How to Be a Leader People Will Follow

Understanding Conviction — and How It Can Make or Break Your Influence

What happens when a leader believes something to be right deep in their bones?

This could be anything from a tactic or strategy or even just a way of communicating. 

There’s a fine line that leaders walk when they feel like they have the answer: the narrow path between seeming uncompromising and wishy-washy. Unfortunately for leaders, they only know that they veered too much on one side or the other when it’s too late.

Uncompromising leaders are easy to admire. When anyone embodies a sense of righteous conviction, they hold a sway over others simply because their belief in what is right is a powerful and attractive quality. 

When a leader gets in front of their team, plants their flag into the ground and says line by line exactly how they intend for things to turn out, you’re likely to see more people nodding in agreement than nodding off. 

It is when things stop going according to plan — and the leader refuses to adapt — that all of those willing followers start looking at each other in question.

The Conviction Scale

In order for anyone to believe in what you have to say, you have to first believe in what you’re saying.

As a leader, you can’t afford to come across to your organization as half hearted about what strategy you intend to enact and expect your teams to charge forward with enthusiasm. 

Sometimes this is just a communication issue. The situation may be something that you passionately stand by, but you’re simply are not passing it down to the troops effectively. 

If that’s the case, it’s a fairly easy fix. Changing communication styles and building effective leadership presence requires work, but it’s attainable for all leaders. Creating a powerful voice can be trained. Developing effective communication strategies are just a matter of habit. 

Changing Your Level of Conviction is Much Harder

Every effective leader must have a high degree of conviction in what they believe to be true, but not so high that they aren’t willing to compromise or adapt in the face of challenges to that belief system. 

This is not to say you should throw away your personal core beliefs. It’s quite the contrary. The beliefs that make up who you are must shine through with the highest degree of integrity.

It’s the beliefs that you hold in regard to strategy, approach, and design that you have to hold humility within. 

The ideal placement on the Conviction Scale for a great leader — one who gets their people to follow them — looks like this:

You want to land far to the right, but not so far that you are totally rigid, uncompromising and obnoxiously arrogant. The only people who can afford to be that uncompromising and still have followers are toxic cult leaders — a title no sane person wants associated with them.

Your team will be looking to you to be the strong leader who’s able to steer the ship through the storm because you have a firm grasp on the wheel. You just can’t be the leader who drives the ship into the rocks because you were so dead set on going east.

Ask yourself:

If you’re the captain, when was the last time you listened to your mates in the crow’s nest and turned the ship?