• Blog
  • Archives
  • Bio
  • Awards
  • Speaking
  • Book
  • Contact

YouthActionNet Global Fellowship Day 1: What makes a great leader

Published: Tuesday, 04 October 2011

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?

About Me

Marita ChengForbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.

I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Random Articles

  • Seek, not given

    I used to think that someone with my character, with my determination, my ambition and my IQ would mean that I would be successful in life because...

  • Over-exposure

    Telling people your plans too early doesn't make you less likely to achieve them.  I know when I tell people what I plan to do the response I get...

  • Nexus Impact Accelerator Fellow

    I spent the last few days of February in Washington DC attending the Nexus Global Summit as a Nexus Impact Accelerator Fellow. NEXUS is a global...

  • Variety of media

    Myself and Teleport (with my business partner Alberto Rizzoli appearing on Teleport) got a really awesome page 2-3 spread in The Age. It looks rad!...

  • Another context

    If you're over your university studies. If you're not looking forward to taking a week out of your life and attending a conference. If you don't...

  • Dividing time - most time spent on highest priority item

    If you're not spending most of your time working on your highest priority, then it's time to reevaluate what you're doing. My mum worked as a hotel room...

  • InStyle and Audi Style Scholarship

    On 13 May, I was named the InStyle/ AUDI Style Scholarship recipient.  Here’s my spread in InStyle magazine.  Thank you to AUDI and InStyle magazine...

  • EmTech Singapore

    Spoke at MIT's conference in Singapore, EmTech.  Other speakers in my session spoke about autonomous robotic cargo ships, advances in drones and...

  • Reasons

    Why, excuses, rationale, justifications, explanations, verbal diarrhoea, reasons, etc. In the end, the myriad and infinite possibility of reasons...

  • 24 hours and QANTAS Magazine

    I did an interview at the beginning of the year about 24 hours in the life of me.  I've copied and pasted the text here below.  Enjoy! For robotics...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top