Invest in What Makes You Best and Network
the Rest!
By Lisa Marie Platske

 

Business sense tells us that everything rises and falls on leadership—creating a vision, generating commitment, building a team, and eliciting the best from everyone involved.  A leader takes us to a new place of belief in ourselves and our abilities, and we all have the capacity to be that leader.  As Vince Lombardi once said, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made.  And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.”

Throughout grade school, high school, and college, I was intrigued by a rather small group of gifted leaders whose self-confidence and unique ability to influence others always seemed to translate into high achievement.  The job I accepted with the Federal government several years later gave me even more opportunity to develop my ideas about leadership.

Through all of my observations and interactions, it became clear to me that leadership is essentially about influence, and influence is easy to create.

In today’s changing business world, every executive and employee needs to develop the necessary skills to be a person of influence.  Whether you work for a large corporation or are creating an entrepreneurial vision through your own company, leadership ability will be a primary determinant in your level of success.  Are you someone others would willingly follow

The first of the five key principles of increasing your sphere of influence is to invest in what you do best and network the rest.  The truth is that people follow people…and then their plans.  Thus, the more you have to offer, the greater your sphere of influence.

All great leaders invest in themselves as well as their employees by focusing time and resources to develop their skills.  Fine-tune your strengths and use the relationships you’ve cultivated through networking to assist you with the challenges you face in other areas.  Then, build on the unique strengths of each individual in the organization and create a powerful system of leaders developing leaders.

According to the American Society of Training and Development, companies that invest in developing their people consistently outperform organizations that do not by an average of 35% every year.  Therefore, executives should be asking themselves, “What will happen to the organization if I fail to invest in my employees?”

As a small business owner, I understand that developing strengths will allow me to increase my sphere of influence as well.  If entrepreneurs, like me, do not invest in what makes us best, we will be out-skilled and out of work.  An investment in something tangible for our business like new technology or a better briefcase may be a good business decision.  However, research shows that helping ourselves become more of what we already are will pay us back ten fold. 

Leaders are indeed made through hard work.  Develop your potential and realize the first principle in increasing your sphere of influence: invest in what makes you best and network the rest.