure, infuriating bosses, it tilts us towards the infuriating end of the continuum, we have a pathway back.

When we find ourselves stealing success, we can start to share success. When we find ourselves getting anxious, we can find ways to be calm. When we find ourselves lost in the weeds, we can take a step back and see the big picture. Yeah. I think that point that you made when we were working on the article together was

was most interesting to me. You know, there's not inspirational leaders and infuriating leaders. People can move back and forth between the two. They can be both at the same time, you know, if they're failing in one area, but excelling in another. And so this idea that your goal shouldn't be to just be 100% top of the line, I'm always going to be inspirational, but more I'm going to be closer to that than I am to infuriating every day if I can.

Yeah, and I think one of the things that becomes really the key is to recognize that it's my current behavior that inspires and infuriates. I get some credit for my past behavior, but not as much as we might like, right? People are responding in the moment to how we are, and those can linger for a period of time. But it also tells us why reflecting on our own experiences is so important. So I already mentioned the power of reflecting on our values can help us get into a visionary state of mind. But

Reflecting on times when we were powerful and in control can give us that calm courage and infuse us with that authentic passion. Thinking about or reflecting on the perspectives of others can help us be a more inspiring or better mentor. But there's a larger reflection that I think we need to engage in because we're not perfect, because we're going to make mistakes, because we're going to go to the infuriating end of the continuum on occasion.

It's really important to reflect on our experiences. And so I tell people once a month to think about a time and their own experience in that last month about when they were inspiring, but also when they were infuriating. Like when did they see the big picture versus not? When were they calm and courageous versus more anxious and cowardly? When did they not really attend to others, but focus only on themselves? And then think about what were the contexts or conditions that produced that? And by doing that, we can not only recognize

When do we often become infuriating? Maybe someone realizes, you know what? Every time I'm hungry, I become hangry and just become an infuriating boss. So I'm going to make sure that I get better food or better sleep. Or they realize they don't deal with time pressure well. And so they can start to work on, how can I take away that time pressure? Or how can I handle it more effectively? And so the reflected life is the life not only worth living, but it's also the life that makes us better leaders.

Yeah. So we all know personally what it feels like to either be inspired or infuriated, but

Have you learned anything about the sort of broader benefits of inspirational leadership and the costs of infuriating ones, you know, for teams and organizations? You know, I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest things that we have to deal with as a organization is turnover, right? When people leave the organization. And if you, I, you know, analyzed a lot of the data that is out there about the great resignation when 30 million people

quit their jobs during the aftermath of COVID. If you look at the reasons why, besides money, and money wasn't even the most important factor for most people, it goes back to the mentor aspect. It goes back to how they were treated by the organization, or they didn't feel that organization gave them a sense of

of meaning and purpose. It lacked the vision that they needed. These things really, really matter for sustaining organizations over the long run, the crisis that we face. When there's a downturn in the economy, how do we handle that? Or do we drive people away or lay them off because we don't see the larger vision, for example, and the human cost of that? Yeah. Do you need to be inspirational to wield influence?

I mean, you don't need to be inspirational to wield influence, and I think there's lots of different ways that you could use force to be influential in the moment. But I will say this, leading through, let's say, domination or infuriation can be an effective short-term strategy, but it's not a very effective long-term strategy because every time we act that way, we create a residue of resentment.

and that residue can build up into an explosive response at a later point. I think there's a reason why people go towards the infuriating end because sometimes it's just easier, right? Sometimes it's the most efficient in that single moment.

But over time, it's not the most effective strategy. And is it possible to be inspirational, do the right things, and still fail or fall down as a leader? Sure, absolutely. I mean, we can do everything right, and our business can fail. We can make the right decision, but the outcome isn't what we wanted. And so the key is not just the type of behaviors we do that lead up to those moments, but how we respond to them.

We've talked about how we can coach ourselves to be more inspirational. How, if you're a manager, do you coach your team members to be that for each other and for their direct reports? One of the things that we can do as leaders is...

people around each of these inspirational elements, right? So we can think about our direct reports. How are they doing on any of these elements? And then we can coach them, right? We can help them see the bigger picture or be more optimistic or help them get calmer in a crisis or help them elevate other people or empower other people.

One of the things that especially new leaders or people promoted positions often do is micromanage because that's our natural tendency to take control. But oftentimes, it's the letting go of certain amounts of control that can be so empowering to people. So using this inspirational leadership as a lens can help us actually be with people, but also solving their needs can help them be more inspirational.

If there's one thing that you would want each of us to do tomorrow at work, you know, to become more inspirational, what would it be?

I'll actually focus on the mentor aspect. The one thing that we can do is we can daily reach out to someone and just compliment them when they've done a really good job and be specific. This all started with a president of a bank with 1,200 employees. He would send a birthday note to each person, 1,400 people. That's like five emails a day, every day, the whole year. But he incorporated it into his morning coffee.

It's very simple. He'll say something like, happy birthday. How did bowling go with your family this weekend? Then the people write a novel back. He said this really helps him. He did this to reach out and let people know how much he cared about them to make them feel good about their day, but it makes him feel good too when he gets these responses back.

Then I was telling this to another CEO, and they told me that they started to do that every day. Over their coffee, they would send a compliment or gratitude to someone in their organization. They were very specific, like, "Hey, I just want to let you know, you knocked that presentation out of the park last week. I was just thinking about that this morning."

And he said that he gets these joyous responses back. You know, he did that to put a spring in their step, but it puts a spring in his step. And it makes them feel more inspired to go to work and to inspire more people. And so you can really see this virtuous cycle of inspiration. When you can reach out to people and inspire them, you get inspiration back. You reap what you sow. And that's how you make the world a more inspiring place.

I love that. What a perfect note to end on. Adam, thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. That's Adam Galinsky, professor at Columbia Business School and author of the book Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others, as well as the HBR article, What Sets Inspirational Leaders Apart. And we have over a thousand episodes, which means we have many more shows and podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career.

Find them at hbr.org slash podcasts or search HBR on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Thanks to our team, Senior Producer Mary Du, Associate Producer Hannah Bates, Audio Product Manager Ian Fox, and Senior Production Specialist Rob Eckhart. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.