Achieve Your Leadership Goals Using Persuasion, Reason and Trust-Building

What are your goals as a leader? We all have something that drives us — our vision of success for ourselves and our organizations.

You might want to improve your hard skills, such as your negotiation skills and strategic thinking. You might want to work on empathy or active listening. You might want to be a better collaborator, land an important partnership or guide your organization through uncertain times.

The Leadership Bag

I often find golf works as a metaphor for leadership. In this situation, your leadership skills are like clubs in a golf bag. You choose them. You put in the practice to learn how to use them. It's your commitment to the process that improves your performance — as a leader and as a golfer.

I'm going to talk about three clubs every leader has in their bag: persuasion, reason, and trust-building. These are among the most important tools of any successful leadership practice.

Persuasion

When you have successfully persuaded someone to do something, you've made them feel like they are making the right choice. The key word is feel.

On an interpersonal level, you could use your presence, commitment or skill to inspire people. This makes them feel a desire to follow your lead — or even to do what you are doing. You could listen to them and give good feedback, making them feel how much you care.

You can also persuade through culture, which is an excellent tool for persuasion. Its greatest advantage: It works without you personally managing it.

Of course, it takes work to create and maintain an environment where people take ownership of the organization's goals and advance your vision. However, when those practices are in place, your team members lead themselves, following the feeling they're doing the right thing.

Reason

Motivating your team through reason requires excellent use of facts, data and language. There are two important parts of this.

The first part is having the right information. You need to present facts that have the possibility to motivate people to help you meet your leadership goals.

The second element is simple: You have to make sense. Presenting relevant information in an accessible and relatable way is the key to using reason effectively.

Trust-Building

Trust has to do with how well people know you. You build it by actively performing a predictable pattern of desirable behavior and favorable outcomes.

To seal a deal, you need to generate trust in the other parties. To weather a challenge, you need trust from your team. To walk the talk of your company culture, you need trust from your leadership circle.

Cultivating integrity, focusing your vision and taking responsibility are excellent ways to build trust. Then again, sometimes it just takes some time, patience and discipline before people recognize your pattern of success.

Leadership is a skill. Persuasion, reason and trust-building are tools you use to improve that skill and complete your tasks. After you develop and practice with these tools, you'll find you can adapt and refine them, improving your capabilities and meeting your goals.

Among the skills of persuasion, reason, and trust-building, which area do your need to focus on to become better at leading?