The need to tell others you’re important suggests you don’t feel important.
Insecure leaders build, protect, and validate themselves. They spend their days like male peacocks fluffing their tail feathers. “Look at me, I’m beautify; I’m important.”
Fluffing activities suggest people don’t believe they matter.
You must believe you matter:
“Everything you will ever do as a leader is based on one audacious assumption. It’s the assumption that you matter.” Kouzes & Posner.
How to matter most:
You matter most when you make others feel they matter.
Secure leaders courageously build others; they fluff the feathers of others rather than their own.
Confident leaders know that people who feel they matter, will. People who feel they don’t matter, won’t.
5 Ways to matter most by making others matter:
- Develop their skills. Competence means I matter.
- Give them authority to make choices. Warren Buffet said, “Delegate almost to the point of abdication.” He owns over 80 businesses. The third richest man in the world (Forbes 2011) tells the CEO’s of his businesses that he doesn’t expect to hear from them more than once a year. He says the business is yours; you run it.
- Explain their impact. Create goals, milestones, and deliverables that highlight the results of their efforts, positive or negative.
- Tie daily behaviors to purpose. Tell them what their behaviors mean in practical terms. One nonprofit that worked with single moms brought single moms into the office. Seeing the people they served gave purpose to daily activities.
- Build their security by acting consistently. Secure people dare to courageously act. Secure people trust that you won’t harm them. Insecure people constantly walk on thin ice.
Has someone made you feel that you matter? What did they do?
How can you make others feel they matter?
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Find this post useful? Check out: “Four Ways to Create Unflinching Boldness.” Don’t press timid people to be bold – Give them hope and they will be bold.