he answered easily.
I was taken aback. He was serious. What did he know that I didn't know?
“How did you know that you'd get all those votes?” I asked him—expecting a quick, one-sentence answer.
I couldn't have been any more wrong.
Gary's response shocked me. He had thought this whole thing out:
I reached out to people. I invited people out to coffee and to lunch. I got to know them. I asked them how long they'd been active in leadership development and with our nonprofit. I asked them what they liked about the organization. I asked them what they would change if they could. I asked them what they hoped the future might look like.
Then, I shared why I was running for executive director. I told them how important this work is to me. I told them that I wanted to build a team of people to take this organization to the next level. I asked if they'd be a part of that team.
Finally, I asked them to show up on election night and vote for me, so that we could be the team to make things happen.
As Gary finished, I felt lightheaded. I propped myself up on the red cushion of the booth.
His explanation made perfect sense. In fact, it was so perfect that it hit me like a blinding flash of the obvious.
Why hadn't I done that? Why hadn't I done anything even close to that?
I'd been living in a fantasy world. Whether you call it inexperience or ignorance, I had just expected to be elected. In hindsight, I could see that I'd made a whole lot of assumptions:
People in the nonprofit would know about me.
They would have heard about all the hard work that I had done on behalf of the organization for the past few years.
All my previous efforts would speak for themselves.
People would know who the “best” candidate was.
People would vote based on merit.
I'd “earned” the job, based on my excellence and tenure.
People would vote for me.
Given my boatload of assumptions, I never even considered taking the step of actually asking people to show up and support me. So I hadn't. And, except for five other people, they didn't.
Ask for votes? Be that explicit? It wasn't my style. It seemed so weird. So…direct.
But Gary knew something I didn't.
Gary knew that the key to successful leadership is influence, not authority. He wasn't interested in acquiring a title and throwing the weight of the position around. Gary knew that no one wanted to work under an authoritative leader.
The whole organization ran on the backs of volunteers. We felt connected to the mission and vision of the organization. Everyone was there out of commitment, not compliance. We did things because we cared. We offered our time, talents, and efforts because we wanted to, not because we had to.
As a volunteer, working from commitment had fueled my own journey for the past three years. However, as a candidate for executive director, I'd fallen for the leadership trap of my own ego.
My fantasy of becoming the person “in charge” had intoxicated me with visions of grandeur. I'd become aloof and had neglected the principles that really mattered. I'd already envisioned how everyone else would fall in line and do what I wanted them to do. I thought I was entitled to lead. This version of reality was crystal clear in my imagination. Sadly, I was blind to the greater truth.
Gary, however, knew that leadership isn't about what goes on in the mind of a leader: it's about what goes on in the minds of people they want to lead. Understanding how things really work, Gary tapped into their energy and explicitly asked them to show up and vote for him. And show up they did. And I lost.
The experience was incredibly humbling. However, that defeat turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons of my life. Gary, through his modeling, had provided me with a map of how to become a better leader (see Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Core Components of Being a Leader
The loss to Gary burst the bubble of my ignorance. I suddenly realized that there was a lot about leadership that I didn't even know that I didn't know. In preparing and executing his election victory, Gary modeled three essential leadership principles: connection, communication, and collaboration.
CONNECTION
Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
When you connect with people on a personal level, they feel that you care about them. Connection provides the spark that gets others to willingly follow your lead. It's the main ingredient in trust. Think of Gary's decision to invite members of the organization out to coffee and/or lunch. He made the members feel valued, and he sent a clear message that he wanted to get to know and understand them. Connection doesn't come cheap; you need to give of your time and attention. However, your investment pays dividends of engagement and commitment.
There's a simple yet powerful exercise I've done with dozens of groups to demonstrate the importance of connection to become a better leader.
Let's try it together right now.
Grab a pen and paper and think of the best leader you've ever worked with. It can be a work leader, school leader, sports coach, and so on. Make a list of qualities of that leader. What made them so great? Come up with at least 10 qualities.
Now review those qualities. Place each quality into one of these three categories:
1 Intelligence/smarts (understanding, reasoning, judgment)
2 Technical skills (specific ability to perform a job function well)
3 Emotional intelligence (able to identify/manage their own emotions and recognize/influence the emotions of others)
Which bucket did most of the qualities fall into?
If you're like most people, most of the qualities landed in the emotional intelligence bucket. Great leaders have a sixth sense for people. They have a knack for saying the right thing at the right time. They know that support should sometimes be nurturing and other times be challenging. Above all, they know how to connect.
COMMUNICATION
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
—Dale
