You Don’t Always Get What You Want...

Assuming the Rolling Stones had it right, “if you try sometimes, well, you just might find… you get what you need…” Regardless of their financial success, I can’t say I’ve ever considered looking to them for advice on anything - especially not for how I can earn influence ethically with the people I’m responsible for leading!

In the last several blog posts, as well as a recent LinkedIn article I published called Lead From Where You Are, we dug into the idea that each of us are completely capable of becoming effective leaders for the people around us regardless of the role we currently fill within our organization. We took a hard look at whether we’re attempting to lead with Authority or Influence, how we can effectively recognize The Hardest Person You’ll Ever Have To Lead, and who we’re currently developing influence with when we’re intentional about who we’re Now Serving…

I had originally planned to get this blog posted a few days ago but several other items on the To-Do list leading up to our first ever virtual LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg experience coming up on Friday, October 9 and the travel I’ll be doing to assist with the Live2Lead event as it takes place at this same time in Atlanta, GA, I fell a bit short… Since this will also be a packed week leading up to those events, I elected to close the loop on those last few blogs today rather than starting down a new path that I may not be able to touch again until next week anyway.

So if we don’t always get what we want, and we may not even get what we need, why should we even bother investing the time, energy, and effort into serving the people around us to develop influence and lead them if we’re not a supervisor or manager?

In The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John Maxwell tells us that “if you want to reach your potential and become the person you were created to be, you must do much more than just experience life and hope that you learn what you need along the way. You must go out of your way to seize growth opportunities!” I believe the same thing is true about earning influence with the people around us and earning the opportunity to lead; we must seize opportunities to SERVE the people we interact with regardless of our title or position! And when we do this, Chris Hogan (one of the speakers from the 2019 Live2Lead event that you can get access to by participating in the upcoming 2020 LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg virtual experience in just a few days) says there are a several things we will get, and should absolutely EXPECT!

Since I built an entire lesson around this, and that lesson is part of the Build a Reputation as a Servant Leader digital course we’re providing as a bonus to everyone who joins us for the upcoming virtual Live2Lead event, I won’t hash it all out again here. I will, however, give you a few highlights! When we serve the people around us, we can expect to earn an increased level of trust. When we serve the people around us, we can also expect to build a high degree of loyalty with them and from them. And when we do this on an ongoing basis, with pure motives, we can definitely expect to see a level of unity grow within the team we’re a part of!

Each of these things that Chris Hogan says we can expect provide a very tangible return on the time, energy, and effort we will invest in genuinely serving people. If we make this kind of service part of who we are on a daily basis, we can also EXPECT to see the results compound. Also in The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John Maxwell shared, “The sooner you make the transition to becoming intentional about your personal growth, the better it will be for you, because growth compounds and accelerates IF you remain intentional about it” Just like with the previous quote I referenced from that book, this also applies to influence and leadership! As we’re able to do this ourselves, and build it into the culture of our entire organization, we will see team members learn to lead regardless of title or position. And when someone learns to lead effectively without authority, it won’t be long until they’ve earned a role in the organization that carries authority - and they’ve proven that they can handle it!