She's a Bada**

In partnership with

Recently,

I was reading the book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell.

It’s a great book if you want to learn about leadership and the value of good leadership.

John does a good job of including stories in his books to illustrate his points.

One of the stories he told in his chapter “The Law of Buy-In” is absolutely INSANE to me.

Before I tell you the story, I’ll explain the concept so that the story makes sense.

“The Law of Buy-In” is the idea that for a leader to be effective the people on his team have to be bought into the mission/ cause that they are pursuing.

You can have an incredibly skilled person leading the charge but if the team they are leading doesn’t care about what they are doing then it will be incredibly difficult for the team to accomplish anything.

Sometimes as a leader, you have to motivate your team to get that buy-in even after you’ve begun working towards the goal because motivation can wax and wane.

This is where the story comes in…

John uses the example of Harriett Tubman when she was freeing the slaves.

Of course, many of the slaves she was helping escape to freedom were bought into the cause. But now and then, the weak-hearted of the bunch would get scared of getting caught and wanted to turn back.

Harriett couldn’t risk anyone turning around and potentially giving away how so many slaves were successfully escaping to the North.

So,

To get her weak-hearted followers to buy back into her cause she would put the gun she carried to protect the group to the potential deserter’s head and say,

This usually did the trick.

Harriett never had someone turn back while trying to escape.

This story is crazy to me because I had learned about Harriett Tubman in school for years but I had never heard this story before.

There’s a reason 400,000 professionals read this daily.

Join The AI Report, trusted by 400,000+ professionals at Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Get daily insights, tools, and strategies to master practical AI skills that drive results.

Sign up now for free and work smarter, not harder.