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Everyone Wants To Feel Valued |
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I’d like to take some time today to look at the second secret of inspirational leadership “Everyone wants to feel valued”. This follows close on to what we have been talking about with regard to bonding mechanisms in the creation of a high performance team environment. Secret two is the second fundamental rule of human nature with regards to creating our high performance team. It is sine qua non. Without which, nothing.
Why is this so? Because what we are really talking about here is VALUE itself. What does it mean to give value to someone, or to something? What does it mean to be valued? The inspirational leader understands at a fundamental level that the secret of moving people is to know what it is we value and how it is that we want to be valued. Bonding mechanisms in a high performance team are the tools of giving value. They are the RESULTS of being valued. They are strengthened by the process of valuing.
I think we all intrinsically know this. If we do, why do I bother to say it at all? Why do we have it as a fundamental rule? I would say that the answer is that we find it so hard to actually COMPLY with and EXECUTE valuing people. This includes ourselves, I would argue, as well. We UNDERSTAND the need to be valued for us. We just find it hard to actually value. In fact, we find that it can be the hardest thing we will do as leaders and team builders.
The first person we have to value is ourselves. The first thing within ourselves that we have to value is our own uniqueness, our own specialness. This is never very easy, especially if you, like me, are a driven person. Sometimes what motivates us is what we haven’t done yet. What defines us is our inadequacies, not our strengths. Not unusual, just the way it is sometimes. If we don’t value ourselves, it is sometimes hard to remember to value others.
And yet, valuing others is the job of the inspirational leader. If we do it well, we can unleash the potential of all that we have the privilege to lead. If we do it poorly, we become the leader that people would rather push into the fire than one they would follow through the fire. Let’s think for a minute about how we use the term “value”. When we speak of gold, we say it is valuable. A .350 hitter in baseball is a ‘valuable” commodity. That which is rare, or precious, or greatly desired is “valued’ highly. The key is that it is greatly desired by a great number of people. Many times, the PERCEPTION of value is just as important as the actual value. In other words, gold is valuable because it is indeed rare. That is reality. Paper money is valued because it has become conventional to assume that it is “worth” a certain stated amount, that it can be “redeemed” for truly valuable assets. One is real, the other is perceived. And yet, the perception is as important as the reality, because the perception demands the same action and behavior as the reality. We tend to value what we all agree is valuable. This is a very important secret for the inspirational leader to grasp.
So, we have a couple of different definitions of secret two. We must try to;
Value ourselves
Value others
Know the things and people we are willing to value
So, if this is so obvious, why is it so difficult? Let’s take valuing others first. We find it difficult to value others because people are very complicated organisms. We are not always easy to read. There are hundreds of personality tests out there which purport to show how people will behave or why they will behave that way. The fact is, that to properly value someone, we have to know what it is they value. We have to know what makes them tick! Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the five basic parameters for what makes us tick.
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