Leaders Influence the Mind-set of the Followers

Leaders can transform people’s outlook to the point where their perspective becomes completely different from the way they formerly thought. Such influence is a tremendous power that all leaders need to acknowledge and discipline in their own lives, ensuring that they do not abuse it – especially since a change in mind-set almost leads to a change in behavior.

 

A leader can use rhetorical skills to convince people that what they believed was good is evil, and vice versa-altering their values and conduct. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, after Brutus and his fellow conspirators kill Caesar, believing him to be a tyrant, the character of Mark Antony uses his communication skills to turn the crowd from an admiration for Brutus to a seething desire to kill him and his accomplices. Followers must always weigh the consequences of what they hear and receive from their leaders.

 

In contrast, an enlightened perspective is a gift that true leaders can give their followers. For example, when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she changed the mind-set of tens of thousands of people who had been either neutral toward the institution of slavery or accepting of it. By putting a personal face on the issue, she showed that slaves were people rather than “property”, so that many citizens began to support efforts to abolish slavery.

William G Augustine