How Great Leaders Inspire Action and Drive Change

“In organisations across the globe, meaningless unstructured interpersonal engagements are occurring. In Melbourne City, there is a dedicated coach who investigates these vicious felonies, helping victims who need more gravitas. These are their stories.”

As you begin 2025, it’s so important as a leader to express things in a motivational way for your organisation or team.

Working with Bernadette (not her real name) on the presentation of a global restructure, I was aware that this was a global team that was somewhat exhausted by change. Consequently, Bernadette had a great opportunity to make a tremendous difference by managing her presentation with an eye on the motivational flow.

So, what did Bernadette do?

Bernadette was introducing a list of new leaders in the executive team. Although her words told me she was excited, her delivery made it sound like a shopping list. 

I said, “You don’t sound very excited,” 

She replied, “That’s because Chris is losing his role. I’m going to announce that at the end and I don’t want to sound upbeat when I do it.’

Wow, why would you finish with a downer! 

Motivational delivery can inspire action and drive change

As a motivational leader we must be focusing on motivating our team so that we can inspire them, create action and drive the change we want to see. So what should Bernadette have done differently to create motivation and inspiration?

Here’s what I suggested to her, and a template for what you can do to have motivational delivery that can inspire action and drive change.

Motivational template

1. First of all, ‘tell them what you’re going to tell them‘ (an oldy, but a goldy).
Eg. “There’s some great news with our exciting restructure.”

2. Then get the bad news out of the way.
Eg. “Before we start, we need to recognise that not all roles will belong in the new restructure, and we are sad to say that Chris will be leaving us as his role is going, and e thank Chris for all that he’s done.”

3. Continue with the good news. For example you could say, “So let’s have a look at the new structure. We are excited to welcome etc. etc. etc.”

(Give the structure in its simplest form and elaborate after that if required. Do not elaborate on each role one by one as everyone reads on to the next point)

4. At the end, close with a summary.
Eg. “We’re looking at some exciting changes in 2025.”

5. Finish with the next action. For example, “Our job now is to support these new leaders and start moving forward in 2025 with gusto.”

Motivational learning from ancient Rome

As I mentioned in a previous article about ROI, in ancient Rome they allowed for measurement beautifully by having different levels of society, which you can see in the model below: