How to Extend your Influence

The magnetism of isolation is control and safety.

Isolating yourself may indicate that tasks, problems, and challenges take precedence over people. During isolation coercion usually escalates. You lean more toward authority than relationship.

Worse yet, when you focus on completing tasks, solving problems, and overcoming challenges you sink inward into your own circumstances.

You cannot influence in isolation.

Ken Blanchard observes, “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.”

Influence and isolation collide. You can command from a disconnected-distance. Influence requires contact.

Think of the people you’re losing influence with? Are you spending less time with them? Either they have isolated themselves from you or you have isolated yourself from them.

If you’re losing influence, the contact you most resist is most important.

Influence requires interaction. Think of the people around your office that you most influence. Do they know you? Do you know them? It’s likely you said, “Yes.”

Commanding is one directional. It requires simple obedience. However, influence is two directional and requires willing consent. You can coerce conformity with authority but you lose influence.

You can’t antagonize and influence at the same time. Antagonizing builds barriers, fuels resistance, and, creates power struggles.

If you’re pulling rank, you’ve already lost influence.

The context of powerful, positive influence is respectful relationships built in harmonious community.

Community building contradicts isolation and means:

1. You join their team before they join yours.
2. They win before you win.
3. They influence you before you influence them.
4. You, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood,” Stephen R. Covey.
5. You give before they give.

No one freely joins your community when they believe you’re in it for yourself.

Community builders reject isolation. They move first. They actively move toward rather than away.

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How can leaders better connect and build community?

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Changing Trajectory

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Repeating the past won’t create a new future. Persistence may be your problem.

Successful leaders tenaciously persist. However, clinging to failed strategies until your knuckles turn white won’t make them magically work. It isn’t noble; it’s dumb.

Repeating the past creates more of the past.

When persistence is dumb?

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” works when you know where you are going. Yet, dogged determination is dumb without clearly defined direction.

Most need others to help them see their dumbness. Find smart people to talk with.

Keep on keeping on until you clearly identify new targets. Stopping without new direction may be catastrophic.

When it’s time to change trajectory?

1. Know that stopping comes before starting. It’s frequently the hardest step.
2. Nothing less than brutal honesty takes you there. People don’t like to admit to themselves that they aren’t getting where they want to go. Admit it.
3. Tap into your frustrations rather than ignoring them. They may help you find new directions.
4. Warning! Don’t go around the office whining about your frustrations.
5. Don’t get stuck in “no.” It’s easy to list the things you don’t like.
6. Intentionally translate negative frustrations into positive, “I want,” statements.
7. Focus on what not who. It’s easy to blame others for your frustrations. Don’t.
8. Don’t decide quickly. Withhold judgment. Explore options. Consider consequences.
9. Tell someone your plans.
10. ???

If the past is creating your desired trajectory, persist. If not, begin creating a new past that changes your future.

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What can you add to the, “How to change trajectory,” list I suggested?

What are some of the dangers of changing trajectory?

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All Hands on Deck

Joe Tye is providing 100 free books to randomly selected participants of this post. Leave a comment and become eligible to win a signed copy of one of three books listed below. Contest Closed!

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“Culture eats strategy for lunch.” Joe Tye believes great leaders do more than craft great strategies; they courageously build transformational cultures. In addition to creating external, visible designs, they invest time developing invisible cultures of ownership.

Things you can’t see matter more than things you can. Strategies, processes and procedures don’t change the world. Great leaders spend time building things you can’t see.

3 Dimensions of Invisible Architecture

1. Core values. I think most organizations carefully craft and promptly forget their value statements. However, Joe explains that values are core to, recruiting and retaining great people and competing for loyal customers.
2. Corporate culture. Culture is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. Your competitors may steal your product or service but they can’t steal or copy your culture.
3. Emotional environment. What does it feel like to work in your organization? Workplace environment determines whether people are engaged or going through the motions. In this case, a few bad apples may spoil the entire barrel.

8 Factors in Building a Culture of Ownership

1. Create a mission bigger than the business
2. Use structure and process to create culture
3. Embrace values
4. Build trust
5. Tell stories
6. Shape character
7. Unleashing creativity
8. Treat people like volunteers

In All Hands on Deck, Joe Tye tells stories explaining how Ray Kroc of McDonalds, Thomas Watson of IBM, Millard Fuller of Habitat for Humanity and others, create cultures of ownership and build organizations that change the world.

Holding people accountable doesn’t work as well as ownership. Additionally, “You cannot hold people accountable for the things that really matter in an organization. Loyalty, enthusiasm, pride, … are matters of the heart not the head.”

I found All Hands on Deck a compelling fable revolving around real stories that explains profound leadership.

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How can leaders create cultures of ownership?

Which of the 8 culture building factors seem most important? Why?

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Joe has provided a total of 100 copies of three of his books as gifts for randomly selected participants of this post. Leave a comment to become eligible. You may win a signed copy of:

The Healing Tree

The Florence Prescription: From Accountability to Ownership

Your Dreams are too Small

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Finding fascinating goals

Some clichés are clichés because they’re true. “Aim at nothing and you’ll hit it,” is one.

You first

Tolstoy wisely said, “Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.” Think of changing you before you think of changing others.

Habitual complainers usually have more goals for others than they have for themselves.

First base

Goal-setting conversations that begin with goals are off target. All personal goal-setting conversations begin by asking, “What are my values?” Create targets that express who you are.

You may require help uncovering your values. They lie hidden under behaviors. Find someone that asks probing questions and restates the obvious.

A young leader I’ve coached said they valued order and procedures. I said, “Do you value conformity?” They quickly said, “No, that’s not it.” Upon further exploration, we learned they valued environments where the path to success is clearly defined. The real value was the path not order and procedure.

Bullies

Goals without values are bullies that push you around. On the other hand, targets aligned with your values pull you toward them.

Benefits

Goals enable milestones. Achieving milestones energizes and motivates. Every list-maker knows the motivational power of checking something off their list.

Better

Reach beyond doing to accomplishment. Setting a goal to contact ten clients today is good. Setting a goal to sell five units of product is better.

Written

I’m not sure what it is but there’s something powerful about written goals. Someone said, “Goals that are not written down are just wishes.”  Can you write down today’s goals? Do they focus on accomplishment more than tasks? Are they more about you than others? Will you know when you achieve them?

“It’s time to start the life you have imagined,” Henry James.

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What personal goal-setting tips can you offer the Leadership Freak community?

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Great Leaders Make Others Great

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great,” Mark Twain.

The most important thing

Your greatest challenge isn’t leading, it’s making others great.

Settle for nothing less than growing leaders that become greater than you.

10 ways to make others great

1. Think less about what you want and more about what they want. Tap into who they want to be. Ask -how can I help you get where you want to go?
2. Provide opportunities for failure. Nothing succeeds like a good failure. Our failures, more than successes, make us. Organizations that learn from failure go farther than ones that punish them.
3. Accept average performance as long as there’s passion to learn and grow.
4. Throw wood on their fire. Anyone can quench someone. Try igniting them. Passion, passion, passion …
5. Learn from them by honoring what they know. They learn by teaching you. Additionally, Honor opens the door to influence.
6. Listen to your selfishness. Give to others what you want from them. Not so you’ll get it back but so they’ll be built up.
7. Step back so they can step forward. Prepare them. Provide resources. Set deadlines. Remember, leaders learn by leading.
8. Be a safety net. Young leaders need a place of refuge where they can recover, renew, and refocus.
9. Be direct with correction. Don’t play around. Describe wrong behaviors and explain the path to success.
10. Leverage ownership over accountability. The power of accountability fades in light of ownership. Say, “This is your project.”

Your organization won’t suffer because it has too many qualified leaders. Effective leadership development taps potential and enhances opportunity. It creates the future.

Drucker said, “No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.”

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Why don’t leaders grow young leaders?

How can leaders grow more leaders?

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Secrets of the Spotlight

Tabitha, a member of the Leadership Freak Facebook page says, “I’d like to see what you think of the phrase, ‘Lead from the front.’”

Leaders that can’t lead from the front can’t lead.

For much of my leadership career I’ve done a few things right and many things wrong. Even though I spent plenty of time in the front, I didn’t lead from the front.

You may embrace the servant-leader model, I do. However, if you aren’t alert, humble servant-leadership wrongly translates into passivity, comfort, weakness, even running from the spotlight.

Stepping into the spotlight

Bold leaders inevitably lead from the front.  They are the face of an organization or movement.

Leading from the front includes:

• Casting compelling vision
• Exercising positive influence
• Leading meetings
• Working through resistance
• Solving conflicts
• Fueling forward momentum
• Establishing positive tone
• Building organizational confidence

Leading from the front requires alignment with organizational values, mission, and vision. Alignment:

• Authorizes leaders to step into the spotlight
• Enables decision-making
• Energizes servant-leaders

Leaders not aligned with organizational values, mission, and vision abuse their position, power, and constituents. Alignment is the foundation of your right to step into the spotlight.

The secret of the spotlight

Successfully leading from the front is an expression of profound humility. Submitting to organizational values, mission, and vision is the secret to success in the spotlight. Submission legitimizes leadership power, the deeper the submission the greater the power.

Note: the juxtaposition of power and humility is intentional.

The down side of the front

Stepping into the spotlight exposes servant-leaders to praise and criticism. Both are dangerous. Praise may inflate the leader’s ego and create envy in others. Criticism may demoralize and eventually defeat. In either case, the answer remains, obedience to higher principles authorizes servant-leaders to step into the spotlight and lead from the front.

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What skills and behaviors help leaders successfully lead from the front?

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How to change others?

He continued standing in his chair until the teacher’s aide firmly planted him in his seat. Defiantly, he glared. Tight lipped he spat, “You pushed me down on the outside but I’m still standing on the inside.”

There’s a difference between superficial conformity and authentic change. Great leaders create environments where authentic change is possible.

Change for the worse

Angry leaders change others for the worse by creating barriers.

Controlling leaders weaken others with their constant interference.

Passive leaders create passive people and fashion organizational cultures where mediocrity is tolerated, frustration is rampant, and bitterness takes root.

Generosity and change

The power of generosity is its lack of coercion. Essentially, you change yourself. Generosity invites change from the inside rather than forcing external conformity. Generosity side steps pressure and manipulation. It sets people free to experience substantive change.

Change agents:

1. Give lavishly. The people that most powerfully enrich others don’t barter and make deals. They give without strings attached.
2. Share information. In my opinion, protecting information is usually a sign of weakness, fear, and manipulation. Backstabbers hide information. Granted, regulated, proprietary, or personal information is meant to be private.
3. Continually grow. Growing people grow others. Changing people change others.
4. Share themselves. Leaders that share their personal journey of frailty to success create environments where people grow and change. Fakers only produce fakers that groan rather than grow.

Getting personal

I’m skeptical. When someone is generous, I wonder what they want. However, since beginning this online experiment called Leadership Freak, I’ve encountered generous people that are authentic change agents. Their generosity challenges my selfishness. Their generosity teaches me generosity. I’m slowly changing. They didn’t tell me to change they showed me the change.

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How might generous leaders hold others to high standards and maintain organizational accountability?

Serious about Fun

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Woody Allen said, “Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.”

On the other hand, Thomas Edison remarked, “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.”

Get serious about having fun or you won’t have it.

People talk about fun, believe in fun, encourage fun, and want to enjoy fun; but do they actually have fun? When was the last time you lightened up?

Appointments postpone fun. Deadlines cancel fun. Deliverables delete fun. Problems push out fun.

The trouble is, “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing,” Dale Carnegie.

Power of fun

Fun connects people, builds trust, and enhances productivity.

If you aren’t in a tough situation, you will be.  Fun builds a foundation that sustains successful relationships. I’m closest to the leader’s I’ve had fun with. Cross-country skiing, shooting guns, playing cards, a good cigar, or just hanging out connect us.

Fun establishes second-chance environments by easing the strain of offenses and relieving stress. It humanize and opens hearts.

Fun opens channels for new ideas.

10 Ways to have fun at work

1. Avoid negative fun like off color jokes.
2. Avoid sarcasm.
3. Appoint a CFO (Chief Fun Officer).
4. Begin all meetings with stories about people you’ve helped.
5. Take off your shoes.
6. Set up a puzzle or some other game in your office or lobby. (Lego’s or some other toy)
7. Get up from your desk and regularly take a brisk, brief walk.
8. Candy dish! (or healthy treat)
9. Enjoy a group lunch.
10. Encourage your resident jester to keep it up.

If you aren’t serious about fun, you may be too serious.

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There is debate about the usefulness of having fun at work. What do you think?

How can people get serious about having fun at work?

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This post is a major revision of, Getting Serious about Fun.

How to start right and end well

Over coffee yesterday, a local business leader complained to me, “I can’t get him to decide.” Decision-making is one of your greatest leadership challenges.

I believe you’ll flounder until you make the two decision that enable you to start right and end well. These decisions come before the others.

Starting right.

Kouzes and Posner said, “Everything you will ever do as a leader is based on one audacious assumption. It’s the assumption that you matter,” (The Truth about Leadership). You start right by deciding you can and will make a positive difference.

Why it’s hard to decide to matter?

To matter you must stand out. Yet all your life you’ve been trained to fit in, to color within the lines.

Can you think of anyone that changed the world by fitting in? “The world belongs not to those who fit in but to those who stand out,” Anonymous. Sadly, much of the energy I see expended around me is expended on being average.

Beware! You feel pressured to fit in so that you won’t stand out, so that you will disappear.

Ending well.

The conundrum of leadership is you matter most when you make others matter.

You end well by deciding to serve rather than be served. The spotlight’s on you so you can shine it on others.

Balancing the tension.

Put yourself first by understanding and enabling yourself. Read books, take classes and seminars, rest, and stretch yourself. Nurture and protect that which makes you stand out. At the same time, embrace the leadership conundrum. Put yourself first so you can put others first.

One reason daily decision-making is hard is you haven’t made the two decisions that enable you to start right and end well.

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How can leaders make others matter without becoming door mats?

What are your thoughts about the tension between serving yourself and serving others?

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Leaders are manipulators?

Geoff Webb wisely observes, “There’s a thin line between leadership and manipulation. Both can be defined as influencing others.” Both have similar skills and use similar behaviors.

Manipulators and leaders both:

1. Recognize and compliment the strengths of others
2. Tap into the emotions of others
3. Exhibit vision and make plans
4. Create buy-in
5. Understand that people want to matter
6. Identify enemies
7. Help people come to their own conclusions
8. Have passion to make things “better”
9. Help others succeed (or believe they are succeeding)
10. Reward desired behaviors

Differences

The differences between leaders and manipulators include authenticity, transparency, and generosity.

Authenticity

Leaders are lovers, manipulators are haters. If love is more about giving than getting, doing what you love establishes your authenticity.

Love the value you bring to others. Love your organizational mission and vision. Leaders that love are authentic; leaders that don’t love, manipulate.

Transparency

Manipulators lurk in the shadows with secret agendas while leaders walk in the light. Leaders are open and honest.

Recently a friend of mine explained that I made another person uncomfortable. I was doing what I love to do, asking questions. My friend explained that I hadn’t laid the ground work to ask the questions I was asking. His transparent correction helps me know I can trust him.

Generosity

Manipulators serve themselves at the expense of others. They maneuver and manipulate to benefit themselves. They make life easy for themselves and hard for others. On the other hand, leaders serve others. They leverage their own skills and the skills of others for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Conclusion

I think Geoff is right. There’s a thin line between manipulation and leadership. Loving authenticity, open transparency, and courageous generosity determine on which side of the line you stand.

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What shared tactics do manipulators and leaders employ?

What other qualities distinguish leaders and manipulators?

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