What does it take to really energize people and motivate them toward a goal? Inspirational leadership might seem idiosyncratic and hard to quantify, but, according to Adam Galinsky, professor at Columbia Business School, it involves three key elements: having a vision, setting an example, and mentoring. His research shows this is true across industries and geographies, and he offers advice on how to improve in each area. He’s author of the book Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others as well as the HBR article “What Sets Inspirational Leaders Apart”.
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.
Think about the people who most inspire you. Maybe it’s a friend or family member who you’ve always looked up to, a coach or teacher who pushed you to be your best. A boss who knew exactly how to motivate the team or a successful CEO or politician who just always seems to do the right thing. What do they all have in common?
Today’s guest has sent some deep research into the specific attributes that make people inspirational leaders – or not – in a variety of contexts in all around the world. He says that the key is vision, setting an example and mentoring and explains that any of us can improve in these areas to become more inspiring ourselves.
Adam Galinsky is a professor at Columbia Business School. He wrote the book, Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others, as well as the HBR article, What Sets Inspirational Leaders Apart. Adam, welcome. Thanks so much for being here!
ADAM GALINSKY: Thank you so much for having me, Alison. I’m really excited to talk to you.
ALISON BEARD: What people find inspiring seems like a really tricky thing to measure, because it is so subjective, especially across different personalities and cultures. So how did you start to think about the best way to study it?
ADAM GALINSKY: It actually happened spontaneously in a classroom. One day I was teaching the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, about 60 agents, and one of them started talking about a leader that had inspired him to make better decisions. And I noticed something immediate about this person. They somehow transformed in their body language. Their eyes sparkled. And they described this person, and you could almost see this wellspring of hope and possibility emanating from them.
So I ended up turning to the rest of the class and asking if anyone else could describe a leader that inspired them. And so there are a lot of different ways you can study what is a phenomenon. One way we can do that is through quantitative questionnaires asking people to rate people on different dimensions.
But I chose a slightly different tact, which was a qualitative approach. So I just started to do what I did with the FBI agents and ask people all around the world to tell me about a leader that inspired them. Now, I also discovered pretty quickly that people also wanted to talk about the opposite type of leader, the leader that created the seething cauldron of rage and resentment inside of them.
And so I started asking people all over the world, two questions: Tell me about a leader that inspired you. What was it about that person that gave you that energy and that feeling of inspiration? And also tell me about another leader that infuriated you.
And so by asking people this qualitative question that allowed them to give spontaneous, open-ended responses, I’ve been able to sort of capture what is the set of characteristics that define each of these different categories, the inspiring leader and infuriating leader. And then through different types of quantitative analysis.
Then I can start to put these into different types of groupings that allow us, that came up with those three that you mentioned introduction, right about. It’s how people see the world, that’s the vision. It’s how people are in the world, that’s their being an exemplar. And it’s how they interact with others in the world, which is being a mentor.
ALISON BEARD: Well, I’d love to go through each of those. What exactly does an inspirational vision entail?
ADAM GALINSKY: Well, there’s a couple different elements to it. One thing that is very, very clear is that it’s optimistic. The vision sees a better tomorrow, and that’s such an important part of it. The second thing is that it’s based in or embedded in a core set of values. Not too many values, a finite set, maybe three to five values, maybe even a single value that really drives forward the idea of this optimistic better tomorrow. So that’s the “what.” It’s this optimistic values-based view of the future.
This “how” is how we express or articulate that. And the two dimensions that really matter are the first thing you do: you want to make your visionary message as simple and easy to process as possible. Lots of research shows that when things are simple, straightforward, people understand it better, but also see it as more true, which I think is incredibly valuable. And I have a study with Blaine Horton here at Columbia where we looked at everything from TED Talks to products on Apple Store, like apps, to even investments by angel investors. And what we showed is that when you can create this sort of simple idea that you can repeat, people are much more likely to get on board.
The second thing to the how is the visual and the visual is to make it as vivid as possible in people’s minds. One of my favorite examples is the difference between: our goal is to make our customers satisfied, versus our goal is to make our customers smile. And that smile is more vivid and therefore more engaging. And some research that I have also with Blaine is we analyze convention speeches from Democrats and Republicans in the last century, and we show that over and above economic factors like GDP, unemployment and inflation, over and above even poll numbers at the time of the convention, we can predict the winners by how much vivid metaphorical and visual language they use in their speeches.
And the final is the when: you want to repeat it over and over and over again. It creates a sense of fluency, which increases understanding and truth, value and validity.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I think a lot of people would say, “Well, all of that that you just described comes naturally to some people. There are people who are sort of big thinkers, ideas people, effective communicators, charismatic, and that’s not necessarily me. I’m more of an executor.” So what advice do you give those people about first, why it’s important for them to cultivate these visionary skills? And then second, how easy it might be for them to do when it doesn’t come naturally?
ADAM GALINSKY: The first thing that I would say is that there’s some things that we can all do in our own time and in our own place. And one of them is the importance of values reflection. So research shows that reflecting on your values periodically is unbelievably important for making you not only see the big picture, but also get that surge of optimism and energy. In one study we found that just getting unemployed individuals to reflect on their values when they sign up for unemployment benefits dramatically increased their probability of finding a job in the next two months. And so there’s something about this reflection task that everyone can do.
The second is, I think especially the last I mentioned simplicity, the vividness and the repetition. You can come up with a message and you can ask ChatGPT to simplify it and visualize it or we can ask other people to help us do that. So even if we don’t feel comfortable doing it ourselves, as a leader, we can use the talents of other people and even the technology that we have.
And the other one is repetition. And that really is about creating a habit. We can train ourselves to repeat that message over and over and over again. It’s just doing any type of exercise, like working out. I work out with a trainer and the first time I do an exercise, it feels totally unnatural to me and sometimes impossible, even that day. But over time, it becomes more possible the more that we work at it.
One of the most difficult ones I think people find is to take their complex thoughts and make them simple. But that’s one of the ones that I’ve worked with people on and really saying, “Okay, what’s the essence of the idea? What’s the most important thing? Let’s get to that.” And once they get there, it’s like this unbelievable aha moment of epiphany, if you will. And so it’s worth the effort. It’s worth the work to get there.
ALISON BEARD: Leading by example also seems pretty intuitive, but who are some people that you would point to that do this really well?
ADAM GALINSKY: There’s a lot of people that lead by example by portraying strength or competence or brilliance. I think whether you feel strongly or negatively against President Trump, he certainly presents himself as a creative genius, as someone who’s strong and powerful and protects people. And I think that’s sort of the image that people want.
One thing that I think is really important: the reason why these are the three universal aspects of inspiring others is because each of these satisfy a fundamental human need. So that sense of vision satisfies the fundamental human need of meaning and understanding. Being an exemplar desired behavior satisfies the human need for both protection and passion or energy.
And one of the reasons why that’s so important is because as humans, all of our emotions are contagious. But as leaders, our emotions are really powerfully infectious. I coined a phrase called the Leader Amplification Effect to really demonstrate that when we’re a leader, all of our signals that we express get amplified, even nonverbal signals or ones that we don’t intend to send. And therefore the reactions get intensified. So when we are calm and courageous in a crisis, other people around us feel calm. But if we get anxious in a crisis that ratchets up the panic in other people. And so how we behave is really, really important when we’re a leader because all eyes are on us.
ALISON BEARD: Okay, so let’s turn to mentoring. What is the human need that aspect of being an inspirational leader meets for all of us?
ADAM GALINSKY: We have two really fundamental needs as social beings The first one is a sense of belonging, a sense that we’re included in a group. And the second is not just that we belong to a community or group, but we’re valued and respected by that group. So these two, what people call fundamental needs of belonging and status, and those are very clearly established as two fundamental human needs.
ALISON BEARD: And mentoring is something that people know is a good thing, but don’t necessarily think is required if you don’t have a direct report or even if you do, but they’re very senior people themselves and the thinking is maybe they can manage on their own. So why is it so important for all of us to keep doing it?
ADAM GALINSKY: One thing is we think about some leaders out there that we often think of as inspirational. We could go to Margaret Thatcher as one example. Steve Jobs,. They seem to be high on the visionary elements and they also seem to be very high on the super competence, if you will, or at least that’s how they present themselves. But all of them I don’t think would be characterized as warm and fuzzy mentors, and that’s probably okay from a distance. But how we treat people really matters.
And I think that there’s a couple things that become really important for people. We are, again, social beings and we want to be shown that people believe in us, they empower us, they give us responsibilities and opportunities. We’re not micromanaged. they also elevate us. They see us, they acknowledge our contributions. And some inspiring leaders and vision exemplar are absolutely infuriating and cruel as mentors because they steal success and they put blame on everyone else. It’s me, me, me when things are going well, but it’s you, you, you when things go badly, and that’s a recipe of infuriation and that’s why people leave and don’t stay at companies.
ALISON BEARD: Are all of these categories equally important if you want to be an inspirational leader? Because you have given examples of people who are inspirational but are definitely higher in some of these areas than others.
ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, it’s a great question. The way that I would answer it is to go back to one of the things that I said earlier about why are these the three universal aspects is because they satisfy these fundamental needs. And so one of the things that we need to recognize is that if our actions today satisfy a need that we have today, we’re going to see that person as more inspiring. But if that person is being inspiring on one dimension, but infuriating on a second dimension, but our core fundamental need at that moment in time is on that second dimension, we’re going to find them more infuriating.
So it’s really not about do you need to be high, that one is more important than the others. It really comes down to what do the people in my orbit really need at that moment in time? And so sometimes people are just going to need a sense of “I know where I’m going. And other times they’re going to need their feelings are going to be attended to.
ALISON BEARD: And how can we get better at determining that, just being more attentive to what people are saying and how they’re behaving?
ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely. I think one thing is that during times of uncertainty, people feel really lost. And so I think in times of uncertainty, the need for effective communication goes way up.
One of the things that Frank Flynn at Stanford has showed is that we are 10 times more likely to judge our leaders harshly if they under communicate than they over communicate. And when people under communicate, we also think they don’t care. So it gets to the mentor aspect, and if they over communicate, we think they care. Anytime we’re going to a period of turmoil, we just want to hear someone speak and give us a sense of understanding.
It’s why Rudy Giuliani became America’s mayor after 9/11 because he stood there every day. It’s why people were talking about Andrew Cuomo maybe being President of the United States, because during Covid, he had a press conference every day and just let people know what he knew. He was communicating. In that moment in time that’s what we needed.
ALISON BEARD: What did you find about the attributes that make an infuriating leader? Is it just the opposite, the lack of vision, lack of setting an example, lack of mentoring?
ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah. One of the things I discovered very quickly on is that they were really mirror images of each other. So someone would describe someone as this optimistic big picture thinker, and someone else would describe someone, the infuriating leader like, “My infuriating leader was this pessimistic, pedantic” or pedantic pessimist. Or they would say “My inspiring leader was calm. My infuriating leader was anxious. My inspiring leader was courageous. My infuriating leader was cowardly. My inspiring leader had this passion.” The other one was just seemed almost without energy or “My inspiring leader elevated me. They recognized my contribution.” “My infuriating leader diminished me, or my inspiring leader shared success, but took on burden. My infuriating leader stole success and put all the blame on me.”
And so they really were mirror images of each other. It sort of suggest that something about this continuum between inspiring and infuriating leaders is part of the fabric or tapestry of the human mind. But it’s also practically important because every time we start to go towards the infuriating end of the continuum and life, right, hunger, sleeplessness, pressure, infuriating bosses, it tilts us towards the infuriating end of the continuum. We have a pathway back. When we find ourselves stealing success, we can start to share success. When we find ourselves getting anxious, we can find ways to be calm. When we find ourselves lost in the weeds, we can take a step back and see the big picture.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I think that point that you made when we were working on the article together was most interesting to me. There’s not inspirational leaders and infuriating leaders. People can move back and forth between the two. They can be both at the same time. If they’re failing in one area, but excelling in another. And so this idea that your shouldn’t be to just be a hundred percent top of the line, I’m always going to be inspirational, but more “I’m going to be closer to that than I am to infuriating every day if I can.”
ADAM GALINSKY: And I think one of the things that becomes really the key is to recognize that it’s my current behavior that inspires and infuriates. I get some credit for my past behavior, but not as much as we might like. People are responding in the moment to how we are, and those can linger for a period of time. But it also tells us why reflecting on our own experiences is so important. So I already mentioned the power of reflecting on our values can help us get into a visionary state of mind. But reflecting on times when we were powerful and in control can give us that calm courage and infuse us with that authentic passion. And reflecting on the experience of others can help us be a more inspiring or better mentor.
But there’s a larger reflection that I think we need to engage in because we’re not perfect, because we’re going to make mistakes, because we’re going to go to the infuriating end of the continuum on occasion. It’s really important to reflect on our experiences. And so I tell people once a month to think about a time in their own experience in that last month, about when they were inspiring, but also when they were infuriating. When did they see the big picture versus not? When were they calm and courageous versus more anxious and cowardly? When did they not really attend to others, but focus only on themselves?
And then think about what were the contexts or conditions that produced that. And by doing that, we can not only recognize, well, when do we often become infuriating? Maybe someone realizes, “You know what, every time I’m hungry, I become hangry and just become an infuriating boss,” so I’m going to make sure that I get better food or better sleep. Or they realize they don’t deal with time pressure well, and so they can start to work on how can I take away that time pressure or how can I handle it more effectively? And so the reflected life is the life not only worth living, but it’s also the life that makes us better leaders.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, so we all know personally what it feels like to either be inspired or infuriated, but have you learned anything about the sort of broader benefits of inspirational leadership and the costs of infuriating ones for teams and organizations?
ADAM GALINSKY: I mentioned earlier one of the biggest things that we have to deal with as a organization is turnover when people leave the organization. And if you analyze a lot of the data that is out there about the great resignation, when 30 million people quit their jobs during the aftermath of Covid. And if you look at the reasons why besides money, and money wasn’t even the most important factor for most people, it goes back to the mentor aspect. It goes back to how they were treated by the organization, or they didn’t feel that organization gave them a sense of meaning and purpose. It lacked the vision that they needed.
And so these things really, really matter for sustaining organizations over the long run, the crisis that we face when there’s a downturn in the economy, how do we handle that? Or do we drive people away or lay them off because we don’t see the larger vision, for example, and the human cost of that.
ALISON BEARD: And do you need to be inspirational to wield influence?
ADAM GALINSKY: I mean, you don’t need to be inspirational to wield influence. And I think there’s lots of different ways that you could use force to be influential in the moment. But I will say this: leading through, let’s say domination or infuriation can be an effective short-term strategy, but it’s not a very effective long-term strategy because every time we act that way, we create a residue of resentment, and that residue can build up into an explosive response at a later point. And so I think there’s a reason why people go towards the infuriating end because sometimes it’s just easier and sometimes it’s the most efficient in that single moment, but over time, it’s not the most effective strategy.
ALISON BEARD: And is it possible to be inspirational, do the right things and still fail or fall down as a leader?
ADAM GALINSKY: Sure, absolutely. We can do everything right and our business can fail. We can make the right decision, but the outcome isn’t what we wanted. And so the key is not just the type of behaviors we do that lead up to those moments, but how we respond to them.
ALISON BEARD: So we’ve talked about how we can coach ourselves to be more inspirational. How if you’re a manager, do you coach your team members to be that for each other and for their direct reports?
ADAM GALINSKY: One of the things that we can do as leaders is structure people around each of these inspirational elements. So we can think about our direct reports, how are they doing any of these elements, and then we can coach them. We can help them see the bigger picture or be more optimistic or help them get calmer in a crisis or help them elevate other people or empower other people.
One of the things that, especially new leaders or people promoted positions often do is micromanage because that’s our natural tendency to take control. But oftentimes it’s the letting go of certain amounts of control that can be so empowering to people. So using this inspirational leadership as a lens can help us actually be with people, but also solving their needs can help them be more inspirational.
ALISON BEARD: If there’s one thing that you would want each of us to do tomorrow at work to become more inspirational, what would it be?
ADAM GALINSKY: I’ll actually focus on the mentor aspect. And the one thing that we can do is we can daily reach out to someone and just compliment them when they’ve done a really good job. And be specific. I was talking to – this all started with a president of a bank with 1,200 employees, and he would send a birthday note to each person, 1400 people. That’s like five emails a day, every day, the whole year. But he incorporated it into his morning coffee and it’s very simple. He’ll say something like, “Happy birthday. How did bowling go with your family this weekend?” And then the people write a novel back and he said, this really helps him. He did this to reach out and let people know how much he cared about them to make them feel good about their day.
But it makes him feel good too when he gets these responses back. And then I was talking to, I was telling this to another CEO, and they told me that they started to do that every day. They would send over their coffee, they would send a compliment or gratitude to someone in their organization, and they were very specific like, “Hey, I just want to let you know you knocked that presentation out of the park last week. I was just thinking about that this morning.” And he said that he gets these joyous responses back. He did that to put a spring in their step, but it puts a spring in his step and it makes them feel more inspired to go to work and to inspire more people. And so you can really see this virtuous cycle of inspiration when you can reach out to people and inspire them. You get inspiration back, you reap what you sow, and that’s how you make the world a more inspiring place.
ALISON BEARD: I love that. What a perfect note to end on. Adam, thank you so much for being with me today.
ADAM GALINSKY: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.
ALISON BEARD: That’s Adam Galinsky, professor at Columbia Business School and author of the book Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others, and the HBR article, What Sets Inspirational Leaders Apart.
And we have more than a thousand episodes of this show, which means we have many more episodes and podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at HBR.org/podcasts or search HBR and Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Thanks to our team, senior Producer Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager, Ian Fox and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR Idea Cast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.
