Two workers walk into work. One receives praise and attention and the other receives harder jobs and no recognition. One is trusted, and the other is not. One is mentored by his bosses and other is forgotten. At the end of six months, one of the workers quits his job. Can you guess who? It was the worker that was ignored and even though they did just as much work and did work just as well one thing was missing. He was not influenced to be better. He might have been motivated to do his job by getting paid, but in the end that motivation was not enough to keep him in the company.

Motivating influentially is a key aspect of leadership. I believe one can motivate people, but motivating influentially is something more. Something that I believe every leader should strive to do. Now let's looks at motivating. Motivating is getting others to want to do something and actually doing it with purpose. While this is great, there is one problem with just motivating people. Motivation dies. People eventually stop doing what you motivated them to do. Entropy kicks in, people stop being motivated, and now you are back to the beginning of your predicament of not getting people to do what you need them to do. The key I believe is motivating influentially.

Leaders lead people, but great leaders influence people. That is a key to leadership. Influencing others in such a positive way that you are no longer leading or managing, but you are empowering people by influencing them. This type of leadership can allow you to accomplish so much more, but it requires that you, as a leader, set an example in all you do. They will see how you lead and want to do it the way you do it. Influencing people can be as easy as meeting with people and encouraging them in what they are doing, providing positive feedback, and giving people a reason to live, for more than just a paycheck. This also requires you to trust the individual. When you show trust in someone, it makes them respect you and that leads to influencing them.

When you can influence people in such a positive way, then you can motivate them at the same time. Thus, with the cycle of influencing and motivating you create a habitual leadership movement. That movement becomes so ingrained in people that they no longer rely on you to lift them up, but instead they remember how you influenced them. This leads them to be motivated by the emotional or mental connection of you encouraging them time after time. This is motivating influentially, and I believe that this is what empowers future leaders and future generations.