…you’d better tell them.

If those who follow you, look-up to you, respect you, work for you, listen to you, sacrifice for you, or dedicate their time to you, think they are unimportant–not a crucial part of the movement–than, ultimately, they will dedicate their efforts, energy and resources to another.

There are three types of leaders:

1. Leaders who forget about or choose to completely ignore their followers, taking them for granted.
2. Leaders who acknowledge their followers but never instill or feed any positive value back into their work.
3. Leaders who recognize the importance of those followers who want to partake in valuable work and consistently reassure them that they are; all while challenging them with truly worthwhile opportunities to commit to throughout.

If people think they are unimportant, regardless of how important they may actually be, their dedication toward you will reflect that mindset. Those who think they’re unimportant will work and follow (at least until they leave) as though they genuinely are.

Great leaders are extremely proficient at connecting value with the work, care and commitment of their followers. They understand what it takes to integrate people into a vision, and they’re adept at assigning appropriate responsibilities to those passionate about making that vision a reality. They have a knack for intrinsically motivating the seemingly unimportant to achieve things which they never before believed possible. They know how to impart importance.

If your work force or small group or spouse or teammates or co-workers think they’re unimportant, you’ve already lost them. Don’t let that happen. Whether you lead 1 person or 1 million, impart and associate value with who they are and what they do. If you can identify your most supportive followers, those highly invested in the process, movement, job, or service you’re passionately attempting, than together you can help a lot of people.

…It’s who you are.

There is a perpetual, internal struggle between what is genuinely important in life and what we have chosen to prioritize instead. This struggle exists because somewhere deep within us we are convinced, at some moment in time, even if only slightly, that there must be something more to life other than what we have currently accepted as the norm, the status quo, the dream come true.

No matter who you are, or what you claim to be, you have a story to tell, and your story is enormously important. Each one of us has a message to share, and whether we know it or not, if we truly believe in our message, we implement it into everything we say and do. Your message usually parallels that which you believe most strongly in, and the stronger, more deeply rooted your belief is, the stronger more deeply affecting and apparent your message is. It’s easy to identify those with a strong, firmly planted message because their response to what they claim to believe is confident, robust, knowledgeable, trustworthy and powerful. Their message relays the characteristics of their beliefs in an extremely efficient and effective way.

In light of what is considered normal in this present age, that which is considered the safe, responsible path of least resistance, there must absolutely be something more. There must be something more than simply accomplishing what everyone else thinks you’re supposed to accomplish in order to maintain a good, fair and rich lifestyle. There must be something more than a “checklist life” which demands you follow the rules of American normality and simply fall into line; in to your fairy tale house; in to your dog and three kids; in to your 8am-6pm job; in to your BMW; in to your annual family vacation to the beach; in to your once-a-week-Sunday-morning-be-a-Christian-church-ritual; in to your 401K retirement package; in to your live a long life composed of luke-warm commitments instead of a full life characterized by passionate relevance and faithful hope, always willing to serve others ahead of your own self, loving people more than you love even your own life. There must be something more than this epidemic normality.

The definition of normality, what we are supposed to do, is vitally and intrinsically flawed. It is so flipped, skewed and slanted that we have lost site of what genuinely matters in life, of what is truly critical during our few, short, fleeting days here on earth. We have lost our vision. We have forgotten our first love. We have forgotten what is important in the end. We have forgotten that opportunities come and go and some day so will we. We have forgotten what it means to live, to really, passionately, live.

There are 2 points to consider:

1. What do you believe above and beyond everything else? Found your life and your message on that. Come to a fuller understanding of what you believe and why you believe it. Develop your message around it, devising an effective plan of communicating and spreading that message so that everyone you know has an opportunity to hear, understand, and support that message. Don’t allow your own shortcomings in communication to hinder your great message; make sure it’s clear, concise and understandable.
2. People are what matter. If you’re thinking about spreading a message or building a product or innovating from an idea that doesn’t in some way involve serving others, you are wasting your time. People, and the authentic relationships that you have with them, are paramount to any other endeavor.

*As a follow up to this post, thanks to your enthusiastic voting and participation, this blog was voted 19th most popular blog in Indiana for 2009. Thank you very much for voting, for your continual readership, and for constantly challenging me to grow in every way. Your commitment means so much to me, and I am truly humbled that you continue to follow and support this effort. Thanks for journeying with me. I look forward to the many adventures ahead and to supporting many of you in the future. Thank you.*

There is a vivacious, growing community of people living in Indianapolis and all over Indiana, that attempts, every day, to impact people around them in a positive manner.  Whether it’s through their entrepreneurial business efforts, their musical abilities, their artistic creativity, or just their attitude towards life in general, they are there; living, working, playing and impacting people, desperately striving to help and serve others to the best of their abilities.  Many of these same people, including myself, also enjoy writing about their attempts, their lessons learned, their services, their friends in need, their faith, and their lives in general.

If you have a desire to support these people, including myself, in our efforts and our writings, vote for us by clicking here (no information required) and then selecting your favorite blogs: Indiana’s Top 50 Blogs.

Thank you very much for journeying with me and for your support.

…they will stop paying attention to you.

If you like your friends, and you have even the slightest desire to keep them around, don’t spam them or pressure them into purchasing something that not even you are genuinely passionate about. Friends don’t want your spam; they want to help you become successful. Friends don’t want to be pressured into buying trinkets; they want to be a part of your movement. Friends don’t want to invest in your side projects; they want to invest in what you’re vivaciously passionate about. Your friends are your friends; don’t abuse them.

The remarkable thing about friends is when they do what friends intrinsically do, they willing spread your message to lots of other people. Your friends do this because they actually care about you. They love you because they know you, have a relationship with you, and they have a real desire to help you. Great ideas never spread through spam or off-beat pressure selling. Great ideas spread because they are great and lots of people love talking about them.

When you share an idea with friends with preconceived notions of your time together resulting in more than the relaying of a sincere passion, without your friends knowing other-wise, you are guilty of spamming.

True friends are incredibly valuable because they’ll always tell you the truth regardless of the circumstances. If they aren’t true friends, they’ll only tell you the truth when it’s comfortable for them and not offensive to you. Seek out people who are willing to be infallible friends, and never forget that their friendship is more valuable than making a sale or forcing a message. If your story is worth telling, your friends will be the first to voluntarily share it for you. If your message isn’t worth sharing, your true friends will tell you so, saving you and their own selves a lot of time and resources. Cheers to outstanding friends.

…and while you’re at it, go ahead and give up your car, your 401k, your house, your smart phone, your wardrobe, your vacation, your clean drinking water, your air conditioning, your TV, your 3000 calorie-a-day diet, your electricity, your bank account, your family and your friends.

It’s easy to forget that the majority of the world’s people do not live like us.

Jeffrey Sachs reports in his bestselling book, The End of Poverty, that

…the extreme poor (at around 1 billion people) and the poor (another 1.5 billion people) make up around 40 percent of humanity. Another 2.5 billion people are up yet another few rungs, in the middle-income world, earning a few thousand dollars a year.

A few thousand dollars a year: Not necessarily what we would consider a typical middle-income situation.

Sometimes life truly is difficult, even genuinely painful; but your viewpoint on difficulty is all relative to your current perspective on life. If you want to grow as a humble leader, capable of selflessly serving and helping others, then you must continually challenge your current, status-quo perspective. The status quo is where men and women, once filled with passion and fervor for helping people in need, go for early retirement, waiting for someone to feel sorry for them and reassure them that their lives were not a waste. It’s not about downplaying authentic challenges and discomforts, it’s about changing your perspective on wasteful worrying regarding trivial matters that wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface of the problems facing the majority of the world’s population.

One of the best ways to alter your perspective for the better is to give something up, to make a decisive modification regarding what and how much you consume, to choose more wisely how you use your time, to see people (all people!) with caring, compassionate eyes, to love others as you love your own self, to think about others more than you think about your own self and to genuinely pursue a heart-felt lifestyle consumed with serving and helping other people, loving them, regardless of their circumstances and background, to the fullest extent possible.

Give up everything else. Simplify. Love everybody. In the end, nothing else matters.

Give the proper tools to a group of people that want to make a difference, and they will.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

Outside factors used to work extremely well as incentives for motivation. A paycheck or a company car or an annual raise or a Christmas bonus, all used to be sufficient prodding devices capable of goading workers into meeting deadlines and out-performing their previous personal bests. The so called “guarantee” of a paycheck every other week used to be impetus enough. It was, and in many cases still is, an openly accepted method of inciting workers to do what many bosses, CEOs and managers believe that their workers do best–work.

The motivation, drive, purpose, heart and stimulus underlying why people work and what they work for is in a state of transformation. This work-foundation remodeling presents a unique opportunity for leaders because many of the past, most frequently applied, extrinsic motivators no longer have the same persuasive effects or carry the same weight as they once did.

In many fields today (but not all), American workers are no longer responsible for assembly-line-esq gadget making. Large and small organizations alike ship their gadget making and their nitty-gritty code writing overseas, saving substantial sums of money, time and resources, thus creating a void of traditional work for the gadget makers.

Insert creativity, innovation and wise use of time here.

People don’t want to work just for money any more. Gadget makers were gadget makers because that’s what was required, and those were the jobs available. Gadget making jobs are quickly disappearing while creative jobs, which require great understanding and leadership, are appearing everywhere. The challenging issue is that you can’t compensate a creative job worker the same way you would have compensated a gadget maker; you can’t incentivize their jobs in the same way; and you can’t expect them to stay busy for 8 hours a day either–wasting time doing invaluable busy work.

And you don’t have to.

If you simply allow creative people to do what they do best–create–then you give them the opportunity to draw from their own intrinsic, heart-felt, passionate motivations, and, when that occurs, everyone moves forward together. Progress and innovation and growth occur when people are free to work on what they are passionate about, when they can communicate openly with everyone within an organization, when they are allowed to form their own teams and their own projects based on their own initiative and ideas.

Workers want to work for a cause, for something that adds value to lots of peoples lives. They want to make an impact on the world not just the bottom line.

Hold on to your creatives at all costs. Allow them the opportunity to be innovative, to build teams within the office environment and to break down bureaucratic walls which hinder communication and progress. Learn (quickly!) how best to nurture the intrinsic motivations which those who work for you and with you so long to implement.

Don’t make monkeys out of your creatives.