Leverage in Leadership
Have you ever sat and thought how some leaders are able to say and act a certain way to elicit a result but never have to worry about the consequences of someone leaving? Take a college basketball coach who rides his team constantly but is able to carve them into perfection because the players stick through it. Or a drill sergeant who demands every ounce of an individual’s efforts. What is it that they have that enables them to be this way and still keep the team together…?
The answer is leverage.
If you’re a middle manager leading a group of individual contributors to group success, you can’t exactly make them do wind sprints the morning after they missed a big deadline in order to correct that behavior. You can’t take your accounting team and make them all sit in pushup position reciting the company’s core values until the first person falls. A sports coach with a team who is willing to stop at nothing and sacrifice it all to win can. A coach who knows the players are bought in and have no other place to go can. A coach with leverage can.
Using some inversion let’s think of the opposite. Let’s think of an individual who DOES have another place to go, or, an individual who has all the money they’ll ever need. If we were managing them, we wouldn’t have much leverage and they can almost put in as much effort as they want without getting fired and theres not much we can do about it, so they can kind of mail it in. The second we put some pressure on them to try to make them better, they’re out. The same can be said for someone who has opportunities outside of your team that they can tap. As soon as you get hard on them, they can go elsewhere pretty fast. The interesting part about what it is the majority of us do, is that we DON’T have leverage baked into our roles. We have to create it.
“Constantly think about how to produce leverage.”
– Ray Dalio
When It’s Baked In
A drill sergeant has it baked in. The recruits knew what they were getting into when they signed up and unfortunately they’re in it now. The best part for the drill sergeant though? Is that there is someone right behind that recruit waiting to take that recruits place. So the drill sergeant has no concerns on if this person leaves. Now they can use whatever means necessary (within reason, although sometimes not) to get the performance they want out of them. Leverage. A high performing decorated basketball or football coach has leverage. He knows that because of his and the team’s successful reputation, that that player is lucky to be there and that coach has the freedom to what he needs to demand perfection. Leverage. A high powered CEO who runs a successful business and pays her employees well who knows her show is the best in town, while it wasn’t originally baked into what she built, has leverage. She knows the people she can demand performance from aren’t going anywhere.
You Have No Leverage
The majority of us have no leverage. The majority of us can’t carve performance out of our groups because they’ll just quit. How much easier would it be to just tell someone “there’s the door” when you know you have someone right behind them waiting to take their place? When you don’t have that, you have no leverage and your ability to demand perfection is limited. The team has the leverage on you because you need them more than they need you. That is where being good at what we do fabricates the leverage we need.
Creating Leverage
Creating leverage is really pretty simple. The hardest part was knowing you didn’t have it to begin with. You create leverage by being good at what it is you do. By creating a culture people never want to leave. By being the leader of the group that people gravitate towards because of your care for their individual success. By driving a group to performance not to the brink of breaking someone for that performance, but doing it with the right amount of appreciation, recognition, and encouragement. You see, you can be all of the above, but the unique nature of the leadership roles that the majority of us hold is that we need to keep leverage in mind.
Conclusion
Leverage isn’t about fear or force—it’s about value. The more value you create for your people, the more reason they have to stay, to perform, and to trust your guidance. When you build a culture worth being a part of, you shift the dynamic. You may never have the baked-in leverage of a drill sergeant or legendary coach, but through trust, consistency, and excellence, you can earn the kind that actually lasts.
Where in your leadership could you be creating more leverage right now?
