Inspired People Produce Results by Jeremy Kingsley - Book Report/Review Example

“Inspired people produce results” by Jeremy Kingsley Summary The book Inspired people produce results by Jeremy Kingsley is considered as one that identifies effective leaderships and uses several principals to place it within business in the twenty first century. The ten identified effective leadership principles are passion, purpose, patience, humility, integrity, loyalty, commitment to team members and offering each personal attention, strong communication skills, and creation of a safe work environment[Kin13]. Kingsley recommends that as a team leader, one have to understand clearly the organization objectives and goals. This understanding should be used to pass on the objectives and goals to the team members within that firm. By understanding one’ leadership role it is possible to inspire a team to greatness. Team inspiration does not result from requiring that each team member memorizes the firm’s mission, vision, objectives, and values but it involves having each team member make the organizational purpose part of their culture. Organizational culture is evident in employees’ actions, thoughts, and words and affects the form of decisions arrived at by top management and the options made by the lowliest staff. With a clearly understood purpose, a leader comes up with methods of linking each employee’s passion to the organizational purpose. Understanding the passion of each member assists in the discovery of each member’s distinctive desires and goals and their definition of purpose. Finding a common ground between personal and organizational goals and purpose, the result is effective, satisfied, and productive employees. From the book, Kingsley reveals that leaders have hold fast to the organizational interests and avoid instances of conflict with personal goals such that each team member is inspired and demonstrates engagement or meaning with their work. This paper examines the five ideas that grabbed my attention and concludes with my reflection of the book. Five Big Ideas the Identified from the book The most outstanding idea is the leadership role of inspiring other employees. The first phase of inspiration as identified by Kingsley is understanding why one is working and not how one is working. Every organization has a mission, vision, and values that define its purpose. As a leader, understanding the purpose is of great significance and involves internalizing the purpose followed by translating it into actions. Consequently, leaders have to reflect the purpose of their organization intellectually, ethically, and morally. As result, the leader will lead by example and team members will follow that leader with since they trust them. However, a leader does not just seek for followers but has to seek for inspired followers. The implication is that a leader has to ensure that each member understands and implements the organizational purpose in all their actions and not just have them memorize it. Inspired team members trust their leader and are confident in their roles to the organization, which is what translates to an organizational culture drawn from efforts directed towards attaining a common goal. Under inspiration, employees are willing to seriously delve into their responsibilities and give their best. Consequently, employees make greater contribution to the organization and this translates to the higher productivity. For the employees, inspiration from leaders provokes going the extra mile to identify the meaning behind one’s profession, technology, financials, or daily routines to defining the meaning and redefining self through all means possible to make it real. Consequently, employees devise ways of being more engaged with their work and this translates to greater results. Inspirational leaders understand. According to Kingsley, leader cannot be inspirational if they do not understand the people they are working with. For each employee, a leader has to understand what he or she does best. This grabbed my attention considering that most people are in jobs that they have academically qualified for but that are not their passion. In such a case, a leader is obliged to understand the performance of each employer to understand any negative or unsatisfactory productivity is linked to some employees. Such identification would facilitate the establishment of employee motivation mechanisms including on job training or matching employee skills and talents to the right position within the organization. As a result, the entire team will be supported and the organization will run smoothly. Logically, when every employee is doing what they are best at, the team is in harmony contributing towards additional positive organizational culture and improved productivity. A positive organizational culture prompts employees to feel good about giving their best to accomplish a task and inspirational leaders should focus on moving employees’ energy toward being the best of who they are in the best possible environment. Understanding in leadership ties to the Dunbar number that defines the optimal number of persons that can be in one’s ongoing social interaction at any given time. Understanding leaders have numerous ongoing social interactions and this makes them inspire more employees thereby improving organizational productivity and performance. In leadership, understanding is one of the mechanisms essential for increasing the Dunbar number. Inspirational leaders communicate. Kingsley highlights that for leaders to inspire their teams, they have to be effective in their communication. Specifically, inspirational leaders have to focus on personal, precise, and persistent communication. In personal communication, Kingsley recommends going beyond words to include facial expressions and the choice of one’s tone of voice in conveying the project’s significance. Leaders intending to inspire employees should focus on distinguishing the emphasis of each communication such that personal communication is distinguished from reports or emails that do not need face-to-face emphasis. Such distinctions make it possible to leave the intended impression such that the employees can ask questions and offer feedback or suggestions. Further, Kingsley highlights that inspirational leaders need to discover the challenge of young employees who prefer working independently and preferring communication using email or texting. For such challenges, the leader must focus on sticking a balance through follow-up through brief one-on-one conversations. For precise communication, Kingsley reveals that fast-paced workplaces tend to promote poor communication characterized by bare minimum passing of information such that necessary information is missed. This way, message sending and reception are improper and could cost the firm too much time to rectify. Additionally, inspirational leaders should embrace the language of their team members such that they do not use buzzwords or technical jargons that could result to confusion. Kingsley’s recommendation is that leaders invest in time and compress their message into chunks comprehensible by the intended audience. In order to remain inspirational, leaders have to be persistent by often communicating important aspects in order to push members into action. Inspirational leaders are caring. Kingsley uses a very extraordinary act by a great leader to demonstrate how leaders should be caring. Instead of using his authority and power to instill fear in his team member, an inspirational leader should adjust to fit into employees’ situations to understand them better and choose on the best course of action. Caring attribute in leadership grabbed by imagination and had me think how a leader today would react on news that one of his employees needs his assistance. For some leaders, it would be a matter of referring the needy employee to their personal assistant to book an appointment. For some leaders, it would be a matter of laying of the employee. However, Kingsley’s Shackleton example reveals one of modern world’s approaches where a great leader lays off his high regard to offer his servant access to his berth while serving the crewmember. Shackleton reverses his role to show how much he valued his crewmembers over his own position. A great leader like Shackledon understood that when one of his employees did not feel valued, his energy and conduct would be reflected by everyone else given that the culture of feeling less valued transmits and infects other team members and this influenced his decision to leave not just the injured employee happy but also the other crewmembers. The implication of the caring gesture from leader results to a cohesive group where members are willing to support each other and work towards a common goal. Additionally, caring leadership generates hope and faith amongst team members who believe that they are led with kindness, equality, and compassion. Inspirational leaders are loyal. As a leader, one is expected to demonstrate strong feelings of allegiance or support. According to Kingsley, very few employees demonstrate loyalty towards their organizations. Loyalty has become rare and this could be linked to lack of pursuit for significance. For some employees, there is little believe in what they do and working for the paycheck is enough to have them go to work. Although the pursuit for significance, purpose, and meaning is a serious aspect of organizations, some employees and leaders hold it as nice to do. As a result, not many employees fail to connect with the organization leaving room for little or no loyalty. Inspirational leaders should espouse profit, people, planet and principles such that their employees belief in purpose and embrace organizational values in order to build self-guidance, peer responsibility and self-policing. This way, employees will assist in keeping each other aligned to the critical set of principles hence developing a human control system with little rules but autonomous employees. In such environments, employees will not only be willful parties making own decisions but also feeling free from being forced into conformity. Autonomy results to employees deciding on the principles they can support to live, share and propagate the right values amongst themselves. In order to improve loyalty, leaders must inspire to shape, live, and spread best values that promote the organization to achieving innovative results. As a result, employees will gain the right spirit to participate in the continuity of the firm thereby making organizational stand for something that employees identify with and have pride in the firm’s success. Conclusion In organizations today, leaders have great roles in determining the success or failure of the organization. A close evaluation of the book by Jeremy Kingsley Inspired People Produce Results is one book that offers leaders in the twenty first century unmatchable principles on how to build productive and successful organizations characterized by inspired people. The book recommends that leaders take up an inspirational leadership role to inspire their employees, promote passion, loyalty, and a sense of purpose. In order to achieve a workforce of inspired employees, leaders should demonstrate understanding, caring, patience, communication, and integrity. Reading this book prompted me to re-evaluate modern day organizations in the context of the role of leadership in relation to inspiration, understanding, and communication, caring, and promoting loyalty amongst employees. Reference Kin13: , (Kingsley, 2013), Read More