When Considering How to Be an Inspiring Leader, Start with Words of Wisdom Shared by Transcendental Leaders
For aspiring transformational leaders and inspirational community leaders, the hands-down most important professional development tool for improving leadership skills is reading the words of wisdom shared by inspiring leaders who have come before you.
Reading (and listening, if you prefer audio learning) not only can deliver solid how-to information you can use to improve your leadership skills.
It can also give you a deep sense of who the inspirational leaders were, helping you model their energy to enhance your professional development and career success, while cultivating your own leadership style.
This is just as true for world leaders, CEOs, senior C-suite members and business executives as it is for self-leaders, managers and members of virtual teams.
From the time I was a child, I adored reading and the worlds it unlocked. By simply diving into a book or essay, you can experience the world in a different way — through the eyes of someone else.
Whether learning from community leaders, leaders who are guiding schools, leaders who are trying to win democratic elections, or even inspiring leaders who want to change the world with their movements, such as Rosa Parks, consuming the wisdom shared by other inspiring leaders is a sure-fire move to boost careers.
The empathy and understanding you gain by experiencing the world through the eyes of inspirational leaders not only can make it easier for you to connect with the in-person and remote teams you’re leading. It can also make you a more effective inspiring leader as you apply your leadership skills to resolve conflict, create understanding, and motivate the people around you.
If you’re a boss or simply a self-leader and you’ve ever wondered, “Who are some leaders to admire?” I have answers. (I also have a list of The Top 16 Must-Read Books on Abundance, all of which I highly recommend.)
How Do Leaders Inspire and Motivate
When I set my sights on learning from inspiring leaders, I was initially motivated for my own gain. I wanted greater career success, and in my chosen industry of sales, that meant learning leadership secrets that could be applied to teams.
I started learning as much as I could about an array of leadership skills: Public speaking, active listening, giving feedback, sharing a vision, and handling conflict just to name a few.
One of the core lessons I learned early on is that there is a vast difference between true desire and a simple want or wish. (Learn more about this key difference in Do You Desire to Think and Grow Rich?)
I would ask myself, “Who are great leaders today?” and throw myself into watching what they did and how they conducted themselves.
This list of inspiring leaders included business executives and managers within my company that I admired. It included candidates I saw running for office in democratic elections, as well as community leaders. It included people within the world of sales, as well as CEOs of well-known companies.
At one point, it finally included one of the most inspiring leaders I’ve ever met — Mary Morrissey, who is the founder of Brave Thinking Institute, as well as my mother.
As you probably can understand, despite having grown up in her loving care, I didn’t fully open to receiving all she could teach me until I was much older. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher — in this case, the inspiring transformational leader — appears.
When I was ready to receive Mary’s help, she began to teach me the Brave Thinking tools. When I witnessed, through the building of my dream home, that they actually worked, I was hooked. I dove into a multi-year exploration of the world’s greatest transformational and inspirational teachers and all they left behind to continue teaching us.
Just as reading is hands-down the most important leadership skill you can cultivate, I believe that history is one of the most important subjects you can study. As the saying goes, “If we don’t understand history, we are doomed to repeat it.” Studying the works of past inspirational and transformational leaders allows us to capitalize on their investment of time and effort, so we can leapfrog over their success and push the boundaries of what we know and can do.
One of the secrets I’ve discovered for understanding how transformational leaders inspire and motivate is to retrace their footsteps whenever possible. Going to the places they lived, worked, taught and reflected allows you to put yourself in their mindset like nothing else I’ve discovered.
This is one reason Mary and I created and regularly lead retreats to Concord, Massachusetts, as well as Dearborn, Michigan, where you can visit places that were important and notable to people and events associated with Transcendentalism, the origin of Brave Thinking.
Who Is the Best Leader in the World — the Most Inspiring Leader?
After decades of studying transformational leadership and history, I don’t believe that we can declare any single individual “the best” leader in the world. But when considering who is an inspirational person, there are many to choose from throughout history.
Here are 31 of my favorite inspirational leaders — and some of their most powerful quotes. Use their wisdom to guide your professional development as you seek to improve your leadership skills and have greater impact with your teams.
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Knowing what must be done does away with fear.”
Rosa Parks
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
Henry Ford
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison
“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.”
Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich
Discover 4 lessons from this classic book here.
“To become convinced that you can succeed is the first requisite to success.”
Wallace Wattles
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The important thing is this: to be able to give up in any given moment all that we are for what we can become.”
DeSeaux
“Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.”
Diogenes of Sinope
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: ‘we did it ourselves.'”
Lao Tzu
“Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.”
Publilius Syrus
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”
Andrew Carnegie
“To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
John D. Rockefeller
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Don’t find fault, find a remedy.”
Henry Ford
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader”
John Quincy Adams
“Strong convictions precede great actions”
James Freeman Clarke
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.”
J.P. Morgan
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation: as you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.”
Joseph Campbell
“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”
Aristotle
“Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place.”
Susan B. Anthony
“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”
George Washington Carver
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
Thomas Jefferson
“If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.”
Wilbur and Orville Wright
“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”
James Allen
“No matter what we want of life, we have to give up something in order to get it.”
Raymond Holliwell
“We all possess more power and greater possibilities than we realize, and visualizing is one of the greatest of these powers.”
Genevieve Behrend
How to Be an Inspiring Leader in Just 15 Minutes
In my decades of research into inspiring leaders and leadership development, one of the things that I learned quickly is that the world’s best inspirational leaders achieved greatness because of their mastery over one thing: their minds.
By learning to access the untapped potential in your mind at will, you can easily level-up your leadership skills and prepare for greater career success. I created a powerful leadership meditation to help you tap into the vibrational energy of the world’s most successful inspirational leaders — in just 15 minutes.
Download the free leadership meditation here, and you’ll be guided to calibrate your mind to the vibration of great leadership by focusing your thoughts to bring forth feelings of gratitude, abundance, creativity, innovation, inspiration – all of which can be transformed into powerful action, momentum and infinite possibility.
Listen to the this short, yet powerful, leadership meditation and:
- Prepare yourself for future leadership positions by unlocking your ability to create a list of solutions to the thorniest problems (it becomes easy once you plant the seeds of innovation and creativity in your subconscious mind)
- Cultivate a mindset of unlimited potential — a little-known power secret for effective leaders — so you can increase your productivity and accelerate growth
- Tap into a deep sense of calm, confident leadership through even the trickiest of challenges simply by igniting the mental “super-power” of Imagination
- Attract the resources (ideas, partners, opportunities, etc.) you need to turn even “no-win” projects into homerun success stories you’ll be talking about for years to come by attuning to the vibration of true wealth
Get your free copy of the leadership meditation here.
What Inspiring Leaders Do
As an inspirational leader, you’re always seeking ways to better support your teams, uplevel your leadership skills, and develop greater career success.
Whether you’re a CEO or business executive, or you’re a self-leader who wants to contribute as much as possible to your remote team, you’ll be well served by following the examples and advice shared by transformational leaders who have come before you.
- Read the works of the many transformation and inspirational leaders who have achieved the pinnacles of career success that you are pursuing. They have already blazed a trail for you to follow.
- Study history, because history repeats itself. The more you can learn from what transformational leaders have already achieved, the less time and energy you’ll spend relearning the same lessons. Accelerate the development of your leadership skills by learning from what history has to offer.
- Study the quotes above, and ponder how you may apply the advice shared to your own life and professional development. By studying these quotes, you’ll understand more deeply how do leaders inspire and motivate.
A powerful way to develop your leadership skills is to share what you’ve learned so others may learn from you. I’d love to hear your thoughts – which of these inspirational leadership quotes spoke to you and why? Add your observations below!
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