Leaders who really have influence that goes past themselves are leaders that are able to give up one thing that is the hardest thing for leaders to give up. Now, remember that person I told you that you came with? There’s something else you’ve been wanting to tell them for a long time. I want you to turn to them right now. I’m going to give you permission because I know you’ve been wanting to tell them this. Look them in the eye and say this: You, I’ve worked with you a long time, and you are a control freak. Go ahead, tell him, you’ve been wanting to tell him, right?
Now let me tell you how I know. Let me tell you how I know that you’re telling the truth because from a neuroscience perspective and everything we know about human performance, the reason you’re telling the truth is because you’re with a human being and human beings are control freaks. They’re control freaks. The brain is designed to go bonkers when we have control.
If you take that little toy with the hammer and the thing and you’ve got a toddler and you’re sitting there and you’re hammering the pegs and the toddler’s watching you. You look at the toddler’s brain and it’s firing and we see all of this activity. You hand that toddler the hammer and their brain goes crazy. It’s just Fourth of July. I mean the machines just start to explode because he’s got control or she’s got control.
And here’s how leaders get influence to go past themselves is when leaders give up control, (a), and (b) they define and help the person define what it is that that person is going to control that drives that passion and drives that result that’s past themselves. What do they have control of that’s going to drive that result.
So many people go to work every day and they don’t know what they do in terms of how it connects to where it is we’re going and what the purpose is. Did a leadership event not too long ago with Tony Dungy and he talked about when he went to coach Tampa Bay they had lost 14 years in a row. Everybody said don’t go but he went anyway.
So he goes and interviews all the players and he’s saying, “Why can’t you guys win a game?” And he said that basically they gave him four reasons: Number one, he said, they said, “We’re from Florida and we don’t win in cold weather.” So he writes down, “Change the weather.” Number two, “We got an old stadium. You know, it doesn’t inspire anybody.” “Okay, get a new stadium by September.” Number three, “We need a superstar.” “Okay, find a superstar.” Number four is my favorite. He said that they told him that, that a voodoo woman . . . a voodoo woman had put the Doug Williams curse on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Doug Williams had been the winning quarterback, he left. She loved Doug Williams and she was mad that he left and didn’t like how he was treated or something and she cursed the team and the players saying, “Man, we’re under the Doug Williams curse.”
So here’s what he did, he goes and does all this research and he looks at those and the common denominator of those four sets of answers were this: None of those things were in the players’ control. They didn’t have control of the voodoo lady, the weather, any of that stuff. So then he does his further research and here’s what he finds. The teams that win the Super Bowl always do three things. Excuse me, I’ve had a cold the last couple weeks. The teams that win the Super Bowl always do how many things? Three things. Number one, they do not hand the football to the other team. They have the lowest turnovers. Number two, they play by the rules. They have the lowest penalties. And number three, they cover punts and kickoffs better than the other team.
And he said to them, “Forget the hail Mary passes, forget the fancy offenses, we’re going to win a Super Bowl, we’re going to turn this thing around, here’s how we’re going to do it. We’re going to stop handing the ball to the other team.” They thought he was crazy but what he did was he showed them how what they had control of every day drove a result. And as leaders if you want to empower people and lead people for this to happen in ways that they are engaged, but not only engaged for the vision itself and the passion, but engaged as humans, you’ve got to let go and give them control to do what they need to do, (a), and (b) connect it for them to the result.
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