For you young people out there, who are leaders, but no one’s handed you the baton yet, the only way to lead is to do it with how you see the world. And the only way to know how you see the world is for you to tell your perspective of it—you have to tell your personal story. We’ll learn what your vision of the world is, based on how personal you are with your story.
The more personal you are, the more trust you’ll gain and the more people will follow you. Your leadership muscles are all based on your personal story. That is your connective tissue. We’re looking at you to lead. You may not know that but we are. We don’t know how to follow you, though, unless you allow us to. The only way to do that is to share your story and your vision.
That’s the connective tissue we’re looking for—we’ll latch on and follow for however long you’ll have us, as long as you can keep us interested and keep the vision personal to you. The more you do that, the more we’ll follow.
When you tell your story, your audience is watching and looking to hear what your story is so they can locate themselves inside of your story. People are looking to find themselves inside of your story. The minute that happens, they follow you. The more personal your story is, the more people will want to latch onto you.
If you see the world in a certain way and tell people, “I was raised this way. My grandfather would sit me on his lap by the fireplace and say, ‘Son (or daughter), this is who we are, this who are family is, this is how I see the world’.”
If you start to share that story of grandpa, people start connecting to their own grandpa. In return, they follow you. Your personal story is the key to the kingdom, is the key to leadership. Even if you’re young, you still have a story; you still have a perception of what’s out there.
The only way for you to let those people know how to follow you is through your personal story. So get out there and discover what that story is and start to share it—that way people can follow you.
