Courage In Action: Inspiring Lasting Engagement

Welcome to the Courage of a Leader podcast. This is where you hear real-life stories of top leaders achieving extraordinary results, and you get practical advice and techniques you can immediately apply for your own success. This is where you will get inspired and take bold, courageous action. I'm so glad you can join us. I'm your host, Amy Reilly. Now, are you ready to step into the full power of your leadership and achieve the results you care about most. Let's ignite the courage of a leader.

One of the biggest misconceptions about leadership is that people are primarily inspired by charisma. They're not. not people are inspired by leaders who are authentic, by leaders who are connected, by leaders that make people feel valued, by leaders that create trust, by leaders that help people believe that their work, that their contributions actually matter right now. In today's workplace, we have an engagement crisis. People are exhausted, people feel overwhelmed, people are disconnected. Trust has been strained in many workplaces, and leaders are trying to motivate teams while under very extreme pressure themselves. That's why inspiring and engaging others requires much more than enthusiasm or motivational language. It requires intentional leadership. It requires emotional intelligence. It requires demonstrating the courage of a leader consistently over time. Because people do not stay engaged simply because a leader says the right things, they stay engaged when leaders

create environments where people feel respected, they feel supported, they feel challenged in the right ways, they feel connected to a purpose. And in the work that I do, coaching leaders and facilitating leadership programs, these conversations come up constantly. Leaders are asking me, How do I keep people motivated? How do I get disengaged employees connected again? What actually builds trust? How do I inspire people when morale is low? And underneath all of those questions is something important. People want leadership that feels real, not transactional, not performative, not overly charismatic, and not disconnected from the actual human experience of the work. So, in this episode, which is a part of the Courage in Action series, I want to talk through five questions. I hear these questions repeatedly, and they get to the heart of inspiring and engaging others. So, these five questions are, what does it really mean to inspire people in a sustainable, authentic way?

Question two, Why do some leaders struggle to engage their teams even when they have good intentions. Question three: How can leaders courageously connect with disengaged employees? Four, what small consistent leadership behaviors build trust and engagement over time? And finally, How do courageous leaders inspire people during difficult or uncertain seasons, so I've been taking notes about each of these questions, so I can share with you what's most important about the dynamics at play right now, and specifically what to do about them, so you'll see me if you are watching this episode on the Courage of a leader website or on YouTube, you'll see me looking at my notes, because I don't want to miss anything, and I want to get this information to you right away. My hope is that as we walk through these questions together, you'll hear practical leadership guidance that you can immediately apply. Inspiring leadership is not about becoming someone else, it's about becoming more

intentional in how you lead people. Let's dive in. So, the first question is, what does it really mean to inspire people in a sustainable, authentic way? I think sustainable inspiration. Is often quieter than people expect. When people hear that word, inspire, they often picture big speeches, high energy, charismatic personalities, and while those things can create temporary motivation, lasting inspiration comes from something much deeper. People are inspired by leaders they trust, leaders who are genuine, who show that they care, who listen, who follow up on what's important to their team members, leaders who consistently align their actions with values. Now that sounds jargony. That's leaders who know what their top values are and think regularly about how they can demonstrate those and bring those to life inside of their leadership and their day-to-day interactions. Leaders who engage both people's heads and hearts. I'll explain concrete ways to do both.

Sustainable inspiration comes from how leaders make people feel over time. Do they feel respected? Do they feel seen? Do they feel like their contributions matter? Do they feel safe bringing ideas and questions and concerns forward.

That's what creates lasting engagement. I also think sometimes leaders put pressure on themselves to constantly pump people up, right? It got to be inspiring, it got to be motivating, I got to say the right thing. Yet inspiring leadership is not about waxing positive all the time. In fact, people disengage if they feel like the leadership feels forced or inauthentic. Demonstrating the courage of a leader means showing up consistently, honestly, and intentionally. Let me give you some examples. It looks like recognizing someone's contribution specifically instead of giving generic praise. It looks like listening fully instead of multitasking while someone is talking when a team member comes to us. It looks like communicating honestly during difficult seasons, instead of pretending everything is fine, it looks like following up, following through on commitments, following through on an obstacle a team member brought up, whether we were able to fully handle it or not, letting

folks know where it's at, and one of the most inspiring things a leader can do is help people understand why their work matters. I often say that engagement starts with a compelling purpose and a clear finish line, a compelling and clear message. This is one of the leadership concepts I believe in most strongly, because I've seen the impact over and over again. If people want true engagement, they need to engage both people's heads and hearts. So, let's talk about this: a compelling purpose and a clear finish line. The compelling purpose answers why should people care right beyond making a profit, beyond having a job. Why does this matter? How does this positively impact others? Probably our customers. What difference are we trying to make? Why do we do what we do? How does it help society members, customers? Because people want to feel connected to something meaningful, and the clear finish line answers, what exactly are we trying to accomplish here? And how are we going to

know when we get there? What does success look like? How will we know when we've crossed that finish line? When we've achieved what we want to achieve, people need both. Without purpose, work starts feeling transactional. Without clarity, people feel confused, scattered, disconnected. And one thing I've observed repeatedly is this: a lot of leaders communicate goals, far fewer communicate compelling purpose and clear finish line. There's a difference. So, for example, a leader could say we need to improve customer satisfaction this quarter. Okay, sounds like a goal, yet it's not especially inspiring. A compelling purpose and clear finish line sounds more like this. We want our customers to feel supported, valued, and confident using our services, so they can succeed in their work. And by the end of this quarter, we're going to cut response times in half while in. Increasing customer satisfaction scores, and then there might be some numbers that we apply to that that helps

people understand both the why and the specific destination. Another example, instead of we need better collaboration, a compelling purpose and clear finish line sounds like we want to create a culture where people feel connected, supported, and empowered to solve problems together, and by the end of the year we will have a clear and consistent cross-functional process that allows team members to communicate more effectively and launch projects more successfully. That combination creates emotional connection and strategic clarity at the same time. Now, that might leave you wondering, like, okay, is that an implementation of a platform, is it this, it's that, and too often we describe what we're up to in that language, we're going to implement XYZ platform. No, you're going to know that you've crossed the finish line when you're able to communicate more effectively and launch projects more successfully. That's when engagement starts to shift, because people are

more committed when they understand both why the work matters and where they're headed together, it engages people intellectually and emotionally, and that's where true engagement begins. People are far more engaged when they feel connected to the impact instead of simply tasks. We're going to implement this platform, we're going to do this, we're going to move processes into this structure. Why, what kind of impact is it going to have? One practical leadership habit I encourage is this: instead of talking only about those outcomes, regularly connect back to purpose, help people see who benefits from their work. Why does it matter?

How are their contributions supporting something larger than themselves? Help them create that line of sight. How are they helping customers, members, community that creates a much deeper form of motivation. All right. Question number two is, why do some leaders struggle to engage their teams, even when they have the best of intentions? Good intentions alone are not enough. Many leaders genuinely care about people, yet caring internally and leading in ways that people actually experience that genuine care are not always the same thing. Unfortunately, sometimes leaders are so focused on tasks, deadlines, pressure that they unintentionally neglect connection sometimes Sometimes they communicate too little. Sometimes they become reactive under stress. Sometimes they assume employees know that they're appreciated without ever expressing it. Or I just did, and now that's a month, six weeks ago. That causes disengagement to grow. It happens through repeated experiences where

employees feel unheard, disconnected, overlooked, or unsupported. So, for example, a leader regularly cancels one on ones. Feedback only happens when something goes wrong, employees feel decisions are constantly changing without explanation, or leaders become so overwhelmed themselves that they stop being emotionally available to their teams. Here's something important: leaders do not build engagement through occasional big gestures, through occasional moments of connection. They build it through consistent everyday interactions. That's why demonstrating the courage of a leader requires self-awareness, because leaders need to be willing to ask, how are people actually experiencing me right now? Not what are my intentions yet. What impact am I creating? One practical strategy is to increase curiosity. Get curious about it, instead of assuming disengaged employees simply don't care. Ask questions. What is helping you feel engaged right now? What is getting in the way? What

support would help you most? Sometimes employees don't need big dramatic leadership changes. They simply need to feel heard and. Understood. One of the fastest ways leaders lose engagement is when employees feel that leadership is disconnected from the actual human experience of work. People want honesty, they want transparency, they want leaders who are willing to say, here's what I know. Here's what I don't know. Here's where we need your ideas, where we need your input. That kind of vulnerability builds trust much faster, more deeply than leaders often realize. Question three, How can leaders courageously reconnect with disengaged employees? This is really important. First, leaders need to stop viewing disengagement only as an employee problem, only as a they problem. Sometimes disengagement is connected to workload, sometimes it's connected to burnout, sometimes it's connected to lack of clarity, trust, recognition, growth opportunities, or psychological safety in the

workplace. They don't feel comfortable coming to you with how they really feel and disengaged employees are not going to become re-engaged through pressure or lectures, they reconnect through trust, conversation, offers of support, meaningful leadership. That's why reconnecting with disengaged employees requires intentionally demonstrating the courage of a leader, because these conversations can feel uncomfortable, especially if leaders worry that they're going to hear difficult feedback. Yet, here's the thing: avoidance is not going to improve engagement, and the difficult feedback is out there, whether we hear it or not. So, it's better to hear it, so that we can understand, and we can find possible ways to reconnect, increase engagement. One practical approach is again to start with curiosity about what you, as the leader, can do differently. Instead of, 'Hey, you seem disengaged recently, try. I've noticed some changes. I want to check in and understand how you're doing, and how

I can better support you and the team. That creates an entirely different kind of conversation, it lowers defensiveness, it creates safety, it communicates care instead of judgment. And you do need to come in with true curiosity about it. We need to listen without immediately trying to defend, explain, or fix everything. We can be really well-intentioned, and want to. Okay, here's something I have an idea for that. I want to solve it. Don't immediately jump in with that. Take the time to listen and fully understand. Give employees the space and time to be heard. We want to slow down, listen fully, understand. I think leaders can also look for practical ways to reconnect employees to their strengths and to their contributions.

People often disengage when they stop feeling effective or valued or like they're having the kind of impact that they'd like to, so we can ask, what type of work energizes you? Where do you feel you contribute best? What would help you feel more successful right now, and we can say your strength of analyzing and getting to the heart of the matter, or your strength of understanding the point of view of the customer, or influencing will really serve you, or the team, or the work that we're doing right now. These conversations create meaningful shifts in engagement. It's incredible, and I've seen it. It's not rocket science, bringing this curiosity, asking these questions, telling them about the value that they bring. One caring conversation handled well can rebuild more trust than leaders realize. And on that theme, question four is what small consistent leadership behaviors build trust and engagement over time. Trust is usually built through small moments more than big grand

gestures, and I think that's encouraging, because that means leadership influence is available every day in. In so many moments, trust grows when leaders are consistent, when leaders communicate clearly, when leaders follow through, when they stop other things and listen fully to the team member in front of them, when they acknowledge people, when employees feel emotionally safe around them, because we're being silent, we're listening, we're taking it in, we're asking curious questions, and many of those behaviors sound simple, yet simple does not mean insignificant. For example, starting meetings on time communicates respect. Following through on commitments builds credibility. Checking in on employees consistently communicates care. Giving clear expectations reduces anxiety. Admitting mistakes builds trust, recognizing effort increases motivation. Oh, I think this is an interesting one. I see so many leaders who are hesitant to recognize effort, especially if the desired

target was not met. Right, we didn't make it across the finish line in the way or in the timing that we wanted to, oh, I don't want to recognize the effort because I don't want to make it seem okay that we didn't hit the target, but if they put in a lot of effort, we want to recognize that, and we want to talk about it, we want to learn from, hey, we did this concerted effort, we didn't quite get there. What happened? It's a dynamic landscape right now. Could be things that are not under our control, but how do we increase our influence in the future? Let's learn, so that next time we put this effort in, we increase our chances of crossing that finish line, creating space for employees to contribute ideas builds ownership. Trusting people with meaningful responsibility builds confidence and engagement. Foundational to all of this, and one of the most powerful leadership behaviors is presence. People can tell when leaders are distracted, they can tell when leaders are

rushing, or they're just trying to move past this, and they can tell when leaders are genuinely listening. Demonstrating the courage of leader often looks like slowing down enough to be fully present with people and vulnerability plays a much bigger role in engagement than many leaders realize, not performative vulnerability, not over sharing without purpose, yet the willingness to admit mistakes, ask for input, acknowledge, and talk about the uncertainty that's going on, and trusting others enough to contribute meaningfully. Engagement grows when people feel included, trusted, and emotionally connected to the work, even during the busy, uncertain, difficult seasons, and I would say consistency matters more than intensity. A leader does not need to create extraordinary, inspiring experiences or speeches every week, yet employees do need predictable consistent leadership behaviors that create trust over time. Ask yourself, what is it consistently like to work with me? That

question reveals a lot, because engagement is shaped less by the occasional leadership moments and more by the daily repeated experiences. Okay, we're already into question five. How do courageous leaders inspire people during difficult or uncertain seasons? We've been talking about this, but some more points to make here. This is one of the most important questions right now. Many leaders are trying to inspire people while navigating uncertainty themselves. Difficult seasons reveal leadership quickly, not because leaders suddenly become perfect under pressure, but because people pay close attention to how leaders respond when things get hard. Now, inspiring leadership during difficult seasons does not mean pretending everything is positive.

You've heard that in what I've. Saying already, people do not need or want forced optimism. They want honesty, steadiness, empathy, and clarity. That's why demonstrating the courage of a leader matters so much during uncertainty. For example, healthy leadership sounds like this is a challenging season. We don't have every answer yet. Here's what we do know. Here's what we are prioritizing. Here's how we'll continue to communicate with each other and support each other going forward. That kind of leadership creates stability. It engages both people's heads and their hearts. The head says, "Okay, we understand the situation that we're in. We understand what we're up to here, and the heart says, "We trust the people leading us here. I think courageous leaders inspire people during difficult seasons by remaining connected under pressure, when things get hard, some leaders unintentionally withdraw. They communicate less, they become transactional, they feel like they've got to

recede to their office, close the doors, get it all figured out, get that perfect message to then deliver to the people, but that is not what the people need. Uncertainty is often when people need leadership presence the most. Even when we, as leaders, have nothing new to say, we can ask questions, we can get connected. Sometimes the most meaningful leadership moments are surprisingly small. A leader checking in personally, acknowledging stress openly, thanking people specifically, sharing appreciation publicly, celebrating. celebrating contributions consistently creating clarity wherever possible, or let them know when clarity is coming, or simply staying calm when others feel overwhelmed, or are showing up phonetically. One of the most inspiring things leaders can model during difficult seasons is resilience, not pretending that everything is easy, yet the willingness to show up intentionally, responsibly, compassionately, even when leadership feels difficult. Okay, one

more part to this answer. For question five, about how to inspire during difficult times. A clear and compelling message engages people's heads, vulnerability engages people's hearts. And I've already said vulnerability doesn't mean over sharing without purpose. It's again here. Here's what I know. Here's what I don't know. Here's where we need your ideas. Here's what concerns me right now. Here's what I'm grappling with. That kind of honesty builds trust, because people experience you, the leader, as real engagement increases dramatically when people feel trusted, included, and emotionally connected, and that's a powerful example of the courage of a leader. As I'm wrapping up today's episode, I want to leave you with this: people may forget some of what leaders say, yet they rarely forget how leaders made them feel. They remember whether they felt respected, valued, trusted, safe, or connected. How can you have your people feel that way every day today. Inspiring leadership is

much less about charisma than people think. It's about consistency, presence, intentionality. It's about demonstrating the courage of a leader with each team member every day. So, as you reflect on today's conversation, I want you to think about this, and I've asked this question a couple of different ways inside of this episode. What is it currently like to be led by you? What's the experience of having you as a leader? Are people feeling heard, appreciated, connect connected to a compelling purpose. Do they feel safe and comfortable bringing ideas, concerns, questions forward? Because small leadership behaviors shape culture more than leaders realize, and that's good news. We can take that as good news, because. Trust and engagement are built one interaction at a time. You can build trust in your very next interaction. Thank you for joining me today. And because this topic is so important to me, I do have an offer for you. I want to offer to give you a free chapter of my

book, The Courage of a leader, how to inspire, engage, and get extraordinary results is a number one international bestselling book. And chapter nine in that book is entitled Build the Ultimate Corporate Culture, and it goes deeper into these ideas of engagement, how to create that compelling purpose, how to craft that clear finish line. How to show vulnerability in meaningful and connecting ways. So, if you'd like a copy of this chapter nine, email us at info at courage of a leader.com We'll put that in the show notes as well. And ask for chapter nine, or ask for the build the ultimate corporate culture chapter, and we'll send you that PDF.

Also, if this episode resonated with you, share it with another leader who may need that reminder that inspiring leadership is not about charismatic performances, yet it's about connecting intentionally. Until next time, keep showing them that you've got the courage of a leader.

Thank you for listening to the Courage of a Leader podcast. If you'd like to further explore this episode's topic, please reach out to me through the Courage of a Leader website at www dot courageof aleader.com I'd love to hear from you. Please take the time to leave a review on iTunes, that helps us expand our reach and get more people fully stepping into their leadership potential. Until next time, be bold and be brave, because you've got the courage of a leader and.