The Role of Inspiration in Cultivating High Performance

While helping employees clearly understand the purpose and objectives of the business has tremendous motivational potential, the failure to do so has a very real downside as well. If you fail to give employees a sense of company purpose, the more internally motivated employees, probably your strongest people, will find a purpose of their own -- and that will likely lead to chaos and conflict as everyone pursues their own agenda.

So what's the problem? Is inspiring employees really that difficult, or is it just overlooked? It's hard to say. While we certainly cannot expect to inspire employees to make the kind of sacrifice that Pat Tillman made, a level of commitment as intense as his is not what is required to dramatically improve the performance of most companies! Now this is a really important point -- the inspiration does not have to be "heroic" to be motivational -- rather all that is necessary is a clearly articulated purpose with well defined objectives that employees can understand and buy into. Think about it yourself -- it's very difficult to be highly motivated by a fuzzy purpose, conflicting objectives or objectives that seemingly change on a whim.

In future articles we will explore the characteristics of a strong vision statement -- one that provides the clarity of purpose and sense of direction that can inspire employees to higher performance. And while cultivating high performance requires more than a vision statement, a well-framed vision statement is a central element.

But giving employees a clear sense of purpose against which to direct their energies and enthusiasm is not enough. We've all witnessed friends or business associates that started a new job full of excitement and desire to contribute, only to find them months later de-motivated by their on-the-job experiences. What happened in the ensuing months? Somehow the operating environment they were working in diminished that enthusiasm.

So before getting into the characteristics of a strong vision statement, one that can inspire exceptional performance, we'll next explore the characteristics of a working environment that sustains, rather than strangles their enthusiasm.