Setting The Example Is A Core Leadership Skill

You can't delegate encouraging the heart. Every leader in the organization (every person, in fact) has to take the initiative to recognize individual contributions, celebrate team accomplishments, and create an atmosphere of confidence and support. It's not something we should wait around for others to do.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" clearly applies here. The foundation of leadership is credibility. Over and over again, people tell us credibility is, "doing what you say you will do." Leaders set the example for others. They practice what they preach. If you want others to encourage the heart, you start by modeling it yourself. Set high standards, believe in others, and invest your attention in them. You can't expect others in the organization to follow your lead if you don't take the first step yourself.

Personal involvement is also a genuine expression of caring. It helps foster trust and partnership. Leadership cannot be exercised from a distance. Leadership is a relationship, and relationships are formed only when people come into contact with each other.

Effective communication, if you're serious about it, requires dedication and self-control. Public displays of emotion are not for the fainthearted. It's become well known that people are more frightened of public speaking than they are of dying. Supporting others, particularly in times of great change, can be physically and emotionally draining. It may seem easy, but we have learned that encouraging the heart is one of the two most difficult of the five practices of exemplary leadership.

We've found that it's much easier for leaders to challenge the process, for example, than it is for them to encourage the heart. There's still a lot leaders have to learn. We begin to see from all this that the main essential of encouraging the heart are core leadership skills. We are not just about showing people they can win for the sake of making them feel good. This is a curiously serious business. When striving to raise quality, recover from disaster, start up a new service, or make dramatic change of any kind, leaders must make sure that people experience in their hearts that what they do matters.