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Taking the lead – gaining commitment and co-ownership.

Guest post by: Patrick T. Malone

Article Overview: “Leadership is the ability to gain wholehearted followers for a common course of action.” Although much has been written about leadership when you boil it down to the basics, a leader is the person with followers. You may consider yourself inspiring but if you look around and nobody is coming with you, you are not a leader. In previous articles I have stressed the importance of good communication and while that is an essential component, it is not leadership. So how do you inspire others beyond a logical agreement and into a wholehearted commitment to co-own the idea or course of action?

Taking the lead – gaining commitment and co-ownership.

"Leadership is the ability to gain wholehearted followers for a common course of action." Although much has been written about leadership when you boil it down to the basics, a leader is the person with followers. You may consider yourself inspiring but if you look around and nobody is coming with you, you are not a leader.

In previous articles I have stressed the importance of good communication and while that is an essential component, it is not leadership. So how do you inspire others beyond a logical agreement and into a wholehearted commitment to co-own the idea or course of action?

To better understand the process of inspiring other, let's look at a time when you reached a confident commitment to an idea. You probably started with openness to the idea (NEUTRAL NELLIE).

Then you gathered data and facts and determined how the idea would work and what is might do (STUDIOUS STEPHANIE).

At some point, the idea became truly interesting, so you delved deeper for more specific information. You considered the advantages and why this idea was functionally better (INTERESTED IDA).

Next, you actually imagined how the idea would work if implemented and visualized the outcomes or results (ENTHUSED ETHEL).

Then, finally, you decided to go for it and take your idea public (CONFIDENT CONNIE). You may remember these characters from my article on Effective Listening - Part 2.

Now think about the last time you made a major purchase - car, home, vacation home, investment, etc. This step-by-step process is how important decisions are made. So this is exactly how effective leaders influence potential followers to buy-in and co-own plans, ideas, goals, etc. Leaders simply reveal their own motivations, and by doing so, they make it easy for others to willingly follow and wholeheartedly commit to a common course of action.

A word of caution - you cannot lead anyone any higher that your own point of view. So if you just think this is a good idea you may get followers who think it is a good idea also but nothing will happen - no results or output. In poker terms, a leader must be all in, head and heart, fully committed before she or he can inspire others to that same level of commitment.

Is it easy - NO. It takes a lot of practice to enhance these skills and then a great deal of patience with persistence to engage others. However there is a huge difference in results between intellectual agreement and wholehearted commitment. And that difference makes it all worthwhile.

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Article Tags: followers, leadership, taking the lead



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