Excuse me!
I'll explain leverage in a bit, but first I'd love to share a very profound personal experience I had with you, I promise to keep it as short as possible.
I was at a church service once, it was one of those power packed services where you could feel the message cutting deep into your soul and addressing your deepest convictions. The message revolved around leaving a legacy and excellence in all affairs. At the end of the message the preacher made an alter call for those who had dreams so big, it scared them.
Personally I've always believed in a divine purpose for my existence and so i thought to my self _ surely this call was for me, it couldn't be for anyone else, I was shocked. People trooped out in hundreds. That moment gave me perhaps the two biggest revelations of life:
(1) Big dreams are a dime a dozen, if it took only a dream to amount to something, literally everyone would be great. Actualization takes effective actions and consistency.
(2) Secondly I learnt that people matter, or at least they believe they do, or they desire to.
Stephen covey says the four greatest yearnings of the human soul is live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy. All other desires can be summed up in terms of this, I agree. A man who is able to tap deeply into these desires of people and create meaning for them through service and value creation would surely be relevant.
Now what is leverage, and how is it connected to all this yada. Leverage means to use (something) to maximum advantage. Of all the resources you need to actualize your visions and goals, people are the most important.
I am embarrassed to say I just only recently grasped the depth of this, even at that my knowledge of the power of relationships are only at the peripheral level. It would take a whole life time to understand how powerful the power of leveraging on people really is.
In an experiment by Stanley milgram (small world experiment), Milgram was able to convincingly prove that there are only about six degrees of separation between any two randomly picked people from anywhere in the world. In order words if I wanted to get to Donald Trump, I might already know someone who knows someone, who knows someone who might have access to him.
In summary, getting the maximum leverage out of people comes from understanding that people matter, and treating people with fairness. Nothing beats having people loyal to your cause not even the best publicity.
Also make sure everyone who knows you, knows what you do for a living, you never can tell how far their reach go. I'd hate to make this any longer so I'll just do a follow up tomorrow, please share your thoughts.
Great Peterson