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As a Leader, I Don't Want Buy-In

Here's What I Want Instead

Quite some time ago, I decided to banish the word "buy-in" from my leadership vocabulary. I guess I got burned too many times by people assuring me that they had "bought in" to an effort I was leading, only to never became engaged. They sat on their hands — "bought in," but unengaged.

Buy-in is cheap. It requires little more than mental assent that what the leader seeks to accomplish has merit.

Genuine engagement, on the other hand, requires substantial investment — if nothing else, a substantial investment of time, energy, imagination, or talent. As a leader, that's what I need from people. I need their vested interest.

Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Once interest in an udertaking translates into a vested interest people will have their heart in its success. And when people put their heart into something, its prospects for success go up exponentially.

In this episode, I look at some basic, no-cost ways in which leaders can draw out genuine engagement from their people. Far more efforts fail because of insufficient engagement than because of insufficient buy-in.