The most important skill in leadership and how you can develop it

A 360 feedback assessment of about 15.000 leaders conducted by Zenger & Folkman revealed that “to inspire and motivate to high performance“ is considered to be the most important leadership quality. The more skilled a leader is in inspiring and motivating others the more satisfied and committed are his followers.

However, what the very same survey further revealed was that “to inspire and motivate others“ is also the one skill on which leaders overall received the lowest scores.

So, if you are a leader and if you care about your leadership qualities, then now is the moment to ask yourself (or maybe your team) how you can become better in inspiring and motivating others.

According to Zenger & Folkman there are a number of behaviors that come along with being an inspiring and motivating leader:

• Having a clear vision
• Setting stretch goals
• Creating emotional connections
• Developing others
• Being collaborative
• Being innovative
• Taking initiative
• Champion change

But the probably most important behavior that fosters inspiration and motivation is what I call compelling communication.

Compelling communication means that a message or idea is not only successfully delivered, received and understood but also internalized - by both sender and receiver. It means to be truly conscious about your own intentions as well as the expectations of your audience and to be able to align both of them.

Compelling communication means that a message or idea is not only successfully delivered, received and understood but also internalized - by both sender and receiver.

I have worked with hundreds of leaders helping them to share their ideas and visions and from my experience knowing how to communicate them compellingly often is the key to inspire and motivate others.

If you truly want to inspire and motivate then it’s not enough to have a vision or to take initiative - you have to convince others to adopt your vision or to join your cause and to make it their own. And the most promising way to achieve this is through compelling communication. Fortunately, this is just a matter of know-how and practice. Anyone can learn how to communicate compellingly and therefore improve their ability to inspire and motivate others.

But there is another reason why compelling communication is crucial when it comes to inspirational and motivational leadership: It’s the perfect proof of concept.

Unfortunately many leaders start communicating about an idea before they even have defined it clearly for themselves - which leads to unsound communication. Unsound communication might be the most common reason why even leaders who do have a vision fail to inspire and motivate others: They just fail to express them clearly - even for themselves. Compelling communication will prevent you from doing the same mistake.

The preparation process of compelling communication will inevitably uncover if your vision, your idea or your message is indeed sound before you share it with someone else. Because being truly conscious about your own intentions as well as the expectations of your audience means that you should be able to express them clearly and precisely (instead of just having a vague idea about them). That might take a few attempts and maybe even lead to some frustration but done in the right way, it will be the perfect opportunity for reflecting on and improving your ideas and thoughts. And it will increase your own motivation - another prerequisite for inspiring and motivating others.

Compelling communication will not only prevent you from unsound communication, it will also help you to develop the most important skill in leadership: to inspire and motivate others.