The question isn’t whether or not you feel like a leader—it’s how well, how often, with whom and to what degree do you exercise your leadership capabilities? We might not have direct authority over others, but we are all leaders. Here’s how I know.
I draw the distinction between leadership and authority because you can have authority over someone without exercising any leadership behaviors. We have all had managers who were poor leaders at best. At the same time, you can be a leader without any organizational authority over someone else. John Maxwell, in his excellent book, The 360 Degree Leader, cleverly describes the two kinds of organizational power as positional (i.e., determined by an org chart) and dispositional (i.e., determined by an individual’s behavior.) I love that, but it’s also a bit misleading. Disposition has to do with a person’s character and personality. I’m not convinced we can change our character, but we can always choose our behaviors. I might not be disposed toward empathy, for example, but I can choose to behave empathically.
The two powers don’t have to be mutually exclusive. One man who held far more positional authority than any of us will ever have was Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States. Clearly, as president, Eisenhower had tremendous positional power, but in his case even the presidency was a step down in authority. Presidents have loud and organized opposition. Presidential power is limited by our constitutional system of checks and balances. The president can do pretty much whatever he (or she) likes, until the Supreme Court says “no,” or Congress withholds the money. But in 1944, when Eisenhower became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during WW2, he was in a position of total power over the people under his command. As the highest-ranking officer in the US Army, his word was law. Obedience to his orders was automatic, and disobedience was a crime. (I may be overstating the case somewhat, but not by much.) I bring him up because it was Eisenhower who said: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” I think you could replace the word “leadership” with “influence” without harming Eisenhower’s intended meaning one bit. I also think “wants to” are the most important words. If you can activate another person’s “want to,” everything gets easier, for you and for them. For you, it takes care of motivation: when people want to do something, they do it, and they do it gladly—sometimes joyously.
That’s how I know you are a leader: You influence the people around you. Sometimes you do it intentionally and sometimes you do it the way Maxwell describes—by your character, your nature, by being yourself.
Still don’t think you are a leader? Then think about this—over the last couple of weeks, have you given someone your advice or opinion? Have you listened to someone in order to help them do or achieve something? Have you given positive or appropriate negative feedback? Have you encouraged someone? Have you smiled at someone?
I’m sure many of you have run across the concept of the emotional bank account. I learned it from reading Steven Covey, but it’s something we all know intuitively whatever it’s called. We have an emotional bank account with everyone we work with. Covey limited the currency in his illustration to trust, and while that’s immensely important, I think there’s more to it than trust alone. Each time we interact with someone else it has an impact, and there are only three ways an impact can be classified: positive, negative or neutral. (Covey said each interaction was either making an emotional deposit or withdrawal. In his metaphor, I suppose neutral would be akin to a balance inquiry.) The more deposits you make with me, the more I enjoy working with you. We tend to dislike interacting with folks who make lots of withdrawals–even small ones.
Day to day, minute to minute, interaction to interaction, you are making choices. To one degree or another, each of your choices influences the people around you. Sometimes it’s easy to see and sometimes impossible. If we want to develop influence, we make conscious choices designed to have positive impacts.
True or false?: You will do far more for someone you like than for someone you feel neutral toward? And guess what—other people are much more like you than they are different. You don’t have to be buddies with someone to have a positive impact on them.
I’ll look at specific ways to build influence in other articles, but before I close, I want to say one thing: There is a difference between influence and manipulation, yet the same tools are used for both. Just as a hammer can be used to build, it can also be used to destroy. Leadership (and influence) is about doing the right thing, about being trustworthy. Manipulators are inherently untrustworthy. My goal is not to equip you to become a manipulator. If you are interested only in advancing yourself, without advancing others in the process, you are in the wrong place.