How To Inspire Others

The biggest trap that Leaders fall into when trying to inspire others is their conditioning around putting others first. They don’t allow themselves to live a full and passionate life outside of work and therefore don’t grow and develop in other ways.

You have to understand that this function of putting others first is a completely normal way of thinking because when we were children, we had to put our parents' needs before our own to get love and not be rejected by our tribe.

We believe that others are more important than us. What then ‘normally’ happens is we go through our rebellious teenage years and tear away from our parents in a healthy rejection of meeting their needs and we learn to meet our own. (If you have teenagers at the moment, you might be pulling out your hair, but this is a very important process so that we can become our own person.)

A lot of people, however, feel guilty putting themselves first because their parents or their tribe are not secure enough to handle this rejection and, therefore keep their children locked in the tribal cycle of guilt and shame for not taking care of the family.

Children must be selfless to survive.

Functional selfishness is understanding that, as an adult we need to meet our own needs first because otherwise, we will burn out. It's knowing that when we have a full cup because we have our own needs and passion at the centre of our focus, we can then give freely to others from a place of love and abundance.

A client of mine started to get run down when in her business because they were constantly ‘on the tools’ (working in the business) AND trying to lead the team. This is a very common mistake lots of business owners make. I asked her one day, ‘Are you putting your needs first?’ She looked at me shyly and said she wanted to take the pressure off her team members doing it… she was putting their needs ahead of her own, and this was affecting her ability to lead. She didn't ask her team members to take on extra shifts because she was afraid that they would feel overwhelmed and that they might be taking on too much. What this meant was my client didn't trust her team members to speak up if they were overwhelmed.

This is an important element of trust because you are letting others learn their own lessons. Being functionally selfish is always a balance of what is ideal and what can't be avoided. There will definitely be times when you have to be on the tools but that should be after you have tried to delegate and be functionally selfish to do what you need to do as a business owner to live a passionate life and from that place you can inspire others.

How can you expect your team members to show up refreshed and fully ready to work if you keep on putting your needs last and teach them that it's ok to be exhausted all the time?

The quote that comes to mind here is ‘Give someone the best of you and not the rest of you’!

If you are ready to stop limiting yourself and your teams ability to grow then reach out.

I can teach you how to

Develop your ideal lifestyle as a leader and create a pathway to get there with delegation, systems and coaching your team members into their potential.