In order to attract wildly enthusiastically passionate customers whose needs are met and exceeded, you need wildly enthusiastically passionate employees. So the question that leaders need to ask is, Why should employees bring that level of enthusiasm to their organization? In this episode of Leadership Podcast, Dr. Chris Bart discusses the answer to that question. The key, Dr. Bart reveals, lies in helping people feel good about themselves, because in essence that’s what everyone wants. Great leaders, he says, accomplish that by giving sincere praise. Yet for some strange reason many so-called leaders are pretty stingy with praise, or they give praise in a way that is insincere. Dr. Bart explains that this is often due to a leader’s overinflated sense of self-importance. When leaders let go of that sense of entitlement or sense of self-importance – when they realize that nothing’s going to happen without the team – then amazing things can happen.
In this podcast Dr. Bart explains that really great leaders are capable of creating an environment in which employees volunteer the discretionary effort over and above what is required to be done. They know how to inspire people in such a way that employees voluntarily commit and submit to do whatever needs to be done for the organization to succeed. The ironic thing, Dr. Bart notes, is that it takes just one person to destroy that. That happens when someone is actively disengaged – when someone shows up to work with one purpose in mind: to drag the organization down. One of the challenges as a leader, Dr. Bart explains, is to not give anyone a reason to want to tear the organization down. He suggests that all leaders need to ask, What have I done today that is going to damage this organization because of the way I made people feel?
Dr. Bart teaches strategy and governance to students at the DeGroote School of Business and founded The Directors College. He was named Outstanding Undergraduate Business Professor and MBA Professor of the Year. Dr. Bart has internationally published more than 100 articles, cases and reviews. He is the author of the number one bestselling business book of 2010 in Canada, A Tale of Two Employees and the Person Who Wanted to Lead Them as well as the acclaimed CICA publication 20 Questions Directors Should Ask About Strategy”.
Title: Back to the Future: Timeless Leadership Lessons for Success
Featuring: Dr. Chris Bart, F.C.A., Professor and Author
Length: 9:35 minutes
Listen to the podcast. Check out more podcasts from the OREA Centre for Leadership Development.
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