Casablanca ranks on list after list of favourite movies of all time. The story goes that initially the producers had wanted to cast Ronald Reagan, who was contracted to the studio, but due to unforeseen circumstances they ended up casting Humphrey Bogart. The film works because Bogart plays Bogart, and no one does that better than Bogie himself.

To be a mega influencer you have to find the courage to be yourself. But not a pale, safe, vanilla version; rather, the brightest, highest megawatt version of yourself you can be.

I call this fierce power — fiercely being you — because nothing compares to you and there's only one of you in the world, even if you are an identical twin! Becoming an influence rock star means wholly owning and being you. Fiercely being you also means being comfortable in your own skin, warts and all. American rapper Kanye West, Time magazine's most influential person for 2015, nails it like this: ‘Look, I can be married to the most beautiful woman in the world. And I am. I can have the most beautiful daughter in the world. I have that. But I'm nothing if I can't be me. If I can't be true to myself then they don't mean anything'.

Fierce power, totally being you, is the mother lode of all influence.

Unlock your values

The foundation of fierce power is your values. Values are true north for your moral compass. With a strong values foundation you will soar like a bird on thermal waves that take you higher than you can fly under your own power.

Chris Darwin, a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, is dedicated to preventing global mass extinctions. In the documentary Darwin's Unfinished Business, he explains, ‘Through life you discover your prerequisites for a job. Mine are PPPV: lack of pressure, nice people, purpose and variety'. These, in a nutshell, are his values, but their realisation came about slowly.

Values, behaviour and words together form the bedrock of our ‘fierce power'. As illustrated in figure 12.1, when our values and behaviour align we embody congruence; when our behaviour and words are in synch we are credible; and when our words and values line up we create meaningful connections. And all of this has to be based in authenticity and integrity.

What are your core values? They're your life's principles, the unflagging rules you live by. They're what you believe in when all else fails. You may be results driven and innovative; you may treasure family and work–life balance or independence and isolation; you may insist on honesty, professionalism, compassion … Is this a values shopping list or a portrait of God?

Here are some exercises to unlock your values.

Cast yourself back to ancient Rome. You are a gladiator. In minutes you will be sent into the arena where a blood-crazed crowd will roar while you fight for your life.

Return to now. You will fight the lions of Mammon, conflict, ambiguity, greed, power and profit. You have two swords and a knife tucked into your warrior's belt. These three weapons are your values and your only defence. What values would you choose?

One of my core work values is results for my clients, a determination to deliver the best outcomes for them. This is a deep driver of my behaviour. If I feel I am not a good fit for a client and can think of a consultant who could serve their needs better, I will facilitate an introduction.

Here's another, less gory way of thinking about this. If your partner, best friend or boss, or a colleague who knows you well, were to describe you in two or three words, what words would they use?

Your next step is to cast your mind over the panorama of your life to recall experiences where you have consistently demonstrated these values. Note the use of the plural experiences. A single moment of righteousness doesn't qualify as a value. It may even be an anomaly. Apply some tough love here.

Think of two or three qualities you want to be known and remembered for, in parallel with authenticity and integrity, that must accompany the expression of your values. Now repeat the previous exercise by recalling experiences where you have lived these values.

Values manifest in behaviour

The beliefs you hold drive what you do. You can spout values endlessly, and many organisations and individuals do. But it is how you behave that is the acid test of your values.

What would you do if you found $40 000 on the street? This is what happened to Glen James, a homeless man, who found a backpack containing that sum of cash on a Boston street in September 2014.

James flagged down a police car and handed in the backpack and the cash. The police located the distraught owner, a foreign student, and reunited him with his money. For his action James received a citation at Boston police headquarters and was widely praised.

But there's more.

James's story inspired Ethan Whittington, a 27-year-old from Virginia, a complete stranger who had never even been to Boston, to launch a fund for James.

In four hours the campaign raised $3152, and in a few days the tally soared to almost $100 000. Whittington plans to keep the fund open for as long as people want to give. He said, ‘It's just inspiring to see somebody do an honourable thing like that. If everybody could have the humanity that he did that day, it'd be a special thing'.

James's deed continues to move people all over America, and the fund keeps growing. Whittington thinks having his own home is now a reasonable goal for James, a soft-spoken man in his mid fifties who has been living on the streets for five years.

Glen James changed his life simply by behaving accordingly to his values. Your fierce power can inspire the world, just as Glen James did.

This is the most powerful form of influence: influence where our doing (behaviour) manifests who we are (our values). Our behaviour holds up a mirror to our values (whether we like it or not).

It's hard. I know I've found myself many times, particularly with my family, insisting, ‘Do as I say, not as I do!' As an influencer this is your daily challenge.

When I shared Glen's story on my blog, one of my subscribers nailed it with her comment: ‘A truly inspiring story. Thanks for deepening my personal connection to the power and partnership between being, acting with integrity, showing up, deeply caring and getting beyond self-interest, and how these actions and choices by their very nature are the greatest ways we as leaders can influence'.

Congruence

When your values and behaviours align, it creates congruence, for you and your audience. And when what you believe and what you do line up, you become a powerful role model.

Research tells us that people, particularly Australians, have fast and sensitive BS detectors. As Australian motivational speaker and author Amanda Gore sees it, it is as though you have an inbuilt antenna that picks up signals and can sense other people's values.

You know people who always chase the cheapest deal even while claiming they value quality, or people who say they love their family yet are complete workaholics. A motivational speaker once said to me, ‘Show me your diary and I will show you your priorities'.

Zappos is an online footwear and apparel retailer with a core value to ‘deliver WOW through service'. Zappos lives its core value every day through its interactions with customers, and it encourages its employees to live this value in their personal lives too.

With only values and no correlating behaviours, you are an empty shell. Behaviour stress-tests values. Some people score well on their written driver's test but perform poorly behind the wheel, revealing the yawning chasm between theory and practice.

‘Under stress we say yes,' writes Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way,meaning under stress we condone behaviours in ourselves and others that we would not normally accept.

In a corporate workshop we ran, one of the leaders put up their organisation's values. It was the usual bag: excellence, honesty, compassion. One of the executives said, ‘Nobody could argue with any of these values per se. It's when there is a conflict between two values — compassion versus excellence, say — that we hit turbulence'.

This is so true, but there is no easy answer, because conflict is always contextual and must be dealt with case by case.

We did some values work for an aggressive, macho bank that had recently implemented a blueprint for values and behaviours. The CEO was determined to live these, and in doing so to change the organisation.

In the first week, he sent a powerful message around the company when he sacked a senior executive — not for poor performance or failure to meet targets, but for behaviour not in line with their new values. Nothing could be clearer: values and behaviour mattered, and any deviation would not be tolerated.

Authenticity

Jonathan Fields, a New York stockbroker turned entrepreneur, exemplifies fierce power through values, behaviours and words. One of his ventures is the Good Life Project (GLP).

The GLP website describes it as:

A movement. A set of shared values. A creed, and a community bundled with a voracious commitment to move beyond words and act … as a manifestation of our collective souls … then as a quest to have the adventure of a lifetime, and to leave the world around us changed …

Every day Jonathan Fields lives his values through his work (behaviour) and words that touch and inspire hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

When words and values intersect, you create connections. At the heart of values (what you believe), behaviour (what you do) and words (what you say) are congruence, consistency and connection.

Global influencers

Urban legend has it that while boarding a crowded train Mahatma Gandhi lost a shoe onto the tracks below. Immediately he threw his other shoe out of the window. The other passengers were shocked and asked why he did this. Gandhi replied that the man who found the one shoe should also have the other.

Values must be based on authenticity and integrity. Authenticity ensures they are sustainable for you. Nothing is more exhausting than faking it, pretending to be something you're not. And integrity allows you to live, display and share these values across the board, at work and at home, in business and in your personal life.

Fiercely being you makes you a mega influencer. People are drawn to you like a moth to a flame, but with positive results instead of third-degree burns.

Global influencers such as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were fiercely themselves on behalf of others.

The words ‘Be the change you want to see in the world' (attributed to Gandhi) recognise that life begins with us as individuals. Gandhi believed that all people were equal and we should care for everyone as we would our own family.

In a world racked by aggression and bloody wars with devastating consequences, Gandhi chose non-violence as his message and method, personally modelling non-violent behaviour, and his example inspired a nation. His policy of non-violent resistance, satyagraha (meaning ‘insistence on truth') brought an end to centuries of British rule. India was declared independent on 15 August 1947, and Gandhi was honoured as the father of the nation.

Challenges and pitfalls

We were travelling in Bali recently and came across a poster that read: ‘Be yourself, unless you can be Batman, then be Batman!'

Assuming no one reading this is Batman (if you are, please call me, I'm a big fan), what else can you do in the domain of fierce power? What are some of the challenges and pitfalls to be aware of?

The dark side of living with and through values is that you can be judgemental of others or appear to speak from the moral high ground, which can discourage your audience. Be careful of preaching versus teaching. Preaching, in its crude sense, means you instruct your audience to follow one way. Teaching means you and your audience learn and share together.

Fierce power is like mithril in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Mithril looks like silver and is stronger than steel, but is lighter than both. ‘Mithril! All folk desired it,' says Gandalf. ‘Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim.' Fierce power too is worn lightly, not in a pompous, ‘Do you know who I am?' way. Remember Ben Zander's admonition: don't take yourself so damned seriously! Nowhere is this truer than when we are channeling and leading from fierce power.

We're only human, and none of us can be fully congruent or wholly true to our values all the time. But this doesn't give us licence to lead or role model from a place that does not serve our values.

Recognise that life is complex; sometimes there are no easy answers and you may have to live with ambiguity. When in doubt seek advice from a trusted mentor. A good mentor, to paraphrase the poet Robert Frost, is not a teacher but an awakener.

When you demonstrate values-based influence through your words and behaviour, you establish yourself as a powerful role model. But as we concluded in the previous chapter, with great power comes great responsibility.

As a leader and mega influencer you know that your words carry power and authority. Your followers can, and probably will, scrutinise and weigh every word and deed. In the spotlight, there is less room for error and forgiveness. Don't allow this to immobilise or paralyse you with fear, but remember to make every word count

Some positive strategies

We were to catch an early-morning flight to Brisbane. Severe storms in Sydney meant delays, long queues and grumpy passengers. The crew came around offering coffee and tea. The man next to me asked, with a smile and cheeky glint, ‘Any champagne?'

The flight attendant laughed. ‘It's a bit early for the “c” word.'

They bantered back and forth and soon everyone around them was smiling. She returned shortly after and pressed a bottle of champagne into his hands. He was delighted. It turned out he was a leading lawyer, but you would never have known it from his humble demeanour. Yes, it does pay to be nice.

No one knows this better than Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, authors of The Power of Nice, whom we met in the previous chapter. Thaler and Koval say that our culture propagates a crude form of social Darwinism, a ‘me versus you' mentality. Yet they powered to the top in the cut-throat advertising industry, challenging conventional wisdom, by being nice.

Over a decade, they've built up the Kaplan Thaler Group to US$1 billion in billings using, not pitchforks and spears, but chocolates and flowers. It's a simple yet powerful philosophy.

They know nice has an image problem and earns little respect. Koval and Thaler argue convincingly, however, that nice is the toughest four-letter word you can use in business because it means moving forward with clear-eyed confidence while giving other people's needs the same value as your own. Nice people do finish first. And enjoy the champagne.

So you're at the top, a professional rock star, a mega influencer, but you still want to be fiercely you. What strategies do you use for staying grounded?

The first is to spread positive stories, as we have touched on before. Once you've decided what you want to be known for, find a handful of stories that demonstrate your values and share them. Again, avoid self-centredness. Share success and credit others for their roles. It's great karma and sound business practice.

Humility and gratitude never fall out of fashion. In The Power of Nice, Jay Leno shares the story that his TV show is called Tonight with Jay Leno, not ‘Tonight starring Jay Leno', because of his mother. His mother thought ‘starring Jay Leno' would tell the audience, ‘Look at me, I'm a big shot'. ‘So I asked her: “How is Tonight with Jay Leno?” ' You know the rest.

What else can you do once you've achieved the mantle of the mega influencer? How can you continue to make a difference and improve the world?

Even when you're at the top of your game there is still room to evolve and reinvent yourself. Celebrated American business author and social commentator Daniel Pink is a master at this. He started by talking about Big P or big purpose but recently updated his thinking to include Small P — smaller day-to-day purposes.

Matt Church, the Australian founder of Thought Leaders Global, argues that thought leadership cannot rest on the laurels of one original idea. As a pioneer or authority, you must continue adding to the body of work in your field.

Quitting at the top

This may come as a surprise, but the final positive strategy is knowing when to quit.

The skill of knowing when to bow out, especially when you're ahead, is rare. The battlefield of public life is littered with the corpses of leaders who stayed on one season too long.

Gail Kelly, CEO of Australia's Westpac bank, and an internationally recognised symbol of financial excellence, created a storm in global banking when she chose to step down in February 2015.

In 2008, the 58-year-old, South African–born Australian businesswoman became the first female CEO of a major Australian bank. During her tenure, the value of the company more than doubled, with market capitalisation increasing from just under $50 billion to around $104 billion.

Kelly, rated by Forbes as among the 100 most powerful women in the world, chose her moment carefully. She left on a high note, her work done and with a rock-solid succession in place.

Her parting comments endeared her to history:

I am very proud of how we tackled the stresses and challenges of the Global Financial Crisis, supporting our customers while at the same time materially strengthening our balance sheet … As our recent results show, the Westpac Group is very well positioned with strong momentum and a high-quality team.

When so many CEOs are pushed out for poor performance, or forced to resign or retire on the job, many departing under a cloud without creating a strong legacy, Gail Kelly's story is inspirational.

Australia's Working Dog Productions, the TV and feature film team responsible for such successes as The Castle, Frontlineand The Panel,is another masterful example of judging an exit perfectly.

Ask yourself (and answer honestly) these key questions: Is my work here done? Can someone else serve the business's needs better than me? Could I do something differently, and better?

Contrast these scenarios and decide which is for you: to be pushed off your perch, to fade away like an aging film star, or to depart as a champion, leaving them wanting more?

Fierce power is the mother lode of influence. Are you ready to embrace it?

In the following chapter we lift the game again to see how by working together, unlocking the secrets of co-creation, we can create and shape a shared future that is better for people, the planet and profits.