How You Can Inspire Those Around You
Whether you are a teacher, a business leader or a parent, learning how to inspire those around you can bring a great many benefits for both you and them. Now, there are some people in this world such as the mercurial Marc Leder, CEO of Sun Capital Partners, who have the natural ability to inspire just about everyone around them. Unfortunately for us mere mortals, we must learn ways in which we can inspire those around us, and then try to use them effectively. Let’s take a look at what you could, and should be doing in order to make sure that those around you, are inspired to do better.
Highlighting the Need
The tricky thing about motivating or inspiring those around you is that not everyone is built in the same way, and many people require different types of inspiration. There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to inspiring others and until you have learned how to spot the needs of people, you will have to learn through trial and error. Once you have the nose to sniff out exactly what makes people inspired, then you can start employing various tactics to push them forward.
Challenging
Some people react best when they are faced with a challenge which seems almost impossible to achieve. This is known as the carrot and the stick method, based on a man riding a horse with a carrot hanging from a stick in front of the horse’s face. The idea is that the horse will run as fast as it possibly can to try and catch the carrot, which of course it never will. The notion behind this is that you set a challenge which may not be possible, but in seeking to complete the challenge, your subject will have been inspired to achieve far more than they could have, if there was no carrot to chase.
Arm Around Them
Some people are more inspired by care, kind words and an arm around their shoulder of support. These are the people who know what their capacity is and are happy to reach for the stars in order to maximize it, so long as they know that they are fully supported.
Pushing and Pushing
There are a many people who prefer to be inspired in a far more powerful and aggressive way and these appeal react best to the ‘stick’ approach. Again this is a horse analogy given because of the increased speed of a horse when it is hit with a stick. You will only be using a verbal stick in this example but it can be very effective. Think of the army as an example, there is no cuddles or wistful challenges in the army, just frank speech and constant pushing to get someone to achieve something which they previously didn’t think was possible.
These are just some of the many ways that you can inspire people, the key is to find out how to inspire them.
