The Harvest Metric is Influence, Not Relief

Having just emphasized why running the six steps from leading from wherever you are through a real situation is even more useful for someone without positional authority, let me explain why. Cindy and I were first introduced to John Maxwell’s work in early 2001, not long into our marriage and very soon after we had each accepted roles where we were expected to get results with the teams around us without any authority whatsoever. I can’t remember if it was through an audio lesson (on a cassette tape in those days) or from one of his books, but John’s quote that “Leadership is Influence. Nothing more, nothing less,” resonated with me immediately. And it has since. We’ve seen hundreds, maybe even thousands, of good people in supervisory and management roles who couldn’t lead silent prayer, largely because they didn’t understand that leadership is built on influence. Even if they did, I doubt they had even been provided with a practical approach for earning that influence.

Not only did the roles Cindy and I held in 2001 carry zero authority, every role either of us held for the remainder of our corporate careers was the same. In every single one, though, we were both held very accountable for achieving measurable results with and through people we could never force into compliance. Quite honestly, that’s why each adversity I’ve detailed through this process has had a tie back to influence earned without positional authority; press operator to trainer, being a parent with no control over a diagnosis, receiving a job offer on a position with global responsibility for just $50k per year, and so on.The constant through all of those situations was that we kept looking for every possible seed we could find that would hopefully lead to the equal or greater opportunity Hill promised, and we kept sowing & nurturing those seeds - even when we didn’t feel like it.

That consistency and determination did indeed help us earn influence that no title would have ever provided, but that wasn’t the real harvest. The metric we’ve found the greatest harvest in was tied to how that influence has, over time, allowed us to sow into people that will carry many of the lessons we’ve learned long after we’re gone. As part of a Live2Lead event we hosted locally years ago, I heard Tyler Perry mentioned that by the time he had made enough money to be able to step away from his businesses, he knew the impact he was making may never allow him to step away. While I didn’t think about his comment at the time, I felt a very similar burden as I was writing the initial manuscript to Leveraging Leadership Growth: Strength Through Great Professional Relationships. The more opportunities I’ve had, the more weight I feel for doing everything in my power to make sure whoever is willing to listen has access to whatever lesson I can provide. 

Our harvest metric is absolutely influence, but that has nothing to do with relief. If anything, the adversities have become larger. Having worked so diligently at identifying every seed we could possibly find for so long, though, has given us a foundation for handling each new challenge more effectively. And that’s taught us that leading from wherever you stand means the next room does not have to change before you do. Quiet consistency after the crisis is the harvest people actually feel. As we wrap this up, we’ll work through the exact next steps you need to take to lead from where you are already standing. Before we do that, take the time to name one person who has watched you in a bad situation. What did your handling teach them, on purpose or by accident?