Chapter 50.
Count Yourself In

To decide to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility for your life and to be in control of your life.

—Arbie M. Dale, Psychologist/Author

Leaders who take ownership motivate more effectively than leaders who pass themselves off as victims of the “corporate” structure or “upper management.”

That’s because they have made a conscious decision to live at the level of choice.

Throughout their day, their people hear them talk of “buying in.” They are always heard saying, “Count me in. I’m in on that.”

The reason leaders living at the level of choice say, “Count me in,” is not because they’re apple-polishing, bootlicking “company” people. As a matter of fact, they don’t much care who their company is! They’re going to play full out for the company because it makes life more interesting, it makes work a better experience, and it’s more fun. Whether it’s a volleyball game on a picnic or the company’s latest big project, it is more fun to buy in and play hard.

Let’s say the company orders everyone to break up into experimental teams. The manager with the victim’s mind may say, “I’ll wait and see if this is a good idea. Why are they throwing new stuff at us now? It’s not enough that I have to work for a living; I’ve got to play all these games. What’s this woo-woo, touchy-feely team stuff? I’m not going to buy into it yet; I’ll wait and see. I’ll give it five months.”

Meanwhile the owner-leader is saying, “Hey, I’m not going to judge this thing. That’s a waste of mental energy. I’m buying in. Why? Because it deserves to be bought in to? No. I don’t care if it deserves to be bought in to. I am buying in because it gives me more energy, it makes working more fun, I deserve to be happy at work, and I know from experience that buying into things works.”

True leadership inspires a spirit of buy-in. It’s a spirit that has no relationship to whether the company “deserves” being bought in to—no relationship at all. The source of the buy-in is a personal commitment to have a great experience of life. That’s where it comes from. It doesn’t come from whether the company has “earned it.” True leaders don’t negatively personalize their companies. That habit is a form of mental illness.

You stand for mental health. And when other people see that spirit in you, they are motivated to live by positive example too. They can see that it works.

In sports, it’s sometimes easier to see the value of this spirit. It seems obviously smart for an athlete to say, “I don’t care if I’m playing for a minor league team or a major league team, it’s in my self-interest to play full-out when I play.”

In companies, though, that would be a rare position to take.

But true leaders are rare. They don’t wait for the company to catch up to their lead. They take the lead. They don’t wait for the company to give them something good to follow.

No company will ever catch up with a great individual. A great individual will always be more creative than the company as a whole.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Even if a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry.”