Manila, 24 June 2020 — What it takes to become a multiplier of positive change.

What happened in 2020? You and your business were on a roll, and then the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Now you’re finding yourself in the doldrums unexpectedly. Priorities seem to change by the week, and you’re not sure what to do next.

How to get back into the game and show your best again when the going is tough?

A Golf Lesson

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s top thinkers and coaches, answered that question with a golf story.

Imagine that you're playing well in a tournament and then, in the final round, your ball bounces into the rough unexpectedly, presenting you with a big challenge how to recover and reclaim your lead for the championship. What should you do?

Marshall’s advice is to focus on just three things: breathe, strategize, and take the shot. Don’t think about the result, he said. Just trust the process that leads to good results. Focus is critical.

Like the golf player, what you choose to focus on during the pandemic will matter greatly. Maintaining your calm and composure matters. Having a strategy matters too, even if you might need to change it again next week. It matters to focus on getting the next step in the process done right. Then move on to the next, and so on.

And if you want to influence people to make change happen during these challenging times, it matters how you go about that, with a focus on the essentials in the process.

After hitting that shot from the rough, there is more you can do. Teamwork is key. As a golf pro, you work with your caddy to prepare for your next shot. In your workplace, it’s essential that you work with your team.

How can you show up as your best, work with your team, and make great results happen, even in these tough times? That’s what we’re exploring this month in #Grow3Leaders with our theme of Multiply: leaders influence people for change to happen.

Earlier, we already explored the Three Resistance Hurdles, the difference between 20th and 21st-Century Leadership, and how to Turn Adversity into Advantage with a new normal from the pandemic. 

In this post, we review three steps to become a multiplier, a leader who can influence people for positive change to happen and who overcomes resistance in the process. Some of the greatest leaders in history are remembered for the changes they influenced during periods of adversity and crisis, just like you are facing now.

Here are the three steps to becoming a multiplier. They all have to do with ignition:

Step 1: Ignite your Intentionality

Most of what matters is going on between your ears, invisible to outsiders. It happens in your Personal World. That’s where you work with your dreams and values that drive you forward and with the fears that hold you back. We all are a work in progress, and being self-aware is important.

Now, just like that golfer in the rough, what you want to focus on is your intentionality. You want to ignite it, so that it brings you excitement and curiosity, and helps you to see your glass half-full continuously.

Your ignition can be triggered by a video you watch, a book or social media post you read, or the words from someone you listen to. For many leaders, this happens because of their role models. You want to work out who your role models are because they can help you to ignite more easily and repeatedly when you remember the example they gave.

To become a multiplier, it’s not enough to be guided by your values. You want to experience ignition, like a car engine that starts up because you turn the key. Only then is movement possible. Ignition means you actually get driven by the best in you.

Part of your intentionality, your focus, will be to work with others, making good use of 21st-century leadership skills. Think of the Bye Bye Plastic Bags leaders in Bali, who started their campaign by deciding that they needed a team. Deciding to collaborate will also help you overcome your first resistance hurdle, of fear.

Step 2: Ignite your Collaboration

Your second step is to put your decision to collaborate into action. Ignite your collaboration, work together with people, including your teammates, peers, coaches, and mentors. If the change you want to influence is as significant as it should be, you will need all the help you can get to succeed and to support you during the journey.

Collaboration happens in your Social World, where leadership is like a contact sport. This is where your communication skills come into play, as well as your empathy and curiosity. It’s where you make commitments to get things done and let yourself be held accountable for keeping your commitments.

Discipline comes in here too, and the importance of following up, which is emphasized by Marshall Goldsmith based on his research of many leaders. See if you can imagine yourself in a martial arts academy, a dojo, where you will earn your succession of colorful belts as you keep practicing effective leadership behaviors. You do that with and in front of the others.

Igniting your collaboration is also about building a coalition for change, with your teammates and people you influence to come on board, starting with the early adopters. Building coalitions for change is what generates and multiplies results.

As you ignite your collaboration, you discover the power of achieving results together. This will also help you overcome your second resistance hurdle, of a concern about friendships that holds you back in your comfort zone.

Step 3: Ignite your Game

Your third step is to ignite your game, which is the contribution you choose to make to this world. As a leader, you want to play a bigger game, something you believe when you give yourself the freedom to do so. You stretch yourself to make it happen.

I’m inspired by what Marshall Goldsmith said about leadership coming down to playing a bigger game. Many coaches, he said, are better in helping people than building a business. I count myself among them. We coaches are prone to thinking that when we do the right thing, clients will come. Not necessarily, of course.

Becoming a multiplier, someone who plays a bigger game, involves you building and using the systems that allow it to happen and for you to succeed in your Observed World. Are you afraid of winning in your game, Marshall asked? Why would you hold yourself back from winning in your game if winning means that you make the world a better place and mobilize resources to do more good work? Well said, and I fully agree.

This is why you need to ignite your game and bring it to scale. To review your goals, workflows, process, and systems to make it happen for you to deliver your message that goes with playing your bigger game. Stop doing what you’re mediocre at and focus instead on developing your areas of highest potential. Igniting your game will also help you overcome the third resistance hurdle, that of the fear of failure.

Learning how to Ignite

In Grow3Leaders, we explore how to become influencers and multipliers of positive change in our workplaces. We are a private community of leaders from countries around the world, and from different generations, who are committed to learning and practicing effective leadership behaviors together and ‘out loud’ to create positive change in our workplaces, especially during these difficult times of dealing with Covid-19.

Joining us is free of charge—not free of commitment. Collaboration and actions are required from the start. Send us a request if you feel that you are up to our Grow3Leaders challenge and are ready to join together with three of your colleagues in your workplace.