7 Ways To Establish Urgency In The People You Lead
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Summary: A critical challenge facing all leaders is creating
urgency in the people they lead. Here are seven steps that will
help you move people from complacency to urgency.
Seven Ways To Instill Urgency In The People You Lead by Brent
Filson
It's one thing to lead people to accomplish tasks, but it is
another altogether to lead them to accomplish tasks with a deep
sense of urgency. Instilling urgency in people is an abiding
challenge of all leaders. Yet few leaders I have encountered
know how to do it consistently and systematically. Here are six
things you must recognize to trigger and sustain urgency in the
people you lead.
1. Recognize the Leader's Fallacy. The Leader's Fallacy
bedevil's most leaders. It is manifested when a leader
mistakenly believes that the people will automatically
reciprocate the motivation of the leader. The leader believes
the people will be urgently motivated simply because h/she is a
leader and is telling them to be motivated. The truth is,
automatic reciprocity doesn't exist. Reciprocity must be earned.
2. Recognize the People's Fallacy. Which is that the people
mistakenly believe that urgency is negotiable. Urgency is not
negotiable. If you want to get great results with the people,
urgency is always an absolute necessity. Look, leadership isn't
getting people to do what they want. Leadership is getting
people to do what they might not want to do and be totally
committed to doing it. If the people have the idea that they can
take or leave urgency or can effect it gradually or at their
leisure, they are wrong. If the leader thinks it's negotiable,
then the leader too is wrong; and h/she, and the people, will
not get the results they're capable of.
3. Recognize that the people's lack of urgency is the leader's
fault. The existence of the People's Fallacy does not absolve
the leader from being responsible for establishing urgency.
Leaders do nothing more important than get results. A leader is
not the measure of results, results are the measure of the
leader. To get great results, leaders must without question have
the people take urgent action. No excuses accepted. 4. Recognize
that urgency is their choice, not the leader's. But to say that
the leader should "instill urgency" in the people misses the
point. English syntax bungles the psychological truth of
urgency. Urgency is not something the leader can instill and
compel in others. Only the people can instill urgency in
themselves. Urgency is their choice, not the leader's. The
leader can only speak and act in such a way that the people make
the choice to bring urgency into their world.
You ask, "Can't urgency can be forced to happen through physical
or psychological violence?" Of course, it can -- up to a point.
However, there are two types of urgency felt by the people, one
is the kind that is forced upon them, that they are coerced
into, the other is the kind that they make the choice freely to
adopt. In terms of getting great results, the latter is far more
desirable. People who are coerced, who flinch from threats, are
not as effective in getting results as people who make free
choices.
One need only look at the history of the 20th century to see the
truth in this when totalitarian regimes the world over fell to
democracies and their "citizen soldiers."
5. Recognize that urgency comes from solutions. A key way for
the leader to speak and act to trigger urgency is by bringing
solutions to the problems of the people. All people everywhere
have problems. Those problems are crying out for solutions.
Leaders are most effective when offering solutions. People will
not make the free choice to urgently be committed to the
leader's cause unless and until they know that in doing so there
are solving their own (not the leader's) problems.
6. Recognize that urgency is best effected when the people take
leadership to solve their problems. Leaders themselves shouldn't
solve the people's problems. The people should solve their own
problems. It's the
teaching-people-how-to-fish-rather-than-giving-them-fish idea.
But it takes that idea to a new, more important level. Instead
of "teaching them to fish", it "teaches them to take leadership
of fishing." The leader's role is to support them in their
leadership. After all, the best way the people can solve their
problems is not by "doing" those solutions but by taking
leadership of the solutions.
7. Agree on the stakes. One of the most serious impediments to
urgency is when you and the people disagree on the stakes
involved with the issue you face. The stakes are what is in
danger of being lost if a certain course of action is not taken.
Simply ask, "What will happen if we don't take this course of
action." Their reply can define the stakes from their viewpoint.
You can't get cause leaders unless they agree with you on the
stakes.
Instilling urgency in the people (i.e., having people make the
choice to embrace urgency) presents one of the thorniest
challenges any leader faces. In fact, to a great extent, the
difference between leaders is the difference in the urgency they
can get the people commit to. Live by these six determinants,
and you'll go a long way in making that difference your defining
difference as a leader.
2006