Are You an Inspirational Leader?

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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”.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the HBRI Deacast from Harvard Business Review.
0:13.2	I'm Alison Beard.
0:20.0	Think about the people who most inspire you.
0:24.9	Maybe it's a friend or family member who you've always looked up to, a coach or teacher
0:29.0	who puts you to be your best, a boss who knew exactly how to motivate the team, or a successful
0:34.2	CEO or politician who just always seems to do the right thing.
0:38.7	What do they all have in common?
0:40.9	Today's guest has done some deep research into the specific attributes that make people
0:45.1	inspirational leaders or not, in a variety of contexts and all around the world.
0:50.6	He says that the keys are vision, setting an example, and mentoring, and explains that any of us can improve in these areas to become more inspiring ourselves.
1:00.1	Adam Galinsky is a professor at Columbia Business School, and he wrote the book, Inspire, the Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others, as well as the HPR article, What Sets Inspirational Leaders Apart? Adam, welcome. Thanks so much
1:13.2	for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Alison. I'm really excited to talk to you.
1:20.9	What people find inspiring seems like a really tricky thing to measure because it's so subjective,
1:26.8	especially across different
1:28.1	personalities and cultures. So how did you start to think about the best way to study it?
1:33.9	It actually happened spontaneously in a classroom one day. I was teaching the FBI, the Federal Bureau
1:38.7	of Investigation, about 60 agents. And one of them started talking about a leader that had
1:43.9	inspired him to make better
1:45.6	decisions.
1:46.7	And I noticed something immediate about this person.
1:50.1	They somehow transformed in their body language, right?
1:53.6	Their eyes sparkled, and they described this person, and you could almost see this, like,
	...

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