Step 1: Love
The people you are leading and trying to align to a plan or program need to know that you love them. They need to know that you care about them and their welfare. If they don't believe that, they are very close to being used and seeing your alignment as simply running them through the meat-grinder. My friend Jim Sylvester used to say, "People will take anything from you as long as they know you love them."
Step 2: Listen
Hear them out. Listen to their wants and needs. Ask lots of questions about their work and what they feel is going well or not so well. This is Steve Covey's "Seek to understand before you are understood" principle. If you are feeling resistance to a new emphasis in your ministry, perhaps you need to spend more time listening to your people. They will feel more comfortable with change if they know that you understand them and their concerns.
Step 3: Involve
Nothing creates buy in more than involving people in the change process. As a campus leader this usually meant involving our leadership students in our strategic planning sessions. A few years back we were struggling with our weekly meeting space as we grew and could not find a room big enough to hold us. We got about 20 of our top leaders together and walked through a problem-solving process together. By the end of the time we were all on the same page as to the solution. That created way more buy-in that if me and the staff team had simply come up with a solution ourselves and told them.
As the adage goes: "Involvement breeds commitment."
So, if you are experiencing alignment issues in your area of influence, odds are the problem can be traced back to one of these three things. Maybe it's time to step back and ask yourself, Do the people know that I love them? Have I listened to them? Have I involved them?
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