Stressing values, earning trust, and connecting with others are some of the ways leaders can inspire their organizations to achieve greater success. Here is an excerpt from an article co-authored by David C. Forman and Friso van der Oord in which they explain how eight principles of inspirational leadership are helping companies of all sizes to move beyond command and control cultures. The article was featured in Talent Management magazine. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Companies from all over the world are thinking differently about values, culture, trust, transparency, meaningful connections and collaboration. These characteristics are different from command and control organizations where power is the province of the few and information is tightly controlled. This traditional ethic has led to uneven performance, escalating self-interest, growing dissatisfaction with companies, missed opportunities and even scandal, but talent leaders can help companies to envision a different future by enabling a new brand of leadership.

Living examples of this new future are led by people who have a different view of what leadership means and can do. They view it as a behavior, not a title. It is more about relationships and connections than power and authority. They don’t coerce or threaten to achieve results, they inspire others to act. They pursue significance beyond the immediate and short-term. They demonstrate “humbition” — a humble personal perspective accompanied by a fierce ambition for the organization’s success. They help to create a culture bigger than themselves so the organization endures.

Researchers John Zenger and Joseph Folkman uncovered similar findings in their multi-year research detailed in their book The Extraordinary Leader. They examined more than 200,000 surveys for 20,000 leaders with correlated company performance data. The most important factors that distinguish the best from the worst leaders are: inspires others to high levels of effort and performance and energizes people to achieve exceptional success.

The Inspirational Leadership Model

While there is widespread agreement that new approaches are needed, and that “inspiration” is a vital ingredient, according to the 2011 HOW Report from advisory services firm LRN Corp., only 4 percent of organizations inspire their employees. It is valuable to define inspirational leadership not in terms of traditional leadership competencies, but principles that provide a broad framework to guide future behavior for the leader and the organization.

There are eight principles of inspirational leadership that a leader demonstrates that become infused into the culture. They can be divided into business and relationship clusters to reflect the fact that inspirational leadership is about both relationships and positive organizational and business results.

[Here are two of the eight principles.]

Rethink and reframe: Decades ago the priority was to keep the assembly line working and not make changes. Today, in the innovation economy businesses have to stay competitive, out-think the competition and fight complacency. Leaders need the courage to reframe, rethink and outmaneuver others who attempt similar actions.

Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, used the phrase “mirror mirror” to enable employees to see the company’s actual position in the marketplace. While HCL was doing fine according to some measures, it was mired in a comfortable mediocrity. Through many meetings, Nayar listened, led with questions — not his own answers — and recognized that not everyone would be accepting. By challenging convention and living the values he was espousing, Nayar established a new level of trust. The results have been significant. From a mid-level, regional player in IT services, HCL is now a global leader in the industry and considered to be among the best managed companies in Asia.

Pursue significance: People want to believe in what they do. It is no longer enough to go to work just for a paycheck. People want a higher calling. Younger generations, in particular, are demanding more from work and life.

The pursuit of significance, meaning and purpose is a serious focus for organizations. It is not a “nice to do” or the corporate social responsibility program of the day; it is a central mission, and one that many top leaders and companies support. Jeffrey Immelt of GE once said that “To be a great corporation today, first you have to be a good one.” Professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers espouses the four P’s: profit, people, principles and planet. Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter gave a name to organizations that prize purpose: vanguard companies.

“In vanguard companies, belief in the purpose and embrace of the values generate self-guidance, self-policing and peer responsibility for keeping one another aligned with the core set of principles,” Kanter said. “This type of human control system does not work perfectly by itself, but it certainly reduces the need for rules, and this helps people feel autonomous. Rather than feeling forced into conformity, employees feel that they are willful actors making their own choices based on principles they can support.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

David C. Forman is chief learning officer for the Human Capital Institute. Friso van der Oord is global head of research for the Corporate Executive Board.