What being "inspiring" actually means

You are not Viggo Mortensen rallying men to fight Sauron. You are a knowledge worker in tech. Here's what it means to inspire in this context.

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Read time: 6 minutes

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When you think of “being inspiring,” you might think of emotional appeals.

The problem is, you are not Viggo Mortensen rallying men to fight Sauron.

You are a product manager trying to inspire your eng team to build a feature.

You are a director getting feedback about how you need to inspire senior leadership instead of being so matter-of-fact.

You are a head of data science who needs to inspire your business counterparts, so you can ship by the end of Q4.

This type of inspiration is different from the dramatic speeches in movies.

I believe being “inspiring” in the context of the workplace is actually about sharing a point of view that gets your audience excited to take action.

This is good news because being inspiring is not an entirely different skill than the day-to-day influencing you’re already doing. Most of work can be reduced to getting various people to do the thing you want them to do.

And if you can build on your existing ability to influence without authority, learning to “be inspiring” is a lot less intimidating than it might seem at first.

“Logical” and “emotional” are not opposites

One main difference between the type of inspiration you see in media vs real life, is real-life inspiration often doesn’t look like anything major is happening. It just looks like two people having a conversation…because that is often what it is.

Being inspiring is not about how passionate your delivery is. You don’t have to get up in front of everyone, or try to cosplay what a bold leader sounds like. You can sound like yourself. Perhaps the most articulate and clear-eyed version of yourself, but still yourself.

Contrary to what you’ve been told, I believe being inspiring is more about how compelling your underlying argument is. While emotional appeals still play a part (you can’t look dead in the eyes when you speak), your colleagues actually care about the substance of what you’re saying.

In other words, your argument has to actually make sense. If you passionately talk about an idea that doesn’t make sense, it won’t matter. No amount of great delivery can save you.

At this point, a common mistake I often hear is the idea that emotion vs logic are opposites. This is the wrong mental model.

When it comes to positioning your ideas, emotion and logic are not opposed. They are interconnected. There’s no need to be overly focused on whether an argument is “emotional” or “logical” though, because research shows we are pretty bad at discerning between the two:

“In one study, twenty-one students prepared speeches that were written from either a logical or an emotional standpoint. The speeches were presented, filmed, and then evaluated by other college students.

Interestingly, there was no real consistency in the findings except that speeches bearing a message that the evaluator agreed with were rated as more rational (even if they were intended to be emotional), while those the evaluator did not agree with were considered to be more emotional (even though some of those were intended to be logical).

It seemed that whether a speech was considered logical or emotional depended on the listener. Researchers also concluded that, as a general rule, people seem unable to consistently distinguish between logical and emotional.”

Basically, whatever you agree with, you would claim is “logical.” And whatever you disagree with or find less compelling, you’d categorize as “emotional.” This is fascinating. It’s also why, in my experience, it’s better approach to use a completely different mental model.

Instead of thinking about whether your argument is logical or emotional, think about whether your argument will trigger a visceral reaction in your recipient.

Make your recipient feel something

To help your audience feel inspired to change, try to frame your ideas in a way that sounds visceral. What feels visceral? Arguments that are concrete, visual, and appeal to what your recipient cares about.

You might say, “But Wes, isn’t this just the classic question of ‘what’s in it for me?’”

Partially. But there are many potential reasons for what’s in it for your recipient. Not all of those reasons are equally compelling. So yes, asking yourself the question matters, but it’s only the first half of the job. What matters more is how you answer that question.

For example, let’s say you are a manager giving feedback to your direct report about why they should manage up.

🚫 “Your lack of managing up is impacting our broader team’s communication, and it’s hurting our team’s alignment and cross-functional collaboration.”

Team alignment… Cross-functional collaboration… Cue polite golf applause.

Intellectually, I know this rationale makes sense, but I don’t feel moved. In fact, I don’t feel anything at all.

✅ “Your lack of managing up means because you’re currently spending 3x as much time repeating yourself, addressing pushback, and answering random questions from all directions.

You’re not getting recognized for your hard work because cross-functional partners can’t tell if you’ve got this project under control.

If you manage expectations by sharing proactive updates on a regular basis, they’d be able to relax and trust that you’re handling it. And you’d have more freedom to operate.”

Wow, okay. When I hear this, I get a visceral reaction.

“You’re right. I am spending a lot of time repeating myself and addressing pushback… That’s not great.”

“Hmm it’s true I don’t want to create more work for myself. I don’t want to make my own life harder.”

“Yes, I want more freedom to make decisions without people breathing down my neck.”

The above are arguments that are concrete, visual, and hit at a visceral level. It helps your recipient see the cost of their current behavior, and what life could be like if they acted differently.

Therefore, they’re more likely to be motivated to take action. When in doubt, avoid appealing to an abstract benefit like saying an initiative is “crucial for our team’s success.”

Appeal to what’s raw and visceral.

On a related note, I can’t tell you what to say to be inspiring. You need to assert why your audience should care in your unique situation. But it’s encouraging to know this isn’t a minor part of the work. This is the work. There is no upper boundary to the metaphorical (and literal) riches you’ll gain by getting good at tapping into what people care about.

And if you do it well, you get rewarded by moving hearts and minds.

Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you in two weeks on Wednesday at 8am ET.

Wes

PS If you want to inspire your audience, it helps to strategize what to say, role-play to build confidence, and get feedback from someone who knows what they’re doing. This is what I do for my coaching clients. If you’re interested, here’s how coaching works.

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