You acquire more influence with young people when you give up using your power to control them...and the more you use your power to try to control people the less influence you'll have on their lives.
Interpretation
Influence is gained through trust and connection rather than through control and authority.
This quote emphasizes that true leadership involves nurturing relationships rather than exerting control. When leaders relinquish their desire to dominate others, they foster a more genuine influence that inspires young people to follow their guidance willingly, ultimately leading to more impactful connections and greater respect.
In practice
In a workshop on youth leadership, this quote can illustrate the importance of trust over authority.
It is one of those simple but beautiful paradoxes of life: When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how we wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being.
If a man's associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
I hired top-notch people, trusted them to do their jobs, and then came to grips with the fact that I wouldn't be coaching as much.
Effective leaders share two intertwined attributes: an unbridled level of confidence about where their organizations are headed, and the ability to bring people along.
In today's world you have to interact. You can't be some difficult, shy person who is not able to look somebody in the face; you have to present yourself. You have to know how to talk about your vision, your focus and what you believe in.
If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.