INsight/ Your Influence Multiplied

Photo Community by Agence OlloweB.

Manila, 3 October 2024 — How to multiply your influence is every leader’s quest.

Story

It happened this year, when leaders shared about their obstacles to making changes happen in their workplaces. Let me highlight three typical cases. First, “Attending a training felt good, but putting the changes into practice was difficult when we came back and work had piled up.” Yes, what matters most is the behavior change afterward. 

Second, “Creating the new project vision was exciting, but then we struggled to make the necessary changes happen in practice.” Yes, we see too many visions not being implemented. Third, “Signing the partnership agreement felt great, but implementing the collaboration was much harder than we thought.” Yes, we often hear that collaboration is easier said than done.

Do these three cases sound familiar? We’ve all been there, feeling the excitement of starting a new habit, vision, or partnership, and then the frustration of being unable to deliver the changes we had agreed on. It turns out that change is much harder than we often think in our enthusiasm to make a positive difference in our world. 

Challenge

Consider, for example, the global goals that show our shared commitment to pass on a better world to the next generations. Alarmingly, none of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are fully on track to be achieved by 2030. And while the number of projects and commitments keep increasing—each with a big vision—the progress has actually regressed in some areas.

Blaming this sorry state of affairs on the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and ongoing conflicts—and calling for a significant acceleration of effort—shows that we may be missing the point. We humans excel in creating visions, goals, and solutions for almost every problem under the sun. But we find it difficult to influence positive changes in our world, our teams and organizations, and even in ourselves. And that is not all.

We feel awkward to face up to this reality, so we hide in busyness, creating even more projects and more goals. How, then, can we learn to become change makers who do influence, deliver, and sustain important processes of change? How do we help our teams and organizations to actually get from A to B as described by the vision? How will we change the world for the better and achieve the SDGs?

Question 

For us at TransformationFirst.Asia, these questions are of great concern. They drive us to help leaders take on learning challenges, to coach them through transitions, and to empower them to make positive changes happen in their projects and organizations, preferably at speed and scale. Our passion is to bring more leaders beyond the difficulties and frustrations of the three cases, to sustained success. 

In our experience, for leaders to become change-makers capable of multiplying their influence, they need to transform first. That is what leadership development is truly about, and it won’t happen by itself. Looking around, many experts and executives have yet to transform into leaders. We have seen how the transformation involves the hands-on practice of effective leadership behaviors in their workplaces, daily and weekly. There are no shortcuts.

While leaders will inspire their teams and partners for a shared vision and goals and get ready to tackle the world’s most pressing problems, they don’t stop there. What sets them apart is their learned ability to bring teams, projects, and organizations to actually deliver change. When you develop that leadership ability, frustration makes way for fulfillment as you work together with colleagues to make changes successful, sustainable, and immensely satisfying.

P.S. What changes do you want to influence and deliver in your organization and the world at large, including for the SDGs? Set up a Free Strategy Call so we can discuss how you will do it.