Five Techniques That Make You Matter Most
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.
I smiled at the picture to-day. You use such a wonderful assortment that really add to the blog.
To answer your questions Dan:
I worked for the CEO of a company years ago and one of the things she did that supported me was to notice – with a touch of humility – little things done well – not just the big assignments. For instance, every once in a while she would say something like, ” I really appreciate your perspective on things. I don’t think I tell you that enough.” She also asked for my input on many things not all related to my specific role and when she didn’t use my ideas, she would let me know she considered them. For instance, she would say something such as, “Keep those ideas coming because I really value your thoughts”.
I took a page from her book and find in my own work that when I too notice little (and big) things regularly, those who work for me show they appreciate that I am applauding their ongoing successes, that I am consulting them and that I am valuing their input. Explaining the impact (as per #3 above) is absolutely important and adds to this approach immeasurably.
Hi Cinnie,
Wonderful story. Something like that happened to me yesterday. A local business man, on his own, took a few minutes to tell me the good things he sees in me.
I feel like Mark Twain, who said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”
Thank you for all you do for me and the LF community.
Cheers,
Dan
Cinnie, thanks for your comment. Noticing the little things really tells people they matter. When I was a CEO I wondered if I did it enough.
Best…
Jim
Cinnie, your story is one of the best things I have read on “Leadership Freak” and I have read alot of very good things here. I think the way that CEO treated you is very inspiring and a great model of how to treat others!
Dan I Love the Mark Twain quote too!!
I have repeatedly met with someone that I remembered fondly from prior meetings who started behaving towards me in the manner described in Marshall Goldsmith’s article titled “4 Bad Habits of Super-Smart Leaders” at http://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/articles/four-bad-habits-of-super-smart-leaders/ after I told him that my IQ was lower than his. Reading this blog post and this comment made me realize how insecure he must have felt to humiliate me with his assumed superiority. Needless to say, I no longer look forward to meeting him or to feed him ideas that he doesn’t aknowledge. He is no leader to me and I no longer consider him a friend. I think he doesn’t care, so I shouldn’t either.
A great way to show people they matter is to make sure they get credit for the work they perform outside the company as well as inside. I had a boss who used to take me to presentations. During the presentation he would always either ask me a question or confirm a fact from the presentation. He already knew the answer. He was using the question to show the client that I was the one who had done much of the work and that I was important to the process. This in turn made me feel that he had confidence in my work and my ability to answer the question in front of the client.
Excellent – contrast with the many bosses who take credit for what their team does. Or, something I catch myself doing is that in trying to build the whole team up, the team gets credit for an individual’s work.
Hi Bonnie,
Love that! Your boss hit two birds with one stone.
He publicly acknowledged you. And, he privately (in your own heart) let you know he respected you. Wonderful.
I say Jack Welch doing something similar as he called on the expertise in the audience at the HSM event I attended. It was impressive.
Best,
Dan
As many people have, I first felt like I mattered in the Army. Since then, I’ve been in organizations where I’ve been able to replicate what I think the Army did for me: put me through training that was challenging enough that I could see it changed me, and then immediately gave me work challenging enough that it showed a high level of trust.
So that’s what I try to do: give people confidence with good training/teaching/mentoring, and show trust by turning them loose. Often the outcome is they blossom.
Have to admit a spectacular failure: I had one guy who decided that since I’d spent the time with him and given him extra responsibility, that made him special. He didn’t catch on that I do that with pretty much everyone. He tried to boss his peers, and started putting in less effort because he felt he had more “rank” and equated rank with privelege. He’s gone now, but it taught me that part of growing people is making it very visible to everyone else. Valuing one doesn’t mean devaluing others.
Greg,
Your last paragraph is insightful gold.
I’m tweeting that last sentence, with credit of course.
I’m thankful for the way you encourage me and the LF community. Very encouraging.
Best,
Dan
Greg, good comment, particularly the last sentence. Ah, the things we learn supporting and mentoring.
Best…Jim
Timely post – I’m working with a CEO who right now needs to integrate these five points (and the entire “building others up” concept versus showing them how inept they are) into his daily interactions. As Cinnie mentioned “notice – with a touch of humility” – I’m going to pass that along – very nice!
To the heart “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.”
Pure Gold! Working since last 11 years, made me realize that these insights are awesome!
Such a great post, and one that really resonated with me. For a long time, I was one of those people who talked about how important I was because I felt unimportant.
It wasn’t until I realized that it was much more useful for me to help others feel important that I began to change, and in doing so, not only began to perceive myself as important but was seen as important. Isn’t it funny how that works?
It’s not how much you matter that counts. It’s how much being around you makes others feel that THEY matter that counts.
Great list. It might be implicit in most of the items on your list but you could add “Ask their opinion.” It makes people feel like they are part of the process.
Right on, especially if you sometimes change things because of their opinion.
I love today’s graphic too. It really “pops” and makes you want to keep reading … and then you encounter great content. Perfect combo!
Has someone made you feel that you matter?
Yes, someone has made me feel that I matter. Recently I ran into a former coworker. It had been at least a year (probably more) since we had worked together. She told me how accepted I had made her feel in our work environment when the same could not be said for others. Hearing it so long after the fact made it that much more meaningful to me.
How can you make others feel they matter?
In keeping with the comment above, keep in mind that people will not always reflect their appreciation for the things you do to “make them feel they matter” (or it may be much later). You have to have confidence that those actions are a) the right thing to do and b) are building that person’s confidence and sense of worth. I think Cinnie’s executive director must have been on to that idea!
This is a great post. It follows in line with Ken Blanchard’s article last year on Servant Leadership. Thank you for writing this.
I think the best leaders help and encourage their followers to be the ones to prance around like showy peacocks. Those who lead best point out the colorful contributions of others and highlight the ways. both large and small, those people make a difference.It is not a handing over of power, but rather an inspiring empowerment.
There was a professor at our college who managed to inspire and lead every student who had him. I never had him in class, but when I walked past him on campus one day, nodding hello, he stopped me and said, “You know, you have a great smile. You should try to use that more.” I mattered, if even for a second, and I have never forgotten that simple gesture.
Engaging with people at the deepest levels possible allows for connection to what matters to them. Responding to that makes peopel feel like they matter too. I recently resigned as a college soccer coach, but I professed regularly how much each of the women on our team mattered to me personally, and to those around them. Before every game I would write them each a personal note…sometimes it was a goal for the day, sometimes it was a celebration of something I knew they had achieved, but I really made an effort to let them know how much I cared about each one of them. They mattered to me, and to the team, and I wanted to make sure they knew that.
Hey Dan, great post – as always.
I wrote a short article last month on coming back from a leadership summit where I had one of hose times where just a short phrase stopped me in my tracks… you know the kind?!
The thrust of it was very similar to the essence of your point here – if great leaders create a culture where other leaders grow, then regular affirmation and encouragement are two key ingredients to creating that culture. “Affirmation” being helping someone know that they matter because of what they’ve done and “encouragement” being helping someone know they matter because of what they have yet to do.
I think its important to count the cost though. As leadership coaches we’re often great at inspiring and painting a picture of what great leaders do and therefore ought to move towards. At the same time, it’s important to be real about the cost involved for those folks we work with to whom simple actions like regular appreciation don’t come naturally… Not because they’;re bad people but just because of the point they’re at in their journey of growth, they’ve yet to make that commitment to integrate it into their daily behaviour. The adoption of new behaviour succeeds or dies on the strength of the commitment that it’s worth changing from the old one. Challenging stuff for a lot of folk.
Felt it related to your second question “How can you make others feel they matter?” so posted a link below.
http://muchclearer.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/creating-compost-for-growing-leaders/
Spot on, as always! Thanks for posting.
Great insight! The only thing I would add is to find out what specifically motivates each individual so they feel they matter most.
Amazing insight made me feel GREAT.
Nice to see wisdom with application