How Leaders Influence a Successful Outcome

Now that we are moving into the principal years for a rising and repairing economy and the peak of the Baby Boomer’s spending on health care, investments for retirement, corporations must entice one to learn the art of leadership as opposed to management. Abraham Zalesnick of Harvard once noted that the difference between leaders and managers is leaders have followers. Managers manage and leaders lead. Managers who wish to grow and account executives who desire to grow must learn the important traits of leaders to move to the forefront of media marketing and companies. For account executives looking to earn their first stripe or a seasoned manager who wishes to update their skill sets and organizational development, the dynamics of influence itself is a leadership imperative. For this purpose, I have found some important traits of leadership that influence successful results one may learn and practice. They have helped many to realize their dreams of position, financial rewards or personal growth.

1. Recognize What Causes Conflict. If you’ve never had a job description given to you or to your sales team members, it then becomes difficult to measure performance. A job description best serves everyone as it provides a focal point of what must be done and when. Conflict comes when one doesn’t have a clear cut description of what is expected of them or when tasks are not getting done. Good leadership facilitates influence on others to enable performance to occur at the appropriate time and at the peak of accomplishment. Conflict may arise when performance lags or when one does not have a clear cut picture of the job. Encourage management to provide a job description to you of what they expect. This eliminates conflict and provides the opportunity for you to perform at your highest capability.

2. The Need to Be More Flexible. Good leaders demonstrate sensitivity to others. Being too rigid inhibits peak performance. The best leaders are open to change. Change often opens the door to greater opportunities. Many coaches would have saved their job if they were able to accept when things were not going well and adapted new game strategies.  Progress is impossible without change. Every working day the business of media changes. Leaders who are flexible prevent crises from arising at the eleventh hour. Flexibility enhances influence.

3. Putting Ego Aside. Whether you are in the field or in the office, everyone needs to get along with others. You have to learn the art of selling not only to the client but up to your management team members, across to traffic, business department, production, art department or from local sales management up to general management. If you want to get things done, put away your ego and in order for everyone to win and get things accomplished, you have to help others succeed in their job too. Being flexible allows you to trade something you may want from others later by simply giving in to their needs now. Leaders in all positions from account executive to general sales manager, ad director or the owner of the company who work to help others solve problems in the present find financial rewards in the near future.

4. The Drive to Endure. If you looked at some of the country’s greatest leaders, whether political or in professional sales, you’ll find that the true leaders have the endurance of a thoroughbred, high energy levels and durability or staying power. The job of sales and media marketing management mandates long hours often at high intensity.

If you agree that a diamond is nothing more than a piece of coal who stuck with it, then look at driven sales teams who, knowing they have a time restraint to finish a specific project such as selling a sports program, a special section in the newspaper or a direct mail conversion, stick it out until it’s done. Leaders whether management or professional sellers demonstrate they can outlast their opponents or the client who is price-value oriented who just wants to hang you out to dry until you give in. Those who stick with it and don’t surrender provide a clear signal of the importance of the mission, while others give up and fall by the wayside. Dolly Parton once said, “If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

In anonymity, one once said about those who win, “It is not the critic who counts: not the one who points out how the strong stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the to the one who is in the arena; whose face is marred by dust, sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who makes mistakes, comes short again and again, who knows great enthusiasms and spends themselves in a worthy cause. Who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if they fail, at least fails while daring greatly; so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

5. Concentration. None of us have infinite energy or skills. The best leaders are those who can concentrate, stay focused on the mission and whose focus alone can get the job done, no matter how tough the road, the opponent or the task.

There are managers and account executives who believe that everything that is to be learned they already know or think they do. As a result they try to gain a position of authority or attempt a task for which they are often not ready and then fall short and jeopardizing future gains. They believe the gold of the temporary glory are the most important and that is how they will attain success as a means to an end. Conversely, they fail because they take on too much and fall short on achieving what it is that is most important. It’s the little things that synergistically make for a greater whole. Doing too many things simultaneously often sacrifices the important details. Concentration to each detail is the very essence by which leaders get things done. About concentration, golf legend Arnold Palmer once stated, “The secret of concentration is the secret of self-discovery. You reach inside yourself to discover your personal resources, and what it takes to match them to the challenge.”

6. Be Sensitive To Others. Understand the people around you and with whom you wish to conduct business. Learn their positions and their issues. What is the best form of timely communication? You must always appraise the readiness or resistance of your followers, colleagues or clients in order to become an effective leader and have influence on decisions and people.

The best kind of influence is to help others reach agreement over interests rather than positions. “Kindness in words and deeds creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” Lao Tzu.

Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.