Why do people follow you? Is it because of your position? Your experience? Your knowledge? Your relationships? Your tenure?
Whatever the reason that they follow you today, you’ll get more from your team if you can answer yes to the following three questions:
Do you care for me?
Can you help me?
Can I trust you?
Do you care for me?
It’s an old saw, but it’s true “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Really – if you don’t genuinely care about the people you lead, you will NEVER get their best. You can’t fake this. People can see a hypocrite a mile away, and they will see right through you.
Start to see them as people – just like you – and enter into what matters to them. Time and again I interview people about their “good boss” experiences. Do you know what I hear *every* time? “My boss cared about me. S/he would always ask about how things are going in my personal life.”
Can you help me?
What if I really care, but I can’t *do* anything about it? Understanding their situation is comforting at one level, but to really go deeper you’ve got to be able to *do* something about it. Your followers need to know that you care and have the capacity to make a difference for them.
Can I trust you?
I recently read that the trait that consistently appeared in the lives of the most successful salespeople was integrity. Integrity – it’s a word we don’t use often these days – mostly because it’s so relatively uncommon. If you want to have significant influence in the lives of your followers, they have to know that your “yes means yes, and your no means no” – that “you do the same things when people are looking – and when no one is looking”
If you can answer “yes” to these three questions, your influence – your leadership will expand. You’ll go from getting the minimum from your team to getting their commitment and passion to support your initiatives.
Saying Yes to these questions is a key part of “Raising your game”
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