{"id":630,"date":"2008-03-24T04:28:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-24T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/why-influencers\/"},"modified":"2008-03-24T04:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-24T04:28:00","slug":"why-influencers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/why-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Leaders Must Love People"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wrote this post a while ago, but the relevance still resonates.&nbsp; It&#8217;s intended for the customer service rep. or the senior vice president of sales.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m always fascinated by organizations that appoint, or anoint, influencers (leaders) who don&#8217;t really love people.&nbsp; Yes, loving people is essential to leading people.&nbsp; For all of Corporate America&#8217;s talk of the importance of people, the results speak to a different reality.&nbsp; If asked, most workers would tell you that the organization&#8217;s leaders are focused on an audience of one&#8230;themselves.&nbsp; Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I am no populist, but those who influence should remember that power flows through them and not from them.&nbsp; Leaders need to use their power to love.<\/p>\n<p>Some time ago, I was in a conversation with a friend who was involved in a management restructure.&nbsp; It was striking what she observed in the early days of that change.&nbsp; The leaders were very focused on the work and process.&nbsp; But sadly, they looked at the people as merely a means to an end.&nbsp; The tragic part was that they were unconscious of the message they were sending.&nbsp; The working dead at work.&nbsp; Being a part of the working dead is bad enough for the individual worker, but it is lethal when a leader of people falls asleep.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, loving people will keep us focused on the what is most important.&nbsp; Loving the people we lead is the most important &quot;thing&quot; in any type of organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wrote this post a while ago, but the relevance still resonates.&nbsp; It&#8217;s intended for the customer service rep. or the senior vice president of sales. I&#8217;m always fascinated by organizations that appoint, or anoint, influencers (leaders) who don&#8217;t really love people.&nbsp; Yes, loving people is essential to leading people.&nbsp; For all of Corporate America&#8217;s talk&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career-2","category-leadership-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}