How to Grow Your Leadership Influence — Part 2

Hello my friend, welcome to The Leadership Tip of the Week. Today is part 2 of your series about how to grow your leadership influence.

Leadership is about influence. It’s about the effect that you have on the way people in your team and in your organisation think and behave. If you want to improve the quality of your leadership, improve the strength of your influence. How do you do that?

We’ve seen in the previous episode that the first secret to grow your influence as a leader is to be authentic. Know who you are; Be who you are; and Share who you are. As Craig Groeschel says: “People would rather follow a leader who is always real than one who is always right.”

The second secret that will help you grow your leadership influence is to connect with others with your heart and through stories. One of my favourite speeches ever is the one that Steve Jobs made at Stanford University in 2005. He shared three stories from his life: one, in which he tells an anecdote about dropping out of college; another, about the lessons he learned from being fired by Apple in 1985; and lastly, his reflections on death.

Too often leaders try to get their people to act by quoting numerous facts and data, and they don’t understand why people don’t move. Knowledge alone does not lead to action. It needs to be coupled with emotion and the best way to doing that is through stories. Facts fade but stories stick. That’s one of the reasons why Steve Jobs’ commencement speech is now the most watched in history.

This was your Leadership Tip for this week: The second secret to grow your influence as a leader is to connect with others with your heart and through stories.

Next week I will uncover the third secret. Until then, take responsibility for everything that happens to you and be committed to serving others. That’s how you become and remain the leader everybody trusts and respects.

Written by Maxime Yao. Extract from Episode #4 of The Leadership Tip of the Week podcast.