A lot of people think that a leader is born, but I want to teach you the principles that I learned from Simon Sinek about how you can train yourself or anyone else to be a leader.
While some people are “natural born” leaders, the skills necessary to be an effective leader can be learned and implemented by anyone.
Anyone Can Learn to Lead
Leading other people is a skillset. Now, there are some people who come into the world understanding how to inspire organizations and people and inspire movements, but the skills that lead to this inspiration are not reserved just for people born with the skill.
The skills needed to lead are a pattern that can be learned and relearned and implemented by anyone with discipline.
What Does a Leader Do?
A leader can help advance ideas, advance vision, and we can all learn to lead. What we think leaders do is fix everything that’s wrong, but it’s not about creating a perfect organization. Every operation has challenges, but there are core features of organizations that work across every industry in every type of business.
How to Start With Why
Let’s talk about how we can start with why. Start with, “why are we doing” and “what are we doing” so that we ensure that we ask the right questions to get solutions to serve a common purpose and a common cause.
Inspirational Leaders in History
Wilbur & Orville Wright Fly the First Plane
Despite highly-educated competition, They rallied a group of dedicated help from their hometown of Dayton, Ohio having no funding, no grants and no connections. No one on the team even had a college education. But this bunch of misfits took the first ever flight on December 17th, 1903.
Steve Wazniak & Steve Jobs Create User-Friendly Computers
Jobs & Wazniak didn’t aim to stand upright and throw stones at authorities during anti-war riots. They beat the system at its own game. They created a brand new battlefield for business and communication in the personal computer.
Computers before Apple were too complicated and too expensive for the average person to use, but what Wazniak and Jobs wanted to do was create a computer that every man could use, with the same functions as the computers that vast corporations were using.
The personal computer could be leveraged, and then it could change the world.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leads to Lasting Change in America
There were plenty of people who suffered in pre-civil rights America. There were plenty of people who were great speakers. There were plenty of people out there saying that civil rights must change, but there is only one Dr. Martin Luther King.
Dr. King knew that if civil rights was going to be a lasting change, it would take more than people rallying around him and more than great speeches; it’s going to take tens of thousands of people with one singular vision.
Making the Dream Personal
The ability to attract people from all across America of every race, of every religion to join in this rallying cry took something special. It took the idea that civil rights is not just good for minorities. It took the idea that civil rights are good for America.
When Dr. King stood in front of that crowd in DC and said, “I have a dream,” what he actually said to them, what they heard, is “We have a dream.” The dream became personal.
Why Do Leaders Motivate?
There are leaders and then there are those who lead. Though their goals are similar, their methods are easy to duplicate.
But the Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stand out among their peers. They stand apart from the norm, and the overall impact of them can never be copied because they inspire us.
Motivating vs. Inspiring People to Action
Some organizations motivate people so they make sales, some motivate people so they get votes. Some motivate people so they work harder. Some people motivate their husbands to go mow the lawn.
The ability to motivate is not that difficult. You can motivate people to do things, but great leaders inspire others to action.
Great leaders give people a sense of belonging and the motivation to act. But we live in a society that unfortunately does not start with why. It starts with what, right?
Most organizations know what they do: You sell something. You’re running for office. You are participating in a marriage. You understand what you’re doing.
Some people understand how they do it: We manufacture goods. I go to political campaign rallies. I cohabitate with this person. I know how I’m doing it.
But we have to look at why we do things because if you lead with what, you don’t have as strong an ability to inspire people.
There are only two ways to inspire people to take action:
Manipulation
Now, there aren’t many products in the world that a consumer can’t buy from somebody else. You can buy a product in a lot of places. Usually it can be the same price, the same quality, same level of service. But if most companies are asked why their customers are their customers, the answer tends to be that their products are the best, their products are the lowest, their features are the best, or their service is the greatest.
If you’re talking about why you’re the best, then you aren’t going after your ideal client. You’re using superlatives to drive your narrative without actually knowing what are the pain points of the client that you’re looking for.
Manipulation By Price
Every company in the world manipulates things, right? For example, the 10% off price game. The price game can come with a significant cost to your business because price manipulations are like heroin.
The short term effect is fantastic, but it’s going to get harder to break free from waiting for the discount price. Suddenly, instead of your product being something of value, you have made your product a commodity.
Everyone is offering the lowest price or the best deal, so consumers aren’t married to the company, they’re married to the deal.
Manipulation By Fear
When you think about fear-based marketing campaigns, think of the classic commercial from the 80s:
“This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.”
That is a fear-based motivation. When anti-HIV commercials began to come out in the 90s, they were very fear-based. You’re trying to avoid this terrible outcome.
Vaccine marketing is very fear-based as well.
Manipulation By Aspirations
We also know at the other end of the spectrum is aspirations. The biggest collection of aspirations is quitting smoking and dieting. Somone is aspiring to quit smoking or to be thin. If fear motivates us towards avoiding something horrible. Aspiration is driving us towards something desirable.
Aspirational messages are the most effective in people who lack discipline or they have a nagging underlying fear of not being enough.
Manipulation By Peer Pressure
Here’s an example: Four out of five dentists agree that this is the best brand of toothpaste. But what if four out of five dentists just don’t have a clue what makes a good toothpaste?
What if they’re recommending the most cutting-edge fluoride-concentrated toothpaste, and you want a fluoride-free option? Peer pressure is all there. This is also where we tap into the fear of missing out, or FOMO.
Manipulation By Novelty
Novelty usually comes with the line, “major innovation.” For example, When Motorola unveiled the Razr phone in 2004, they touted that it had a combination of aircraft grade metal, aluminum, an internal antenna, a chemically etched keypad, and that the formation of the device is only 33.9 millimeters thin. People became obsessed with the Razr.
However, four years later, the CEO got fired and was forced out because Motorola stock had dropped by 50% of what it did during the Razr days.
What is Real Innovation?
Real innovation isn’t about new materials. It’s about ideas so significant that they change society.
What’s the difference between Alexander Graham Bell creating the first phone versus a new iPhone? Society changed. The invention of the light bulb changed society.
These are true innovations because they changed everyday business. A great camera on a phone is a nice feature, but if you really take a look at how Razr was marketed, it sounds like nothing more than it’s a new metal, a hidden antenna, a flat keypad, a thin phone.
What’s the Problem with Manipulation?
Manipulation drives sales, but not loyalty. Your business becomes transactional.
Will Your Amare Business Be Transactional or Loyalty-Driven?
We need to be sure that we know whether our business is going to be a transactional business or is it going to be a business of loyalty?
There are times when transactional businesses are all you want. If your cat runs away, you don’t care who returns the cat; this is how transactional businesses work.
But if we truly want to drive loyalty, then we have to do things in different ways. Every company knows what they do. Most companies know how they do it, but very few companies know why they do what they do.
Leading Amare with the Greater Good
We believe that every person desires to be fully mentally well. We serve this greater good by creating cutting edge supplements, specifically designed to help lower cortisol, raise serotonin, raise dopamine, and help you simply to feel better.
Leading with Your Purpose
People buy why you do what you do, not what you’re selling.
We want to think of how we market like we think of dating, and we want to be sure that we are leading with our purpose, which is greater than the product in front of me.
If the leader within your organization cannot clearly articulate why they do what they do and by leader in the organization can’t communicate why they do what they do, or even if you can’t communicate why you do what you do, then how can you go into your down line and motivate and inspire them to continue moving forward?
Be your own competition and start with why.