I get to talk before audiences a lot, and of course, since before you talk, you also have to listen to other speakers a lot, and it has always been a learning experience for me.

The other day, I heard Robert Kuan spoke.  He is a successful businessman, having founded Chow King, a 155 branch leading Chinese fast food chain in the country. IN his delivery, he talked about telling stories to inspire his workers.

He had a difficult childhood, having once had a father who was drunk everyday, and being part of a family business where relatives fought over to manage.  All this he overcome, and telling some of the challenges he met I saw engendered a lot of response from the audience.  His speech is by far one of the best I heard, simply because while business consultants spew generalizations and theories based on what they read, his was home spun true stories that are easy to remember and identify.   Moreover, because it was told from the heart, it sounded genuine — eloquence after all is when you are credible because your actions and words are one.  But I was struck by his choice of words, which was to inspire.

I also talk a lot to my staff, and hoping to ‘motivate’ them.  But then the distinctions started to dawn on me, especially with the quote also by Colin Powell.

“Good leaders inspire, not motivate,” he said. “The best leaders can inspire (workers), so they can do things through self-motivation.” Leadership involves developing a vision and conveying that purpose throughout the company, down to the last person in an organization.

So the distinction needs to be clear. You cannot motivate a person because motivating a person will need constant push at the back, and you don’t have time to do that.  YOu probably cannot waste time trying to cajole a person who is never hungry to eat his meals everyday.  What you probably should do is to get people who can do things through self-motivation, and fuel that self-motivation by inspiring him.  What do you think?