The influenced leadership

Leadership is often a very misunderstood word. How our subconscious mind thinks is that if someone is at the top of a corporate hierarchy, then the person is a leader. Well, that might be true, or it might not be true. Leadership doesn't come with any position; it rather comes up with our ability to influence people.

The word "influence" was first used somewhere in the Middle Ages as an astrological word meaning a streaming ethereal power from the stars acting upon our characters or destiny. It means an element believed to determine someone's character or individual tendencies caused by the position of the stars and planets at the time of one's birth. The word kept on evolving, and by the fifteenth century, it was defined as an exercise of personal power by human beings, how we exert gravitational force on each other, just like any stars in the universe.

We can see many people follow the structure of their positional leader, not because they want to, but because they need to. Many leaders fail to lead people by influence; they think the position is the leadership but fail to understand what influential leadership can do for the organization.

So what is influence?

Influence is similar to airflow or the flow of a river. When water is flowing downstream, is there some force pushing it to go downstream? Not really; there is a gravitational force that's pulling the water downstream. The same thing with influence, that's what successful leaders do; they don't push anything; rather, they create a pull.

But that's when most of the businesses fail; they try to push people for their benefits rather than the benefit of their people, and that's why they struggle to be in the business for the long run. Think about how far we can push a rope, maybe not even a meter or two. How about pull, we can pull as long as the rope is there. Pull always happens only if there is more benefit to the people of the organization or there is mutual benefit to both parties.

The first and foremost thing a leader needs to have is vision. A leader needs to have a clear vision of how the organization will look in the coming years, the things they will accomplish, and what it means to every single person in the organization. And just having a vision won't be enough to move onto the next level for any organization or a leader; the biggest challenge of any organization or a leader is a constant cloud of fear, doubts and disbelief that swings around the heads of people in the organization. The leader's biggest job at that point in time is to hold to the vision, see that in crystal clear in the mind, and keep seeing that especially when nobody else does. That's what people count on their leader for.

So, influenced leadership is all about the victory of every single person in the organization, which leads to the victory of the leader and the whole organization itself.