Matthew Tenney is a speaker, writer, and teacher who works with organizations to develop more effective leaders who serve. He has an interesting background that includes military service, a prison sentence for his involvement in a fraud scheme, and time in a monastery. Through all of this, Tenney’s life has evolved from value extraction to value contribution. It is quite an inspiring story, and you can learn more about it in his book, Serve to Be Great.

Tenney has recently released a new book called Inspire Greatness: How to Motivate Employees with a Simple, Repeatable, Scalable Process.

The title and subtitle tell you all you need to know about the content inside. Tenney presents us with a straightforward algorithm—a term he uses—for practical leadership. As I read it, I found it to be a great handbook for leading effectively and creating a great workplace culture.

The book is divided into two parts. The first presents some background and the fundamental process for helping people get engaged in their work to rise to greatness they didn’t even know was within them. Part 2 goes through 14 habits for leaders to work on to inspire that greatness. These include things like facilitating excellence, showing appreciation, providing clear expectations, giving people tools to succeed, providing feedback, giving power away, and truly caring, to name a few.

I found this a very valuable read. My copy is loaded with highlighted sections that I plan to refer to again and again. Here are some favorite quotes:

• Employee engagement is not an “HR thing.” Ultimately, employee engagement is a “leadership thing.”
• The best strategy in the world is useless if the people in the organization aren’t empowered to effectively execute it.
• The primary job of a leader is simply this: to inspire greatness in one’s team.
• Great leaders don’t demand performance. They inspire it.
• A person’s environment, and the habits that are created by that environment, are almost entirely (if not entirely) responsible for the success or failure of teams and individuals.
• As we get better at seeing what’s right in our lives, and expressing gratitude for it, our lives improve.
• Employees don’t want a policy to dictate where and when they work. They want to be seen as adults who can be trusted to figure this out for themselves.
• Of all the needs people have for thriving at work, feeling cared for by one’s manager may be the most important.
• The more often you put people first, the sooner your motivation will be genuinely selfless, which will help you to be even more effective at consistently inspiring greatness in your team members.
• By creating a workplace culture in which the top priority is inspiring greatness in others, you can create the most meaningful workplace possible.

I recommend this book to anyone drawn to the topic of leadership, whether you are a new leader with a need to get started on the right foot or a seasoned leader interested in improving or updating your leadership tool belt. Additionally, if you are in any organizational leadership role and have struggled with employee engagement and/or performance issues, this is your book. It is practical, easy to understand, backed by research, and chock full of actionable tips for the implementation of the ideas.

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