Leadership Influence & Alignment: Five Essentials for Business Growth

Before I start breaking this down a I want to kind of give you a nice analogy.

If you're a car fan out there, you're really going to get this.

I want you to look at, as I talk about this throughout this particular course in this podcast, I want you to look at influence as the engine of leadership while alignment is the direction.

I'm going to say that again.

Influence is the engine and alignment is the direction.

Now, the mistake is made saying, well, the faster engine I have, the faster I'm going to get there.

Not true.

And you're going to find that out.

Now, if you have a stronger engine, that's going to help you.

But that's where alignment is going to come in on how straight can we get there.

So the better the influence, the more power the engine will provide.

Now, the better the alignment, the straighter you will go.

So together, in harmony, the two will get you there much quicker.

Look at this.

You could have a strong engine.

Engine could be operating on all cylinders.

But if we take 55 unnecessary turns along the way, that's where the chaos, the lack of efficiency is going to take us longer to get there.

If we have a strong engine and we've got directions that only make us turn three times on the way to our goal, we're going to get there a lot faster because now we're pairing the engine with the right directions, all right? So influence and alignment is what we're going to be diving into.

Now, leadership isn't about control or positional authority, as we talked about already.

We're going to talk about it some more, right? It's rather about influence, which is persuasion.

people to move willingly.

That goes back to what we've already talked about in part one of this series, right? Is which is easier, the idea or changing human behavior to get the idea installed? And obviously having the idea is easier, but that's why the idea really isn't the go-getter, It's how you implement the idea.

It's how you change human behavior.

And that's what influence is gonna talk about, persuading people to move willingly.

And alignment is more ensuring everyone moves in the exact same direction.

Before I start breaking this down a I want to kind of give you a nice analogy.

If you're a car fan out there, you're really going to get this.

I want you to look at, as I talk about this throughout this particular course in this podcast, I want you to look at influence as the engine of leadership while alignment is the direction.

I'm going to say that again.

Influence is the engine and alignment is the direction.

Now, the mistake is made saying, well, the faster engine I have, the faster I'm going to get there.

Not true.

And you're going to find that out.

Now, if you have a stronger engine, that's going to help you.

But that's where alignment is going to come in on how straight can we get there.

So the better the influence, the more power the engine will provide.

Now, the better the alignment, the straighter you will go.

So together, in harmony, the two will get you there much quicker.

Look at this.

You could have a strong engine.

Engine could be operating on all cylinders.

But if we take 55 unnecessary turns along the way, that's where the chaos, the lack of efficiency is going to take us longer to get there.

If we have a strong engine and we've got directions that only make us turn three times on the way to our goal, we're going to get there a lot faster because now we're pairing the engine with the right directions, all right? So influence and alignment is what we're going to be diving into.

Now, leadership isn't about control or positional authority, as we talked about already.

We're going to talk about it some more, right? It's rather about influence, which is persuasion.

people to move willingly.

That goes back to what we've already talked about in part one of this series, right? Is which is easier, the idea or changing human behavior to get the idea installed? And obviously having the idea is easier, but that's why the idea really isn't the go-getter, It's how you implement the idea.

It's how you change human behavior.

And that's what influence is gonna talk about, persuading people to move willingly.

And alignment is more ensuring everyone moves in the exact same direction.