Leaders Without Followers: Why No One Follows Them...
It's simple: if no one follows you, you are not a leader. And vice versa: the more people follow you, the stronger your influence as a leader.
We have known about the phenomenon of "influencers" not just since social media. Influential leaders have always had a sizable number of "followers." But this is about something very simple that is relevant to anyone who wants to influence others in any way: it's about influencing others so that they are happy to follow you of their own free will. If you can do that, you can move the proverbial mountains.
By the way, this has absolutely nothing to do with "blind allegiance". On the contrary: The more your people critically question and challenge you, the greater your influence - provided you are willing to accept the challenges and deal with the criticism.
Leaders come to me all the time with questions about why people don't follow them enough: "Why aren't you doing what we agreed? Why aren't you implementing things the way I told you to?" Here are the top three reasons from my experience why people don't follow you:
- They spread uncertainty. I had already dealt with this in detail elsewhere. Many leaders spread insecurity to others through their lack of clarity. Clarity in communication is often drastically overestimated. What appears to be clear to you may be completely unclear to others. No one wants to follow someone they don't understand.
- The trust is too low. Of course, you know this: if you are to follow someone, you must trust the person to some degree. The more trust, the easier the leadership. But what is often ignored: In order to trust yourself fully, you should know yourself as well as possible and be able to assess yourself. This requires actions that are outside the normal work processes.
- There is no need. This may come as a bit of a surprise, but if you don't see a good reason to follow another person, you won't do it. So if others don't understand the need for your leadership, it will be difficult for you. The good news is that you can consciously create that need.
If you reverse these three points, you have a very good chance that other people will be very happy to follow you, which will then increase your influence.
Bonus insight: The three levers mentioned above apply just as much in sales if you want to turn as many customers as possible into your fans.
To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch
