How to Get People to Follow You

When people are allowed to participate, better ideas come up. People have more buy in. People stay committed. Over the long term, humans become more resilient themselves. It's important. It's so important. So please take it. Take an active role in this day. Score yourself, be honest and think about this and how you can amplify this. If all you did is understand this principle and you practice this principle at the deepest levels, you would so far surpass almost everybody you're working with. I promise. My biggest belief, my biggest teaching in all of leadership, and it's five simple words. People support what they create. People support what they create. This is the defining leadership principle of my life. Every time I'm working with a leader and they're frustrated with the co worker, they can't get the team to be motivated and energized. The down line isn't performing, the upline isn't listening. We got this problem where, you know, you can't mobilize a movement, or you started a political action committee and it didn't stick, or you started your nonprofit and no one contributed. It always comes down to a fundamental misperception about this topic of leadership. Leadership's fundamental principle is that people support what they create. If you want people to follow you, they must create with you. They must feel enabled, trusted, empowered, autonomous, capable, rewarded for participating in the journey in what we'll call the vision today, right? If they don't have any hand in shaping it, and if they have no reward, autonomy or trust in participating in it, they got no skin in the game. They got no reason to be enthusiastic, excited, hardworking, excellent. So what happens? Well, as you see around the world, it's like we have these command and control old models from, you know, the past, these dictatorial ways of leading where it was like, do this, do this, do this. You know, bury like, you know, early 1800s stuff that should have been done by the 1950s. But people are still learning. And so you have this situation where a lot of people still think of like, oh, I have positional leadership, I'm the boss, or I'm this leader. Everyone needs to only do these things and it becomes a one way street or it becomes something where the leader doesn't have the connection with everybody else because no one has a part in it. They can't play yet, they don't believe in it yet. Even if they like you, even if they think you're an okay person, even if you had great successes in the past, if you don't get them collaborating to create where we're going, how we're going there and how we'll be together. They're not interested. They'll pretend they'll take the paycheck, but they'll be gone in six months. Or when the tough times hit or the stock price goes down, they're bailing, man, because they're thinking, you know what? I'm not part of this. I'm not part of this. I'm telling you. We live in a participative global culture now where people want a voice. And so much of leadership is understanding where to open conversations to allow diverse voices to come in, have a perspective on something. Even if you or the leaders maintain that decision making authority, which we'll talk about later, the active participation and enrollment of conversation is the difference maker. And your job as a leader, listen to this, Is to hold that space, to set the standard, the expectation, the structure for that space for other people to participate. Now I know some of the leaders out there like, yeah, but that's super hard, the timing of that and when. And some people have a voice, but they don't know what the hell they're talking about. They're not an expert, Brandon, why would I listen to them? And oh my gosh, does this mean more meetings for me? Don't worry, this isn't about you doing more meetings. Just to listen casually. We'll get to those practices later. The principle I want you to write down. People support what they create. The five most important words in all of leadership and people support what they create. If you get that principle, we can change the world. When you don't get that principle, you don't get the followers. Now with that, I want to introduce a concept, you know, that I've literally been teaching for 21 years now. I don't like the word followers. I don't like the word leaders versus or the position leaders versus followers. If you study with me before, I really believe you have leaders and instead of followers you have collaborators. It's just a different way of defining things. Unfortunately in our world, because of popularity and ego, when someone follows you on the Internet, it all became about a one way street. And so now we've ingrained in people's human behavior this idea that I broadcast my world and you should follow it. That's come into organizations. I tell you what to do and you should follow it versus hey, we're co creating this organization together. We're co creating this team. You're going to have some people on your team who are super participative and other People, they were never given autonomy or trust or a voice and they're super smart, but you're not getting enough from them. They just need to be enrolled to participate in a different way than the person who, who's always had the benefit of being in communities where they were heard. We live in a world right now where so many people have never actually been heard, then we expect them to perform as high performers in their organizational settings. It's like, oh, you have to be aware of these things. Some members of your team and some members of your family haven't been heard, haven't felt heard, haven't been allowed space for it. And I don't just mean listen to, I mean being allowed space to make decisions together about what's important. Take a look at the most critical members of your team. Maybe this is your executive team or the most important people in your life, your family. And look at each of them individually through this lens. It's like, oh, has this person been co creating the experience with me? Have they been active in that or passive in that? And not as a judgment to them like a one, they're bad. It's that, oh, if they are a one, I as a leader need to create a process, a rhythm, a meeting, an opportunity for this person to get some decision making authority, to establish some trust, if anything to be heard more in meetings. Maybe this person is never called on, they never get the opportunity. And you're going to like, oh, I'm going to be aware this person has not been participating and I need that participation from them if we're going to have long term success and we need to participate together. So let me have that. So I'm always thinking about that of and when I work with leaders and I coach them and I performance, it's always about, okay, let's work through your team, let's walk through this principle and let's talk about each of these critical team members and do they feel empowered to be part of the process because people support what they create is ultimately people being part of the process. Because guess what, when they're part of the process, they've helped come up with decisions. They're working towards something they had a hand in, they fight for it, they stay focused on it, they have ego decision making in that process and they want to protect it. When someone has an idea, you know what they want to do, they want to own that, they want to protect that, they want to perpetuate that, they want to ensure that that idea lives. When people are allowed to participate better ideas come up, people have more buy in. People stay committed. Over the long term, humans become more resilient themselves. It's important. It's so important. So please don't take an active role in this day. Score yourself. Be honest and think about this and how you can amplify this. If all you did is understand this principle, and you practice this principle at the deepest levels, you would so far surpass almost everybody you're working with, I promise.