Overview: Leaders motivate their teams, and teams motivate their leaders. Engaged team members who share the enthusiasm of their leaders can be incredibly motivating for managers and leaders. Teams can motivate their superiors by celebrating successes, providing them with worthy challenges, and supporting them on their quests to advocate change. 

Leadership coaching shows leaders how to motivate their followers and themselves. Where do leaders find their motivation? How do they keep themselves engaged and committed to their objectives? 

Teams are the primary sources of leaders’ motivation. Well-performing teams motivate leaders to aim higher and achieve more. Good teams also create opportunities for their leaders. This is the key to leadership motivation. Followers crave security and transparency, while leaders want opportunities. 

Leaders Like to Meet Challenges

Leaders often find opportunities in challenges. Leadership types like to undertake difficult tasks to prove their mettle and create opportunities for themselves. 

The common challenges of leadership are enough to motivate most leaders. Leaders have to: 

• Act as agents of change
• Inspire others
• Juggle different perspectives
• Deal with their fears and teach followers how to deal with theirs
• Develop followers and mentor successors
• Manage teams

Leaders also face challenges like: 

• Making difficult, on-the-spot decisions with limited information
• Seeking and offering relevant feedback
• Delegating tasks
• Managing team workloads and other resources

Leaders have discovered their strengths and know what they can do well. Using their experience and expertise, they help others learn what they’re good at and push them towards succeed. Helping others succeed is the crowning challenge and motivating factor of leadership. Having engaged followers eager to succeed can motivate leaders to do their best. 

Celebrating Successes

Teams that celebrate their successes offer leaders fuel for motivation in many ways. 

• They remind leaders of the goals they set and the reasons why they set them. We forget the importance of goals once we accomplish them, thus emptying our work of meaning. Remembering the significance of our goals can be very motivating. 
• Teams that celebrate successes remind their leaders that their approaches to getting things done work. 
• Celebrations create a sense of unity within the team. They reinforce the feeling of belonging for all. 
• When celebrating success, leaders interact and build connections with their followers in ways not related to work.
• Celebrations drag leaders away from the grind of day-to-day tasks, allowing them to take breaks and recharge. 

Leadership Autonomy

Like employees, leaders need freedom and control over their lives. Leadership coaching values autonomy because it improves employee engagement, allowing employees to assume psychological ownership of their work. 

Like employees, leaders need autonomy to feel they truly own what they do. Unlike controlled motivation, autonomous motivation has a far-reaching impact on engagement and job satisfaction. 

Shared Enthusiasm

Teams that share a leader’s enthusiasm for a project can be highly motivating. Few things can take the wind out of your sales quicker than a disengaged team that’s not as excited about something as you are. 

Team members who share a leader’s enthusiasm exhibit some highly motivating traits: 

• They show an infectious sense of urgency. 
• They strive for excellence and do their best work. 
• They go above and beyond the call of duty to make things happen. 

Such team members give managers and leaders wings by believing in what they do. 

Acting as Agents of Change

Intelligent leaders advocate change and thrive in such a role. Executive coaching focuses on teaching leaders new ways to facilitate change and overcome resistance. Inspiring leadership is all about change and the ability to navigate it. 

When day-to-day work grows stale, inspiring leaders lose their reasons to be. That is a death sentence for their motivation. Change gives leaders reasons to step up and shine. 

Inspiring leaders are motivated. Leaders are powerful sources of motivation for their teams. In turn, teams are sources of motivation for their leaders. Teams and their leaders feed off each other’s energy. 

To learn more about how you can join the IL Movement as a coach, or how you can benefit from bringing IL Solutions to your organization, contact us today.