The first day of the "YouthActionNet Fellowship" program began with a welcome email read out, written by Bill Clinton!  How exciting!  I've always had it that I'm here and Bill Clinton is over there with no overlap.  So to have him (or his entourage) write to the International Youth Foundation the day before our retreat to welcome us was incredible for me.

The first day was about leadership.  My biggest insight of the day was that the most important factor that differentiates a successful leader between an unsuccessful leader is their ability to "inspire and motivate others to high performance".

As soon as we were told that, my first thought was: "but how do we train leaders in our organisation to be that?"

They didn't divulge on that though, unfortunately.

But here's what I'm going to do with my team as a result of my knowing this.

Inspiration

Inspiration is intangible - you can't measure it.  It's more like a feeling or a sense.  So I'm going to work with my team and get them to generate "inspiration" - however they make sense of the world - in their day-to-day interactions.  If they generate it within themselves, then it will radiate outwards.

High performance

We set big goals goals in Robogals Global and ensure that our focus is always on achieving our goals.  If the Robogals leaders radiate inspiration and keep the conversation about their team's goals in existence and are always looking at finding new and creative ways to reach them, then a whole generation of the best kind of leaders in the world will be created.

What about your thoughts about how we can inspire and motivate others to high performance?  What are your thoughts about how we can train others to be this kind of leader?