One of the many, many differences between management and leadership is as follows:

Management is about telling people what is what.

It is intellectual and factual.

Here is the process for this and the expected standards for that.

Leadership is about inspiring people and motivating them.

It’s emotional, maybe even, if you’re inclined to think this way, spiritual. Why not right? Because, in many ways, the best leaders are like priests, prophets, and gurus.

Leaders share their vision and inspire their people to see it too.

Yearning for it like a drowning person yearns for air.

That is why you cannot achieve leadership by giving orders to people. Even the military, the very symbol of “giving orders to the people”, know this. Leaders who rely on their rank do not have soldiers willing to fight and die for them.

There is only one way to do it:

Earning your trust.

Confidence, like everything that happens in someone else’s head, is not something you can directly influence. Your employees see the world through their own filters, distortions, biases, omissions, and confusion.

Ultimately, you are just another sign in a universe full of noise.

Therefore, you cannot reprogram people to act differently.

You cannot order the change.

All you can do is influence someone to make the change for themselves.

(I say “everyone”, as if that’s not the most powerful thing in the world …)

If you want your change initiative to be successful, then you can’t think of the plan first and the people second. That is the other way around. No matter how good the plan is, it won’t work without your people.

However, if you start with your people, something interesting happens.

As any psychologist can tell you, questions are powerful. A question is not something that requires an answer, it is something that requires thinking. Asking the right question can inspire new lines of thought.

In my work as a coach and hypnotist, I see this all the time. You will be amazed at the effectiveness of a question such as “what needs to be done differently to solve this problem?” can be.

And that brings us to the questions you ask your people.

What do you need to change?

In an ideal organization, what is a typical day like?

How can we go from where we are to where we need to be?

What do you need from me?

All those powerful questions. Even as a simple thought experiment, this can inspire change on its own.

But when you take the answers to those questions, put them into a plan and pursue their implementation?

My God, you have a powerful cocktail in your hands.