When individuals are pursuing growth in their leadership capacity, it’s usually because they realize they need to improve their ability to influence if they want to get others to follow them into their vision. What many young leaders fail to understand is the factor of magnetism. The truth is that we tend to attract people that posses similar qualities to ourselves. Therefore, trying to create a team of people who posses the skills you’d like to work with isn’t as easy as it seems. Who you attract under your leadership is determined less by what you want and more by who you are.
Let’s take a look at three main areas of magnetism. Review them and set realistic expectations of who you’re able to lead based on your degree of magnetism.
ATTITUDE
Attitude is one of the most contagious characteristics. Positive leadership tends to make people feel and act more positively and negative leadership tends to make people feel and act more negatively. If you’re dealing with a team full of negative personalities, then you should evaluate your own attitude. If you’re wanting a team that is more positive, then it falls on you to lead them there.
VALUES
Whether good or bad, you will attract people who posses similar values to your own. The character that you posses is what you’re very likely to find in those who are following you. If you’re seeing consistency of bad character on your team, it’s time to evaluate what kind of character you’re displaying in your leadership.
LEADERSHIP ABILITY
In addition to gravitating toward similarity, people are also going to gravitate toward leaders that are stronger than themselves. If you’re at a very low level of leadership capacity, then you cannot expect that high level leaders will want to follow your vision. Be in hot pursuit of leadership growth and you can expect to see the same desire for growth from your team. When you increase your leadership capacity, then you will begin to see people with higher leadership ability begin to follow your vision.
