How To Be Like Mother Teresa

How To Be Like Mother Teresa (8/4)

Mother Teresa had no job title, no money, and was a part of a dying organization. Yet she had a huge influence and helped change the world!

Why? Well, I believe there are several myths about leadership and influence that keep people from having this same impact. Let me share with you four examples of common coaching clients I deal with when working on their leadership. Let’s see what clues we can gather.

Martha The Manager

Martha believes that, because she is a manager, promoted for her skills, she has automatic influence. Martha rests on this fact and takes her authoritative voice a bit too far sometimes and her people are beginning to not like her. She is excellent at getting stuff done, especially when using preset systems and processes. For these reasons, her bosses saw potential in her. However, because of her lack of ability to build relationships and connections, she lacks true, deep, and meaningful influence. Here people will listen for a time and then ignore her.

Eddie The Entrepreneur

Eddie believes that he is blessed with great ideas and the drive to make it happen. He’s started several businesses relatively quickly and seemingly with ease. He loves finding a great business to turn around and quickly sell. He feels like he has a lot of influence and he’s changing the world. While he might be changing his community, people rarely come to him for advice or help or service. He sees an opportunity and not people. Eddie will continue to make money, however, due to his lack of connecting with people on a deeper level and commitment to serving others, he will not live a full, deep, meaningful life nor inspire others to do so.

Priscilla the Professor

Priscilla has five degrees and was headhunted for a position and a prestigious university. She got to ‘write her own ticket’ and pick the classes she wanted to teach, the research projects she wanted to participate in, and takes regular sabbaticals. Priscilla believes, because of all these perks, she must have great influence. However, her teaching partners and students defer to her opinion in front of her face and do something different behind her back. She is frustrated and annoyed and doesn’t understand why no one will listen to her. She chalks it up to the ‘stress of the job’ and takes another sabbatical. People are happy when she leaves and frustrated when she returns. Priscilla never figures out that the best way to influence others is through serving and listening. She truly believes she should be the only one talking unless she is with colleagues that are at least on the same level as her.

Cecil the CEO

Cecil has been in the CEP position for almost five years and he is stuck! He doesn’t like his people and they don’t like him! Everyone knows it and the work is suffering. Cecil blames his people when something goes wrong and regularly ‘throws them under the bus’ with his board members. The leadership team has stopped meeting because they are so toxic. Cecil believes his team is broken and has no idea how they will get through the next product launch successfully. He still has 10 years until he can retire and he is losing team members left and right. Cecil used up whatever influence he had years ago, even though he has the title of CEO.

Why aren’t these people, who have titles, positions, degrees, and knowledge more influential?

Because they haven’t learned this key concept: leadership isn’t about those things it’s about influence! Now, I could spend a whole week with you and teach you a ton about increasing your influence… no one has time for that! So, let me give you a few tips I actually gave each one of these clients and they worked!

• Serve- find ways to serve your people, don’t wait for them to serve you. Start small and in whatever way you can. If you’re in a meeting and someone needs a pen, give them yours. If you’re walking into the office, hold the door open for the next guy. Try to find as many opportunities you can serve in one day, just in small ways, and then begin thinking about how you could serve your team in bigger ways.
• Listen- one of the common denominators between these four people is that they want people to listen to THEM but they don’t listen to others. Now is the time to practice a very difficult skill- being quiet! This takes a great amount of power and control- practice this whenever you can- home, work, community, etc.
• Show Up- not just in body, but in mind and soul as well. Don’t just arrive at a meeting, really be present. Don’t think about what you need to do later, be here now. Your people can tell.
• Keep Your Promises- influence is based on trust. When you lose trust with your people, they eventually stop following you. If you’re leading and no one is following, you’re just out for a walk! Don’t make a promise you can’t keep. This might mean not making a commitment until you can examine your time, money, and resources. It’s better to take a while to make a decision and KNOW you can back it up than to say yes and not keep your promise.

Start here. Don’t’ wait to get into one of these four situations before you find someone to help you grow your influence, start here and start now!

Empowered Leaders Group

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