Trials in Leadership Motivation

Perhaps you have been elected the president of a non-profit organization. This organization is comprised of at least a dozen committees and as many committee chairmen. When you enter office, you quickly realise that the committees are not operating at the level of efficiency which would keep the organization running successfully. You discover that the problems lay with the apathy of the chairman.

To combat this apathy you need to find ways to motivate the chairman to be able to adequately and fruitfully lead their committees.

Committees are all made up of several different types of people and personalities, as are their leaders. Because of this, you have to use a few different leadership styles. Some of the chairmen will need little encouragement or guidance so you will only need to provide them with minimal supervision. Some of the chairman will need some guidance in different areas, such as dealing with their committee members, or setting goals for their committees. To these chairmen, you should provide supervision in their required areas, with minimal supervision in other areas. Some chairman, those with little experience, lack of organizational skills or energy, will require strong supervision and leadership in order to perform thier own leadership tasks to the best of their ability.

It will take time to evaluate which chairmen fall into which categories. To do this, always keep one thing in mind. A good leader leads by example. To set an effective precedent, strive to always remember three things, your own physical actions, emotions, and remembering that it is being able to motivate others to complete their tasks themselves.

The point is simply physical action. To encourage enthusiasm in others one must first appear enthusiastic themselves, through physical action.

The second part of successful leadership motivation is emotion. A good leader motivates by finding ways to stir others emotions, therefore spurning on their actions.

The third point to remember, and perhaps the most crucial, is getting people to buy your hype. In other words, we can not make anyone do anything. They have to want to be lead and motivated into action. Accept that and there will be no disappointment

Taking all this into consideration, focus on presenting yourself with obvious physical and emotional enthusiam. Encourage the chairmen to come up with their own ideas on how to fix the issues within their respective committees, and teach them how to set their own goals while furthering the goals of the organization.

Again, some people will need more of this guidance than others, but once everyone sees everyone else excelling in their positions it will raise the morale and motivation of the entire organization.

When you came into office, the organisation was not working well together. Perhaps when you leave, you can be the top chapter of the national organization and even win several awards! Through trial and efficient leadership you WILL manage to motivate even the most apathetic member.