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For every leader, following-up with their people is key to the success of the organisation.  Leaders follow-up in all different ways, as they know that follow-up is key to influence the right behaviours in their people.

Some people take ownership of both what needs to be achieved and their own behaviour, and they need less following-up than others.  However, there are those in your organisations who don’t take that ownership, and need more follow-up to influence what they achieve and their behaviours in the right way.

Successful leaders reinforce this ownership both by explaining why what they are achieving is important and following-up that it gets achieved shows it is important.

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Every successful leader is impatient and wants to achieve everything as quickly as he or she can.  However, there are times when a little patience is not only something desirable, but can be absolutely necessary.

In some cultures, a consensus process is necessary to get people aligned to implement quickly, and leaders who bypass this for the sake of speed often end up frustrated with themselves that they did.  At these times, a little patience is needed…strategic patience.  Being patient, when it is necessary, actually increases the overall pace of the achievement, not delaying it.

Leaders with good listening skills develop the right sense to know when strategic patience is needed, and are patient at the right times when it can really make a big difference.

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Think about it for your own life first.  How many times have you wanted to do something…the how was difficult and your WHY just wasn’t strong.  You didn’t do it, did you?  However, you can probably think back to those times when your WHY was so strong, that you would do ANYTHING to do it (& achieve it).

So, here’s what happens when this equation is out of balance (WHY < how).  Your people find the how difficult, they don’t really have a WHY or understand it, and then they simply avoid doing what they know they should be doing.  When you are leading at a distance, you are not there to see them not doing it, and pushing them to do.

Successful leaders create the PULL power that drives their people to do it, and that comes from the WHY.

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Ask successful leaders, and they will say that managing the relationships and expectations of all the stakeholders is one of the factors in creating and maintaining the success of their organisation.  These leaders understand that there will always be a time when they will need to find a win/win solution with a key stakeholder, and that this is more easily gained when they have both a relationship with this stakeholder and understand his or her expectations.

When successful leaders take on a new challenge, they begin by listing up all the key stakeholders and start building a relationship with each of them right from day one.  They know that they need to build it; as for sure, there will be a time when they will need it.

Have you built good relationships with your key stakeholders?

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Successful leaders use a combination of PULL & Push to lead their organisations.  They communicate a powerful WHY that creates the PULL power, and pulls people to WANT to do what they need to. Push power comes from the leaders position, with people feeling they HAVE to do it.

Now, a couple questions…

When a leader uses PULL power, does his or her power go up or down with each use?
When a leader uses Push power, does his or her power go up or down with each use?

When leaders rely on using too much push power, their power reduces a little each time they use it.  However, when leaders use PULL power, their power increases each time they use it. Successful leaders use both PULL (the WHY) and Push (their position) to gain the achievements from their people.

A key question for you…

During this week, have you used the right combination of PULL and push in your organisation?