One of my mentors once made a remark in one of his facilitations, he said; "if you cannot influence others positively, then you are not a good leader." One of the things I have understood about leadership is that it is not by force, neither do you imposed your wills on your followers, rather you motivate them by positively influencing them. The difference between being a good leader and being just a ruler is in the way you make your followers to do your biddings. The former will influence and motivate others, while the latter will just force their ways down their throat. Here, we shall take a look at ways to effectively and positively influence others as a good leader.
The first way that we will look at is "leading by example." A lot of leaders out there just stand and give orders but will not be involved in anything at all. That is "follow what I say, not what I do." What some people fail to realise is that you will have the zeal to follow after a leader who leads by example than those who will just give out orders. I remember in one of the places I worked before I entered school many years ago. A few months after I started work there, there was a reshuffling and a new Head of Department was assigned to my unit. The man knew extensively about leadership and was fully involved in every task and activities of my unit. In fact, you could hardly tell that he was the leader because of the way he was involved.
This made everyone in my department to put in their best to match with the H.O.D. We did not have any difficulty following after him because we saw him already doing it, so we were motivated by his actions. This made the production of my unit to astronomically go high that by the end of the year, during appraisal, we became the best performing unit in the entire institution. This is because we got a leader that led by example, not the previous one that would just sit in the office and use the intercom to give out orders remotely. As a good leader, you have to demonstrate and show the exact value that you expect from your followers.
The next positive Influence a leader can have is to be effective in communication. Trust me, there is a way you will talk with people and you will uplift their spirit and make them to have the zeal, enthusiasm, and encouragement to do a particular task. On the other hand, there is also a way you will talk to someone and you will kill their spirit. You have to learn that communication is not just about opening one's mouth and making some utterances, it goes beyond that; it is an art which can influence a lot of things about the life of an individual. When communicating, you have to do it with courtesy and do not allow sentiments to downplay it.
Another positive Influence is to build trust in the minds of your teammates. If your followers or subordinate cannot trust you, then forget about gaining their support. But when they know they can rely on you, it will be easier to gain their support. In order to build trust, you have to learn truthfulness, sincerity, and reliability. You should also know that as you build trust, you should also try to sustain it so as not to destroy it with wrong actions. To let you know; the trust that took years to build, with just a small wrong step, it can come crashing down. As much as you are mindful of your actions, you have to also know that inactions also carry capacity to affect trusts. That is, if you do not do what you are supposed to do, it may breed distrust. So beware.
The last positive Influence we will look at here is appreciation. When you learn to acknowledge and appreciate people's inputs, they will be motivated to do more and even go beyond their limits. As a good leader, you tend to influence people positively when you appreciate them for what they have done, so as to make them to do even more. One of the things you need to imbibe as a good leader is the culture of acknowledgement and appreciation.
Thanks for reading
