How to successfully build your leadership with willing followers

For years experts have said that leadership was intangible and not measurable. However there is a basic measure - leaders are determined by their followers. No followers, no leader. Most influential leaders no matter what title they have or role they play are those with willing followers.

The whole point of leadership is to get whole hearted followers for a given course of action. However most potential leaders ignore followership and instead focus on being more engaging, interesting or convincing. At times they may rely on their positional power and end up, not with committed followers but with agreements at best, compliance at worst and marginal results.

The term whole hearted implies leaders have engaged their followers both in the heart and head in other words emotionally and intellectually. It also implies that the follower decides to whether or not to give his or her commitment.

So how do you gain whole hearted commitments and willing followers? The first step starts with the conversation
you have with a potential follower. Here you express your decision goals, and you include three critical decision goal elements:

1) a confident statement of the goal which has value or benefits to the potential followers
2) an invitation for followers to look at or listen to the goal and strategy and
3) an acknowledgement that the potential followers are decision-makers.

Take for example the following interaction: I believe we can reach our target of cost reduction by making a few changes to our process. Let's discuss this approach and you decide if it something that you can support. By putting forth your ideas with the confidence that others can decide on and treating followers as fellow decision makers, you have a greater chance of being heard and with an open mind and gaining credibility.

Planning and logic alone will not guarantee commitment. Commitments are whole hearted decisions and that means engaging the heart and head. Not everyone sees information the same way because emotions shape logic.

Opening a conversation with a well stated decision goal establishes rapport, openness and trust; it also lets followers know they are decision makers and so feel safer talking and revealing their true attitudes toward a plan.

A follower’s potential attitude can be positive, negative or neutral and can vary from moment to moment. Exceptional leaders are able to intuitively recognise intuitively recognize momentary changes in attitudes or points of view in a conversation. They focus more on how something is said, and by that, what is said makes more sense. Recognising and adapting to what is said is what enables leaders to influence others.

Let's look at an example of what this looks like - when you give someone directions to your home, you first determine where the other person is starting from. The directions you then give vary based on where the person is at that moment in time. In the same way if a potential follower considers your goal or strategy difficult to execute then you must simplify it. If a follower sees a plan as being to risky you then reduce the risk. Since followers vary in their attitudes you will need a range of responses that make sense to followers.

Regardless of a potential follower’s response, you must treat followers seriously so they talk openly and consider your goals and strategies. Acknowledging their point of view and taking them seriously are easier to do with the following:

1. Give them your total attention: Prove you care by suspending all other activities, suspend your point of view and show interest in what the other person is saying.

2. Respond: Responses can be verbal or nonverbal (nods, expressing interest). the key is to show that the message was received and had an impact.

3. Prove understanding: Saying I understand is not enough. You need to prove understanding by occasionally restating the gist of the idea or asking questions which prove you know the main idea. This is different from proving that you are listening and transmits a different message when people are communicating.

4. Prove respect: Take others’ views seriously. Telling someone, I appreciate your position, or I know how you feel, does not help. Such responses are usually followed by the word “but” and your viewpoint. Instead, show respect for the other person’s view by communicating at their level of understanding and attitude. An adjustment in tone of voice, rate of speech, and choice of words shows you are imagining being where the other person is at the moment.


When others sense they are being taken seriously; they in turn will take you seriously as their leader. Understanding that successful leaders are great followers first will assist you in becoming a better, more effective leader.

Making An Impact With Your Audience

Last Sunday I was sitting in a pew at Southside International Church during the sermon. This is pretty unusual because as the Pastor I am usually the preacher. Today was different and I was about to be greatly blessed and encouraged. The speaker was Rev Dang Pham. Dang and his wife are C&MA missionaries to Cambodia . They head up the ministry of New Hope which reaches out to the 1.5 million Vietnamese refugees who are amongst the poorest of the poor in the Khmer Kingdom . Dang was a former jet pilot with the South Vietnamese Air Force. He was imprisoned for three years after the fall of Vietnam in 1975. With his family he later escaped to Australia where they were sponsored by a rural Baptist Church . It was in this small town that an Aussie pastor led the family to Christ. After nine months they moved to Sydney where Dang undertook theological studies. He joined a C&MA church and after retirement he and his wife offered themselves for missionary service, leaving behind four single adult sons. In March this year Dang took the Leadership Matters Course in Bangkok . This is where my encouragement came. As I listened to this man for whom English is not his mother tongue, I could hardly contain myself as he delivered a near perfect thirteen minute talk which he had developed during the LMC. His “you modules” gained the immediate attention of his hearers, the cultural modules were gripping, his “is it worth it all” module came through loud and clear and his “nuts and bolts’ module clearly described the ministry of New Hope. Two others in the congregation who had taken LMC courses caught my eye and with big grins gave me the “thumbs up”.

From listening to Dang I was encouraged to realize again that LMC is truly making an impact. Missionaries can share their story in a concise and relevant way that really makes an impact on their hearers. I am all fired up again. I want to keep raising up leaders as long as I have health and my Lord allows me to continue this life-changing ministry.

Roger Lang
ITA Trainer

Why Listening is Key to Leadership

Habakkuk teaches us that leaders must first be listeners. In the first four verses of his book, the prophet cries out for God to answer his questions. He begs God to respond to the injustice, the violence, and the perversion of his nation. He knew God was infinitely just and he could not understand why God didn’t interested in doing something about Judah’s rebellion.

When God finally did respond, He gave Habakkuk a distasteful answer: God declared that He planned to use a nation more unjust than Judah to correct injustice among the Jews. That didn’t make sense to Habakkuk!.

Even so the prophet continued to listen. He wrestled with God but knew that leaders earn their right to speak by listening. When they listen they gain something more precious than the privilege to speak:

1. They gain insight about people
2. They connect with the speaker’s
3. They earn their right to speak
4. They become relevant
5. They understand the keys to the speakers heart
6. They identify
7. They gain authority
8. They learn

Tell me, When you speak, do you learn anything? Do gain anything - should you listen to God and to others?

How to Ease the Pain of Delegation

The ability to delegate sets leaders apart from followers. That is because many people find it difficult to give up control. Delegating duties and responsibilities is essential in today's downsized organisations. The following key points will help you take the pain out of delegation.

1. Find the right person for the project.
Do not assign the project to just any warm body - unless any outcome is acceptable. If you want the job done right, however, you must find the right person for the job. If none exists, find the most capable person and train him or her well.

2. Delegate authority and accountability.
The worst thing you can do is delegate a task and then tie a person's hands. If you have picked the right person or trained someone well, you must then give that person authority so the job can be done without your supervision. If you have to minutely supervise the project, you have not truly delegated it. In addition, you should make the person accountable for the quality of the work performed.

3. Make the task perfectly clear.
Carefully explain the nature of the project to the person you are giving responsibility. This may be done verbally or in writing, depending on the complexity of the task. The newer and more complex the task, the more questions the person you are giving responsibility will have. Answer all questions promptly and thoroughly.

4. Agree on a deadline.
When the person to whom you are delegating fully understands your expectations, both of you are in a position to determine a mutually acceptable deadline.

5. Review and coach.
There is a learning curve associated with any new activity. During this time, you should periodically review the other person's progress and offer additional coaching if needed.

6. Lay the groundwork for more delegation.
Once you get your feet wet, you will find more things that can be done by others to free up your time. Begin training people to assist you in more operations and you will find yourself with more time to do what you do best.

Why Transformation outweighs Culture

Of late I have been reminded of a critical objective related to helping people experience transformed lives.

"We are not helping people convert to our culture; we are helping them be transformed by Christ."

If we aren't crystal clear about that, people will be drawn to, and make commitments to our culture. People want to belong to a movement bigger than they are. People want to be in on what is exciting and adventurous. People want to be part of something excellent and significant. But, if we aren't clear about calling people to be disciples, sold-out followers of Jesus Christ, they will continue to show up, cheer and maybe even tell their friends, but their lives may not reflect a personal, missional buy-in to the agenda of the kingdom of God and the grace of Jesus Christ.

People matter too much to miss this critical distinction. God's kingdom agenda matters too much to allow this confusion.

How To Connect With Your Audience

Connecting with people is critical for selling, persuading or getting the point across. And one of the ways we connect with people is to tell them stories about ourselves.

I was at a business workshop recently, and the stories that were most effective (by acclamation of the attendees) were ones where the person let down his/her guard, and revealed something personal. This is one of the reasons storytelling is more effective than reciting a list of benefits to a prospect. In addition to being interesting and easy to understand, it also helps create a personal bond with the audience. It means that you may want, in your ministry storytelling, to reveal anxieties, fears and feelings. In other words, to give the audience your confidence.

Why Thinking About Vice Increases Your Chance of Giving In

In a recent Science Daily article - a study by researchers from Duke, USC, and UPenn explored for the first time how questioning can affect our behavior when we have mixed feelings about an issue. The study, forthcoming in the June issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, found that asking people questions, like how many times they expect to give in to a temptation they know they should resist, increases how many times they will actually give in to it.

A number of experiments were run including college students illustrating how questions that seemed innocent enough, actually encouraged people to lower their guard to the extent that they were actually giving in to the vice.
Despite very real negative repercussions, respondents to a question about their future class attendance engaged in the negative behavior (missing class) at a significantly greater rate than those not asked to predict their behaviour.

While the results were especially pronounced for those with low self control. Its implications only serve to strengthen why those of us in leadership and management have all the more reason to lean on the Lord and be rooted firmly in the Word so as to avoid the numerous vices that pervade our lives and societies.

However on a positive note - two moderators were discovered which can prevent intention questions from exacerbating indulgences in vices -

1. Having people explicitly consider strategies for how they might avoid the behavior.
2. Having people create a self-reward for sticking with their stated usage patterns.

How To Make A Point Effectively

We often grapple with the question of why and how leaders should go about making a point through their messages. In otherwords get people to understand the message when they hear it, they remember it, and they change their behavior because of it.

Messages that make a point or “sticky” messages have certain distinctives - unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional.



Read More on my other blog.

Learning to Preach Like Jesus

Demographers indicate that 350,000 sermons are preached in the USA every Sunday. But no-one has done any reliable surveys to discover how many people sleep during those sermons. Statistics from an earlier assessment have shown that if all the people who sleep in church were laid side be side in a long line … they would be a lot more comfortable!

For generations preachers have fought the battle on how to keep people awake during their sermons. Many methods have been proposed and some even aggressively instituted.

Not all preachers are gifted communicators. Billy Graham preached his first four sermons, sequentially, in one meeting, in only eight minutes. Many preachers do worse than that, except they take longer.

Communicating through the medium of preaching presents special challenges. And Ralph Lewis, in his book: “Learning to Preach Like Jesus” investigates the methodology that Jesus used.

When God wanted to communicate with people, it seems to me that He would choose the most effective method possible. That seems logical to me, since He knows the very essence of our make-up. And what tools did Jesus use to communicate in his sermons? Parables.

In his book, Ralph looks at the Greek and the Hebrew approaches and methodology of sermonizing. He analyzes the ‘right brain’, ‘left brain’ ways of learning. He researches the uniqueness in personal processing of data and he enlightens us on the ‘triple brain’ challenge. He does a fabulous job in discovering the ‘what’ of communication.

Then he dissects Jesus’ sermons and parables. Jesus was a storyteller.

But … there is one element that Ralph leaves out in his book ... the ‘HOW’ to tell stories. This element of ‘how’ is what we teach at the Leadership Matters Course! The ‘modular approach’ to storytelling, ‘STORY’ and the ‘Dutchman’ are distinctives of LMC!

Not forgetting what we learned! … John

Stop that email!

I took a day off work only to come back to over 70 emails in my inbox. I found my self only following up on messages that managed to catch my attention within the first few seconds of viewing it.

This experience underscored the need to be relevant to an audience. Is this relevant to you? The LMC course which you have either attended or been referred to provides the skills to be relevant to your respective audiences. The training alliance through a series of media including this, hope to encourage you on your path to relevance.

Seth Godin wrote an excellent post on his blog about communication through speeches or talk. He writes about the dynamics of speech: “Speech is both linear and unpaceable. You can’t skip around and you can’t speed it up. When the speaker covers something you know, you are bored. When he quickly covers something you don’t understand, you are lost.” This is both the advantage and the challenge of speech.

A speech has always been a platform to sell ideas, but we often forget that and just drone on presenting what perhaps is important to us (often the audience can’t tell) without regard to our listeners. Godin adds, “If marketing is the art of spreading ideas, then teaching is a kind of marketing. And teaching to groups verbally is broken, perhaps beyond repair. Consumers of information won’t stand for it. We’re learning less every time we are confronted with this technique, because we’ve been spoiled by the remote control and the web.”

Godin suggests, “If you teach - teach anything - you need to start by acknowledging that there’s a need to sell your ideas emotionally. So you need to use whatever tools are available to you—an evocative PowerPoint image, say, or a truly impassioned speech.” Speech isn’t broken; we just don’t take the time to do it well. A well crafted speech has the potential to cut through the clutter and hold your attention more intimately than nearly any other form of communication.

In my opinion the above doesn't just apply to speeches but to all forms of communication.

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3 Points from Aristotle on Presentation

1. Begin With the End in Mind
Knowing where you're trying to go before you start is crucial to leading an effective life (and handy for road trips too). Aristotle called this teleology, which is the study of matters with their end or purpose in mind. Fans of Stephen Covey will recognize the concept from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The same principle applies to any presentation. The overall story that a presentation is trying to tell is tied into your unique selling proposition, and you need to have a clearly-defined big picture perspective of how you're going to tell that story over time.
You do that by telling smaller stories, and, those smaller stories should each have a clear individual point and reason for being. Even if it's just to make your audience smile on a Monday.
Each story in some way should be also telling a part of the bigger story that demonstrates to your audience that they will benefit from engaging with you. There's a million different ways to do that, and developing your own unique style is as important as any other advice you might get.
Just always remain focused on where you're trying to end up. Even when the path disappears, you’ve got to remember where you’re trying to go.

2. It's Not About You
Aristotle nailed the key to persuasion. Aristotle said that persuasion involved being able to identify the most compelling naturally-occurring element of any subject.
Once identified, Aristotle argued that the most compelling way to communicate that natural element is via pathos, the ability to connect with the emotions, desires, fears, and passions of the audience. And you certainly don't accomplish that by focusing on yourself.

3. Tell Persuasive Stories
When it's time to bang out a winning story post that captivates your audience and prompts them to take action, Aristotle's got you covered. Here is his four step structure to persuasive presentations:
Exordium: This is your opening. You've caught their interest with your headline, but the opening is where you've really got to grab hold for dear life. It might be a shocking statement, an interesting factoid, a famous quote, or a vivid anecdote.
Narratio: Next you've got to show the audience you understand their problems. They need to identify with you, and you with them. In this section you demonstrate that you feel their pain.
Confirmatio: The solution appears. Use vivid imagery to illustrate that the technique or service you offer is the answer, and give examples featuring people similar to the audience.
Peroratio: Don't forget to expressly state the need to act upon the solution offered now. This is the call to action, and it's crucial, yet so many people simply stop at the confirmatio.

The Right Story at the Right Time
The point I hope you take away from this post is that you'll see certain timeless truths again and again in the world of marketing. How those truths eventually resonate with you depends on who tells you the right story at the right time.

This applies to you and your ministry. Someone in your field is going to connect with that motivated individual, convert them and disciple them.
If you're telling compelling stories, and others can't be bothered to, who's that someone more likely to be?

5 Tips from Jobs

Apple computers is now celebrating 30 years of innovation. Anyone who has watched a Steve Jobs keynote, will tell you that he is one the most extraordinary speakers in corporate America. He comes across to most people as a particularly hip and plugged in friend showing off inventions in your living room. Jobs has learnt that a leader must be an evangelist and brand spokesperson.

Here are Jobs tips to wow them with your presentation:

1. Sell the Benefit
Steve Jobs does not sell bits of metal; he sells an experience. "For example, when introducing a 30 GB iPod, he clearly explains what it means to the consumer - users can carry 7,500 songs, 25,000 photos, or up to 75 hours of video.

In January when Jobs introduced the first Intel (INTC)-based Mac notebook he began by saying, "What does this mean?"He went on to explain the notebook had two processors, making the new product four to five times faster than the Powerbook G4, a "screamer" as he called it. It's not about the technology, but what the technology can do for you".

2. Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More
Take nothing for granted during presentations. Review and rehearses your material. Jobs sense of informality and easy manner comes only after grueling hours of practice.

3. Keep It Visual
There are very few bullet points in a Jobs presentation. Each slide is highly visual. If he's discussing the new chip inside a computer, a slide in the background will show a colorful image of the chip itself alongside the product. That's it. Simple and visual.

Apple's presentations are not created on PowerPoint, as the vast majority of presentations are. But PowerPoint slides can be made visual as well. It's a matter of thinking about the content visually instead of falling into the habit of creating slide after slide with headlines and bullet points.

4. Exude Passion, Energy, and Enthusiasm
Jobs has an infectious enthusiasm. This was obvious during the launch of the video iPod, with comments like: "It's the best music player we've made," "It has a gorgeous screen," "The color is fantastic," and "The video quality is amazing."

"There is no better example of Jobs' passion than the famous story of how he convinced John Sculley to lead Apple in the mid '80s by asking him, "Do you want to sell sugared water all your life or do you want to change the world?" The former Pepsi executive chose the latter and, although the pairing ultimately failed to work out, it reflects Jobs' sense of mission - a mission that he conveyed consistently in the early years of Apple and continues to today".

5."And One More Thing..."
At the end of each presentation Jobs adds to the drama by saying, "and one more thing." He then adds a new product, new feature, or sometimes introduces a band. He approaches each presentation as an event, a production with a strong opening, product demonstrations in the middle, a strong conclusion, and an encore - that "one more thing!"

So what does this mean?
How do you and your team rate when it comes to crafting the story behind your organisation or brand? Do you come across as trustworthy, confident, and competent, or do you fail to captivate your listeners? When you do speak to an individual or groups or a large audience you are often the sole experience a listener has with your organisation/brand.
LMC has an entire section of the course dedicated to help bring the evangelist and brand spokesperson out of each one of us.

3 Key Lessons from a Master Storyteller

Jesus knew that sometimes truth can't be explained, outlined, analyzed, and summarized. He knew that sometimes the only way to tell the truth is to wrap it up in a story.

In a recent article on pastors.com, Steven James quotes novelist Flannery O’Connor: “When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”

Steven goes on to sure 3 key lessons learnt during his story telling sojourn thus far:

1. Work with images rather than propositions Faith cannot exist without imagination. And you do not grow in faith by just hearing facts. Often the best told stories, and sermons, need no explanation because they embody the truth. They say what cannot be said any other way.

2. Trust the story to do its work Jesus rarely explained his stories, in fact only once in Scripture are we told specifically why Jesus told a story (Luke 18:1), and only a couple of his story explanations appear. Jesus trusted his stories to do their work in the hearts of the people listening.

3. Never tell the same story twice Effective communicators combine careful and thoughtful preparation with a warm sense of spontaneity. In short, they respond to their audiences. They prepare their messages with their listeners in mind. Their stories and jokes aren’t canned. People feel like the message is directed right at them.

Steven James has a master’s degree in storytelling, speaks weekly at churches and conferences nationwide, and is the author of the highly acclaimed book Story: Recapture the Mystery

Tags: leadership, communication, leader+communication, leadership+communicationTags: storytelling