The art of inspiring your team members
One difference between successful supervisors and the ones who find their jobs exasperating is how well they inspire their employees.
The first step in being an inspirational boss is to make people feel wanted. Beyond that, inspiration depends on reaching 
people as individuals. To get started, think of your team as consisting of three groups of individuals:
- The easily inspired. Be supportive and stay out of their way. Allow their natural enthusiasm to drive them to stronger, better efforts. Your main goal is to heap on the praise, making sure they don’t butt their heads against too many brick walls, and then become more hesitant.
- The hesitant. Provide strong leadership and show a willingness to take prudent risks. If you lead the charge, people who otherwise tend to hesitate will be swept along by the respect and liking they feel for you. Your main goal as a supervisor should be to limit the downside for the members of this group so they don’t drift into lethargy.
- The lethargic. Here are the two main courses of action: Once-motivated-but-now-uninterested employees might need you to help them rediscover why they once cared about doing good work. And those with little or no favorable track record may need a supervisor who can give them a reason to care. Either way, one-on-one coaching is the answer.
