Bob Burg on why giving is at the heart of influencing others

Hello! Welcome back to Your Future, Your Work, where we explore what it takes to create a lasting positive impact, empower and inspire your team, and become the best version of yourself at work and at home. Join me, and take your next step toward greatness.

I’ve admired Bob Burg and his work for a long time. His best-selling book (and one of my favorites!), The Go-Giver, co-written with John David Mann, has helped leaders around the world find more success and fulfillment in both their personal and professional lives through giving and service. 

Bob walks the talk, and is very generous with his time and expertise. I’m thrilled to be able to share some of our recent conversation with you. 

Shifting your focus from getting to giving

“Go-Giver” leaders internalize their responsibility to serve others, and as Bob explains, it’s about “constantly and consistently providing immense value to those you lead.” This includes your team, peers, your own leader and even your customers. He credits Dale Carnegie’s classic 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, with sparking this idea. In the book, Carnegie writes that “Ultimately, people do things for their reasons, not our reasons,” meaning that if we want to influence others, we need to make the desired outcome valuable to them. From Bob’s point of view, leadership is more about those being led, not the leader themselves:

“An average leader is eager to take the stage. A Go-Giver Leader is eager to give the stage, to support others within the organization to tap into the leadership qualities within themselves and step up.”

Influence is all about getting your team to invest in your ideas, through sharing your own individual experiences and by demonstrating your investment in those you want to persuade. Leaders may be the ones to set the vision for their organization, but it will only be successful if you can connect that vision to your team’s wants, needs, and values. Before you seek to influence anyone, take a moment to reflect on what will benefit them. Ask yourself questions like:

• How does what I’m asking them to do align with their goals?
• Does what I want the other person to do solve a problem for them? 
• What makes my team’s life better? 
• What brings them closer to happiness? 

The answers to these questions will largely determine how successful you will be at getting others to “buy” into your ideas. Bob puts it this way, “In sales, nobody's going to buy from you because you have a quota to meet. They're not going to buy from you because you need the money, and really, they're not even going to buy from you just because you're a nice person. They're going to buy from you because they believe that they'll be better off by doing so than by not doing so. The same is true for leadership.”

Ask yourself: What is my process to align the needs and wants of those I’m trying to influence before I delegate tasks, share my vision, etc.? What steps can I take to better connect my objectives to their individual goals and values?

Commitment over compliance 

Leaders can lead one of two ways: through compliance or commitment. Compliance is what many of us think of when we think of more traditional leadership models. Bob describes it as, “I’m the boss; you do this because I said so.” It’s not a tactic he recommends; while people may comply with your wishes, it’s unlikely that they’ll be invested in the results. Bob also warns that “they may even find a way to sabotage the process, consciously or unconsciously. And when you’re not there, they’ll never do their best work.” 

The other way to lead is through earning commitment, and you do that by helping the other person attain the results they desire. Said another way, “you earn commitment by focusing on the value you’re providing them, as opposed to compliance, in which you’re focused solely on what you want.” Bob is always one to highlight the work of other leaders he admires, and he shared a quote from his friend and leadership authority, Dondi Scumachi, that I loved: “Compliance will never take you where commitment can go.”

Each generation brings unique perspectives and experiences to the workplace, and many of my clients come to me with concerns about how to navigate generational friction. When I asked Bob about how leaders can manage these challenges, I appreciated his response, “no matter how old or young someone is, you need to offer them value.” It’s human nature to care about how something affects us, and as Bob quotes Byron Katie as saying “when argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.” Perhaps, instead of mulling over the mysterious generational gap, leading people of all ages means that you have to consider that what is valuable to one person may not be valuable to another. If you want to earn people’s commitment, you’ve got to focus on them as individuals.

Ask yourself: Am I defaulting to compliance instead of considering how earning others’ commitment could be beneficial? How can I focus more on the value I give to my team, and less on what I want as their leader? 

“Behavior that’s rewarded gets repeated.”

Whether you’re seeking to lead your team, make an impression on your board, or simply survive office politics, Bob referred to the recently passed Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway, who emphasized the importance of incentives. When you get good results and want to replicate them, reflect on what was incentivized and what wasn’t.  While money is very important to workers, it isn’t always the most important motivator. Incentives don’t always have to be financial. When employees feel their pay is fair, rewards like autonomy and acknowledgment can go a long way in creating a more self-motivated team. Bob reminds leaders to ask themselves, “How are you incentivizing people? What is it that this incentive is going to probably cause them to do?” 

Many clients come to me seeking guidance on how to work better with their cross-functional colleagues, but what we have the power to reward them with is different from those we manage. When silos are competing against each other for information or resources, With our peers, incentives like a strong connection or a beneficial relationship can be especially effective. It’s also important to consider what incentives your peers might be receiving from those at the top. “It's always a culture issue,” Bob says, “It always comes back to that. Is the culture that they're each competing for the attention of the big boss? In other words, what are the incentives? How are they being rewarded? If it's a culture in which they're incentivized to work together, then they're going to probably work together.”

While you may feel you do not have authority to set the culture, you do still have influence. “As you’re leading your team and getting good results, chances are it’s going to make it up to those that need to know about it. They are going to want to know what you’re doing that’s so effective. And that’s how you start to spread your influence,” Bob says. “At that point, you can influence those at the top.” 

Ask yourself: What behavior am I rewarding on my team? With my peers? With top leaders? 

By providing value to those around us, earning their trust, and rewarding positive behaviors, 

leaders can create workplaces that are more positive, profitable, and sustainably successful. “If you want people to commit to your vision and to your leadership, you must commit to them as human beings, not as cogs on the way to accomplishing your goal. You must help them grow. You must give leadership.”

What kind of leader do you want to be? Let’s talk about it. 

Make sure you never miss an issue by clicking the “Subscribe” button in the upper right corner of the page. For more articles, tips, and insights, connect with me here!