Leading Your Relationship Better
Apple Podcast Episode: 4 Ways to Lead Your Relationship Better
YouTube: 4 Ways to Lead Your Relationship Better
There is clearly a deficit of good leadership in relationships. The burden is shared between men and women. Although men are most typically thought of as Leader, there are ways a healthy, productive woman leads the relationship as well. In healthy partnership, both people have different strengths and weaknesses. Ideally where one is especially weak, the other is strong enough in that area to mitigate the deficiency and help the weaker one improve.
Everyone has the potential to lead where they are strong, but potential is different from ability. Non matter how good you are in an area, if you can’t inspire someone to trust you to handle it, your strengths go under-utilized. I think many people think their results alone should be enough to make someone follow them, but the reality is trust is gained through showing you actually care about the person you’re trying to lead and other demonstrations of positive character - not just your own individual positive outcomes. Plenty think they’re leading because they have a good idea, but fail to realize they have bad execution.
I make distinctions between Controlling vs. Leading vs. Condescending
Control - make someone do something. Threats, punishment. You rely on fear and power.
Condescend - shame someone into something. You rely on their insecurities to motivate them, when really it just makes them feel worse.
Lead - inspire someone to do something. Guiding, illuminating. You rely on someone’s natural sense to want to be where you are.
You don’t ‘get’ someone to follow you, you inspire them to follow you by showing how it benefits them, even more so than how your own strategies are benefitting you.
3 Points on Leadership
Lead by being somewhere others want to be, they will follow you
Leadership is not overt persuasion, not ‘trying’ to convince someone
Leadership is through modeling
The way you communicate as a leader makes all the difference
Communicate your care and how you see their best interest
Practice what you preach
Be willing to see your own faults and fix them, not just trying to correct others
Come from a supportive place
Listen to the full episode to get more detail on these points:
Apple Podcast Episode: 4 Ways to Lead Your Relationship Better
