Are you responsible for developing inspiring leaders? If you are, then make sure they don't think they have to be heroes, says Sukhwant Bal. The main focus, he argues, should be on helping leaders motivate their staff – not on trying to achieve their own star billing.

If you are a leader, or you are training others to be leaders, then what skills and behaviours are you trying to develop? If you think leaders have to portray the sort of heroism typified in the 'Dangerous Book for Boys' then beware. Inspiring leaders shouldn't be interested in their own star billing but, rather, should be much more focused on helping their people turn up to work feeling inspired.

So how exactly do you help leaders get the message that it's up to them to help their people get energised, engaged and fired up? And what sort of shift will this require from them?

"Leaders have to radically change their focus... it's their job to make it a top priority to challenge and encourage their people, appreciate and enthuse them, and listen and support them to be their best."

It's my contention that leaders have to radically change their focus. To get the best from their people they can't afford to spend their time fire-fighting or being the technical expert. Rather, if they want better results, it's their job to make it a top priority to challenge and encourage their people, appreciate and enthuse them, and listen and support them to be their best. It's in the relationship they build with their people that the potential lies for getting individuals and teams to work at full power.

Of course this sounds like common sense. So why do so few leaders manage to achieve it? Is it because workloads, changing priorities and time pressures get in their way? Certainly these have an impact but in most of the companies I deal with it's more to do with how managers relate to their direct reports – typically they put the task before their people when what is required is the complete reverse.

There is nothing particularly revolutionary about this notion but just reflect for a minute. When you are developing leaders do you tell them that it's their primary role to keep the energy flowing in their team? Do you tell them that they need to go out of their way to remove obstacles that are preventing their people from working at full power? Do you tell them that it's their job to spark people's imagination and give them the self-belief to succeed? The point here is that energised and motivated people work with a greater sense of purpose, they go the extra mile to deliver results, they not only do their own work more effectively but they have a positive impact on others! And as a trainer or developer of leaders you have a key role in helping leaders see this.

Here, in summary, are the key areas on which I believe you should help leaders to focus:

1. Get them to be ruthless with their time. Why? Because there is always something else for them to do, something else that's jockeying for their attention. But managers/leaders who are looking to inspire others need to spend time with their people, listening to them and finding out how to support them
2. Get them to be tough on under-performance. Effective leaders don't accept the expectations that others have, especially the negative ones. They set a positive agenda and have the conversations needed when people don't measure up
3. Get them to be disciplined in focusing on what is important and not just on what is urgent. This is about helping leaders to think and act differently rather than following the crowd
4. Get them to have the courage to trust in others - believing that others in the team have the potential to be stars
5. Get them to be brave in never settling for second best because in essence inspiration is about winning and expecting more from people

One consistent way in which I help managers and leaders to be inspiring is by helping them develop powerful coaching skills. I run programmes which train up managers to have rich and engaging coaching conversations with their direct reports about what it is they care about, what motivates them and what goals they want to set.

The reality is that it's through such coaching conversations that leaders can begin to find out what fires up their people. Of course leaders need help to have such conversations and I provide my clients with both the training and the tools to facilitate such dialogues. But what my clients quickly understand is that by having such conversations with their people on a regular basis they can swiftly and dramatically improve individual and team performance.

I call these regular leadership dialogues 'lightbulb conversations' because they are aimed at helping people get switched on and I encourage managers and leaders to have such interactions with their direct reports for 20 minutes each week. Some people of course say this is impossible. They are too busy. That's not what real work is about. They aren't the ra-ra type. My answer to them is to have them remember that it's through people that results get delivered and they need their people turning up with more energy, focus and commitment. That's when they recognise that being able to inspire is their top priority.

Sukhwant Bal is a psychologist, author of 'The power to inspire high performance' and managing director of 100 Watt Coaching. For further information call 0845 607 6878 or go to www.100wattcoaching.com