In Leadership, The Eight Ways Of Right Action. (Part 1)
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Word count: 757
Summary: Results don't happen unless people take action. But
there are right and wrong ways to take action. Here are eight
ways of right action that every leader must challenge the people
they lead to take.
In Leadership, The Eight Ways Of Right Action. (Part 1) by Brent
Filson
The ancient Greeks had a saying: "When Aschines speaks, the
people say, 'How well he speaks,' but when Demosthenes speaks,
the people say, 'Let's march against Philip!'".
To get the best results as a leader, the people you lead should
be saying in one way or the other after you speak, "Let's march!"
When you speak to people as a leader, it's not what you say
that's really important, what's important is the action people
take after you have had your say. And if you are not having the
people you lead take the right action, you're giving short
shrift to your leadership, their trust in you, and their desire
to take action for you.
Here are the 8 ways of right action to get people marching in
the right way for the right purpose at the right time in the
right direction.
I'll delineate the first four ways in part one of this two-part
article then in part two, I'll describe the last four ways.
Action must be: (1) PHYSICAL. Action is not what the audience
thinks or feels. It is what the audience actually does. Usually,
the audience takes action with their feet and hands and tools.
When thinking of what action you want your audience to take,
imagine their actually doing something physical, and you are on
track. Getting your audience to take right action involves
challenging them to do one specific thing. When Ronald Reagan
said in his speech at the Berlin Wall, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down
this wall!" he was delivering a call-to-action that was a
stunning turning point in the Cold War. In your day to day
leadership activities, you are probably not meeting such
daunting challenges as winning a war, but you can use the
principle to raise the effectiveness of your leadership to much
higher levels.
(2) PURPOSEFUL. People who take action are useless to an
organization. It is only those people who take action for
results who are useful. Make sure their action has purpose. The
secret of success is constancy of purpose. When your audience
does take action, they should know exactly what they are doing
and why they are doing it. Purpose in leadership talk has three
aspects: reason, feeling and awareness. People should understand
the rational justification for the action; they should have an
emotional commitment to the action; and be fully mindful that
they are taking action.
(3) HONEST. If you trick people into taking action or lie to get
them to take action, you'll damage that element on which all
motivation is based, trust. Afterward, you may be able to order
them to do a job, but you will never motivate them. Be honest
with yourself in developing your call-to-action. Marcus Aurelius
said, "Never esteem anything as an advantage to you that will
make you break your word or lose your self-respect." Be honest
with them in challenging them to act. I do not recommend this
merely on trustworthy grounds but on eminently practical ones as
well. After all, we do not know how good we are as leaders
unless we are challenging the people to be better than they
think they are. And they cannot be persuaded to accept that
challenge if they think we're deceiving them or that you are
deceiving yourself.
(4) MEANINGFUL. Action gives meaning to the emotion your
audience feels. Emotion alone cannot get results. It's action
that gets results. Action validates emotion, and vice versa.
Leaders who find little meaning in their jobs or the results
associated with those jobs, shouldn't be leaders, or they should
change jobs and/or results. Most leaders understand this. But
few leaders understand that meaning also involves the jobs of
the people they are leading and the attitudes of those people
toward those jobs and the results the jobs aim for.
Your cause should be meaningful to the people who must carry it
out. If it is only your cause and not their cause, the action
they take will get insufficient results. Your cause will be
meaningful to them when that actions they take to meet the
challenges of that cause are solving the problems of THEIR
needs. So, before you challenge them to take action, identify
their needs and the problem solving actions.
2005