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If you truly want to be a leader and gain career success you must sell yourself and your ideas to three constituencies. After all, what you accomplish as leaders comes through the persuasion and influence you exert with other people. The truth is most of us spend too much time on the career path with our friends. We worry about our adversaries more than we should. In the meantime, we ignore the substantial majority of our co-workers who are unaware, disinterested and uncommitted to our objectives. We fail to recognize they are the key to gaining the majority support we must have for effective leadership. You Have Three Constituencies Job tip: You will never reach your full potential for leadership on your career path until you understand that you operate in a world made up of three distinct groups of people. Each of them is motivated by its own self-interest; each has its own distinct set of attitudes toward you. There are friends who are your unquestioning supporters. This constituency will tend to stick with you through thick and thin. Others will support you because they believe in you and for what they see as the good of the organization. Face it, others will be in your camp because of greed, fear, laziness or other human frailties. At the other extreme are your adversaries. Recognize you have opponents and critics. Everyone does. These opponents will be against any and everything you do. They are “aginers,” generally. They take opposing positions for some of the same reasons your supporters are with you: fear, greed, self-interest, or maybe they oppose you in the belief they are serving the greater good. How To Work With Your Constituencies Recognizing that you have only a limited amount of time and energy, you should very carefully ration how you work with the voters in each of these basic constituencies. Strangely enough, your supporters can be the greatest threat to your progress. They can lull you into a sense of comfort, security and overconfidence that will lead to trouble. They are apt to smother you with “amens” and “Go get ‘em, tiger.” Always show appreciation for your supporters; communicate with them and keep them motivated, but resist spending much time with friends and supporters while you are at work. Save the camaraderie for other venues. Your opponents at the other end of the spectrum will rarely, if ever, be won over to your side. With knee-jerk reactions, they will resist you no matter how good your proposals. If you are not careful, they will undermine your confidence and sap your strength. Worst of all, they will skew your view of opportunities. You should watch them like a hawk, but spend as little time as possible with this minority. Clearly, the best strategy for career success is to concentrate on the middle ground, those who start out as unaware, uninterested and uncommitted. They represent the balance of power. Take every opportunity to spend time with them; work to gain their confidence; and communicate your vision of the objectives and your plans to achieve them. Here's the bottom line of this career counseling: If your ideas are sound and well presented...if your leadership deserves support and if you follow this career advice you will have a good shot at converting a majority of those in the middle. When they join your steady supporters, you will have the followers you need to reach your career goals. ---
Article Source: http://www.realworldtactics.com/articledirectory
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