There are several moments in almost every speech I deliver when I get a real, gut reaction from the audience. I expect it when I bring up hunting and ask who the hunters are or ask them to describe what they think of when they think of hunting. But the surprising moment is when I bring up leverage. The general reaction is one of disbelief: using people and relationships to get what you want? To that, I say “hell, yes!”
Facebook is constantly leveraging its data, users, and finances to move them closer to their goal of connecting the entire world population. When they lost favor with millennials, Facebook bought Instagram and encouraged posting photos via that app to Facebook and then leveraged their technology and metrics to improve visibility of photos on the network. This kind of conscious attention to the ever-changing landscape keeps Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook relevant and moving to the next level of success.
Leverage is the power that keeps life moving. Hunting with leverage simply demands that you look at yourself and your life with clarity and then use what you see to get where you want to go. Everyone has soft spots; by coming to grips with yours, you’ll be better able to connect with a difficult client, understand an angry teenager, troubleshoot a dysfunctional work process, avoid a bad outcome or propose a better strategy.
Once you have clarity, you can trust yourself and bring intuition in to help guide you. We have all had moments where we could see how things were going to play out and instinctively knew where the leverage points were. Intuition takes the combination of experience and observation and adds that indescribable feeling in your gut that points you home. Feed data into that equation, and now you are ready to leverage others – as well as be leveraged yourself.
The world is full of leverage points. Some will work with your values and needs; others won’t. The more practice you have, the better you will be at spotting and using what works. And the more effectively you use leverage points – people, events, issues, chance meetings, you name it – the faster you’ll move and the more new ones you will spot.
Because it’s such a critical skill, leverage should be as instinctual to you as breathing. It’s an act of success and survival. If you overlook, ignore or refuse to leverage an opportunity, you’re wasting the time and effort you’ve invested in every other aspect of your hunt for success.
