I believe in sharing knowledge, I believe that each person is provided with the right tools to become as great as they want. I believe in a world where all people are content with their neighbor and respect the choice of the individual. I wake up each morning urging to help you to grow and develop yourself into your own full potential. I believe that you can do whatever you set your mind on doing.

The world is populated with 6,855,878,752 different individuals, personalities and needs. People are different, so are leaders and followers, none are alike. But a leader does need a follower and some people need another kind of person to work well together. This is why a strong initiator needs a reactor to make anything happen. But why should the reactor do what the initiator is saying in the first place?

What makes the follower do what the leader is communicating? What makes people follow great leaders and ditch others as soon as it gets tough? Different people act differently and different companies have different goals. The leader that can inspire action or change is the one that can articulate the purpose, not by telling what to do, but to inspire by telling you why you should.

Taste the difference:

Doing the “What” is a dread, it is work and it is hard. Doing the “Why” is meaningful, it has purpose. The leader is the one that articulate the why, the followers are doers and know What to do. If I tell my kids that we are going on a picnic they will go “WOHOO!” And run around the house and find stuff they want to bring. If I tell them to get the stuff first they will go “Uhhhhh…..sigh…. WHY!?”

So how should you use this as a leader?

Think about your work, how many times do you ask your employees to do a what task? Get on the phone, get that report done by tomorrow, make sure to ask the customers if they want something to drink with that.  How many times do you use why? We have customers waiting, do we allow that? Your report is an important piece of the puzzle to get the deal tomorrow.  It is hot outside today our customers might be thirsty. This is the day to say why. Your company should also have its Why to motivate the employees into doing What. The people, who know why, also need the people who know what to do.

Gain Believers

The good follower is the person who believes what you believe. To find the right employees you need to tell them why you are in business. You are not hiring, you are gathering believers.

This blog post is influenced and inspired by Simon Sinek’s book – Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
This is a great book that every single manager or leader should read. If you don’t have it, buy it today! Must read!

Further Reading:
If you like this post, you would probably like Fear and Courage leadership or look for other articles in the Leadership Category. Did you know that you can receive updates from my blog by subscribing to updates? It is free and there is several ways to follow my blog.

Update: I wrote Leaders Personality Matters to follow up on this post. Take a look!

I am a big fan of Srikumar Rao’s writing. And his latest book Happiness at Work changed my thinking already at chapter two. This book does provide an interesting way of thinking about challenges in your life. The book is about happiness at work, but it works on other areas of life as well.

It is a thought-provoking book that challenge the way you think. It is capable of changing your life in an instant. I got the book at Amazon.com and when it arrived in the mail I felt the thrill and had high expectations, and it exceeded my expectations at once, and I read the book in one day, and read it again slowly. I found great advice in this book that I applied in an instant and achieved great results, ironic not at work, but as I wrote, this book applies to more than one area of life.

I have read a lot of leadership books in my life, and some are filled with theory. I have a mantra telling me if I manage to learn one thing only, it is worthwhile reading. Dr. Rao didn’t just teach me a lot of things with this book, but he also touch the highway in my mind and build a new intersection instantly changing the way I think about life. He is a mental brain surgeon operating with words, it is amazing.

If you have read his other book “are you ready to succeed” you will find a lot of this stuff familiar, and have a notion of re-reading. But with Srikumar Rao repetition doesn’t matter, it is still great.

I do strongly recommend this book! Buy it today, money well spent.

Dr. Srikumar Rao is a pioneer in the field of happiness and personal mastery. Dr. Rao has regularly taught at top business schools including Columbia Business School, London Business School, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.

Whenever I need to correct my five year old son he replies with the following:”I did not know that, why have you not told it to me before?” – This is something that I need to scream out in this book review. This book is written in 1936, and why has it not gotten my attention before now? I rate books by “life changing”, “Useful”, “Well at least I learned a thing or two” or “waste of time” – This old book is absolutely in the “life changing” category, as it is straight out displaying a beneficial way of behaving. What book am I talking about?

How to Win Friends & Influence People – By Dale Carnegie

As a leader I have developed according to autodidactism, maybe that is why I have missed out on this book thru all these years? It has sold more than 15,000,000 copies around the world, Over 8 million people have completed Dale Carnegie Training course. I know feel like a heavy bunch of people suddenly got a head start. My point is this: Have you still not read this book? Order it now!

The book is all action with examples and an in detail descriptions on how to succeed according to Dale’s principles. And if you have not read it yet you should as soon as possible as this book will open you head up and show you how easy it is to get it your way. This is a must for leaders as well as for salespeople out there. Be aware; the principles and ideas in this book are easy to understand, easy to do, but hard to remember when you are in the game. That is why you need to read this book more than once and practice, practice and practice.

I have just finished reading Co-active Coaching – New skills for coaching people toward success in work and life by Laura Whitworth. This book is the second edition.

Coaching is a growing profession around the world, and a lot of people use coaching skills without even knowing it. This book is quite basic, but it still covers a lot of tactics and the best part of the book is how it is structured. First you have a paragraph or chapter about a topic, followed by a sample coach and client dialogue to point out how it works in an actual dialogue. The last part of the book is filled with tools that you can use in your everyday coaching practice. A lot of these tools are quite effective and useful.

But wait there is more! This edition comes with a CD with Audio Samples of coach client dialogue. And on the same CD there is a toolkit as well. Great add on for this book, making this book a must have for anyone that is curious about coaching.

When I first started coaching I had very few coaching skills, mostly I was motivating others and a good person to talk to. My coaching skills where compared with today almost none. I regret not reading this book until now, and if you are new to coaching you should, no sorry you MUST start with this single book. Strongly recommended!

Click here to take a look at other books I recommend!