How to Inspire the Team You Manage
Few business books have clear, actionable ways to tackle the intangible aspects of leadership. Corny as parts of it are, Gung Ho! is a great guide to it.

Leadership doesn’t come easily to everyone, but one subset of leadership skills eludes many leaders. The official powers are clear. It’s the human factor that baffles many would-be leaders.
Gung Ho! is a short framework for inspiring groups of people at work. Some of it is seemingly obvious, but the authors, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, introduce important nuances managers often miss.
True to form, Gung Ho! has cute names for its leadership frameworks. The Spirit of the Squirrel, Way of the Beaver, and Gift of the Goose are business influencer terms at their finest. But they don’t take away from the soundness of the advice that composes them.
Inject Meaning into Meaningless Jobs
The authors’ Spirit of the Squirrel draws was inspired by the mad dash squirrels do each year to stockpile nuts for winter. Squirrels die if they don’t create a suitable stockpile. The strong sense of purpose drives the squirrels’ frenzy. It’s the basis for Andy Longclaw’s advice about instilling meaning in work:
“Worthwhile doesn’t mean more important than important…Worthwhile just covers more territory than important. There are three lessons to learn: First, the work has to be understood as important. Second, it has to lead to a well-understood and shared goal. Third, values have to guide all plans, decisions, and actions. Put all three together and you’ve got worthwhile work. In short, Spirit of the Squirrel.”
Longclaw oversaw a factory team that was outperforming everyone else. He attributed his team’s performance in part to the purpose he instilled in everyone’s work.
“Bashing a chunk of metal and grinding it into conformity with an engineering drawing is one thing,” Longclaw said. “Making a part for a brake on a child’s bicycle is entirely different.”
The authors don’t specify which company Longclaw worked at — we’re only given the anonymous name Walton Works #2 — but this anecdote makes a good point about motivation.
Most jobs become boring after a while. You can’t motivate someone at a cashier job with the great joy of handling transactions. But framing the job around a larger purpose like feeding families while being honest about the job description can create a sense of purpose that creates an exciting environment.
Obviously, that’s not enough for a happy team environment. A work team’s morale can’t be separated from each member’s pay.
Cash and Morale Are Intertwined
The authors’ Way of the Beaver addresses concrete goal-setting, a common subject of business books. Anyone who’s sat through a presentation or read an article about SMART goals has internalized most of those basic lessons.
The third piece of Gung Ho!, the Gift of the Goose, contains less common insights. True to business writing fashion, the authors repurpose Einstein’s equation, E=mc²: enthusiasm is mission times cash and congratulations.
Two useful insights are buried underneath the punny business writing.
The first is that basic needs must be met before any talk of motivation. A larger mission won’t motivate someone who can’t feed their family. Longslaw is said to have remarked:
“…cash and congratulations are important. But cash comes first. You have to feed a person’s material needs, food and clothing, et cetera, before you can feed their spirit with congratulations.”
Congratulations go beyond formal awards. The authors readily admit that these types of accolades can be easily seen through and are unreliable for long-term motivation. The more personal congratulations and encouragement are necessary and better. But explicit encouragement is only half a proper congratulations. The other half is letting workers do their jobs:
“A classic example would be sitting on your hands, biting your tongue, and looking unconcerned and confident as one of your team members carries forward a tricky, complicated, and important project. Just the kind of project you excel at, and every fiber of your body is crying out to take control — or at least issue a couple of warnings about potential trouble spots. But you don’t. And your silence sends a very clear message to the worker: ‘You’re good. You can handle this. I trust you.’”
Everyone who’s had a micromanager for a boss remembers how demoralizing that was. You have a job you know you can do, and you’re not allowed to do it. Instead, you’re forced to watch someone worse at your job try to make you do it their way.
One of the most profound things you can do to encourage your employees is build them up to make them believe they can do more than they thought they could and then allow them to do it. Encouragement isn’t just about affirmations and awards. It’s about building people to be better than you.
If you’re willing to tolerate the anecdotes and characters, Gung Ho! has actionable advice that’s easy to understand and implement. The advice is cloaked in the cheesy business writing endemic to the genre. But the useful nuggets are worth picking through the silliness.