The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential (20 page)

What kinds of difficult decisions are leaders likely to make on Level 3? Most of them will be decisions you must make related to yourself! I found that about 25 percent of the decisions I make on Level 3 relate to my team. The rest are personal ones that require change, honesty, and self-discipline. As the American writer Mark Twain said, “To do right is wonderful. To teach others to do right is even more wonderful—and much easier.” That is so true.

As a leader on Level 3, you must make the Difficult Decision to…

• Be successful
  before
  you try to help others be successful.
  
• Hold yourself to a higher standard than you ask of others.
  
• Make yourself accountable to others.
  
• Set tangible goals and then reach them.
  
• Accept responsibility for personal results.
  
• Admit failure and mistakes quickly and humbly.
  
• Ask from others only what you have previously asked of yourself.
  
• Gauge your success on results, not intentions.
  
• Remove yourself from situations where you are ineffective.
  

It has been my observation that when leaders are confronted with these difficult decisions on Level 3, many fail to make them. What they may not understand until it’s too late is that failing to do so will eventually disqualify them from leading themselves or others. Their leadership potential becomes stunted, and they cannot remain on Level 3.

I can remember facing each of these decisions on Level 3. It took me a long time to make some of them. It certainly wasn’t easy. Sometimes it still isn’t. But each decision created a personal breakthrough in my leadership journey.

I encourage you to win in this area of your leadership life. Persevere—even in moments when you feel the way Moses must have when the Red Sea parted and the people waited for him to take them forward, saying to himself,
Why must I always go first?
Going first may not always be easy or fun, but it is always a requirement of leaders. It paves the way for the people who follow and increases their chances of success for completing the journey.

Becoming accountable for the productivity of the team does not mean that leaders can stop caring for the people they lead. Remember, just because you add a new level of leadership doesn’t mean you leave the previous one behind.

There is a real temptation for leaders on the Production level to neglect relationships in pursuit of achieving a good bottom-line result. However, if leaders do that for an extended period of time, they burn their relationships with their people, and they will eventually find themselves back on Level 1. Don’t fall into that trap. Keep developing the relationships and caring for them as you produce results.

M
oving up through Level 3 based upon solid Level 2 relationships is no small feat for any person. Many people find themselves incapable of achieving it. If you have the opportunity, here is what you need to do to make the most of it:

One of the keys to the Production level of leadership is understanding how your gifts and abilities can be used productively to further the vision of the organization. Part of that is personal. In previous chapters I discussed the importance of knowing yourself and deciding on your personal leadership style. This is slightly different. If you are a leader, you must have a sense of vision for your leadership. And it must align, at least during the current season, with the vision of the organization you serve.

It took me a long time to develop a sense of where my true strengths lie and how I can serve an organization that I lead. Discovering it took effort, and the process was often messy. But eventually I came to understand that I had special gifts and abilities. (So do you.) There is a strong relationship between giftedness and effectiveness as a leader on
the Production level. If I ever wanted to reach my potential as a leader, I had to know what my personal contribution could be to the organization. The same is true for you.

As an example, I’ll tell you the four areas where I personally contribute the most to the productivity of an organization or a team:

• Influencing People (Leadership)
  
• Connecting with People (Relationships)
  
• Communicating with People (Speaking)
  
• Creating Resources to Help People (Writing)
  

These comprise my strength zone. These are the key to production for me and where the best results will be realized.

Knowing this doesn’t let me off the hook as far as growth and learning are concerned. I am as committed to learning and growing today as I was back in the early 1970s, when I started my first personal growth plan. The difference is that I now concentrate almost exclusively on growing in those four areas. After discovering what I was made to do, I began to focus my efforts.

The more focused you are within your talents, the more rapid the rate of growth and the greater you increase your overall potential to be a productive leader. If you want to maximize your ability on Level 3, you need to follow the advice of Walt Disney, who said, “Do what you do so well that those who see you do what you do are going to come back to see you do it again and tell others that they should see you do what you do.”

If you want your team or department to be good at what they do, then you need to become good at what you do. Productivity has to start with the leader. Focus there first, and you will earn opportunities to help others improve and reach their potential.

Vision casting is an integral part of leading. Fuzzy communication leads to unclear direction, which produces sloppy execution. Productive leaders create a clear link between the vision of the organization and everyday production of the team. They show how the short term impacts the long term. They are clear in their communication and continually point the way for their team.

A compelling vision is clear and well-defined, expansive and challenging. It is aligned with the shared values of the team. It is focused primarily on the end, not means. It fits the giftedness of the team. And when it is communicated and understood, it fills the room with energy!

How do leaders give their teams the greatest possible success in achieving the vision? By helping team members to do three things:

In every organization I have led, I found it necessary to define or redefine what success meant for the people working there. For example, when I owned Injoy Stewardship Services, it meant working to help churches raise money to advance their vision. When I founded EQUIP, it meant working to bring long-term leadership development to every country in the world and give local leaders resources in their own languages. When I created the John Maxwell Company, it meant developing resources and teaching coaching skills to people who wanted to add value to others. How in the world can an organization be successful if the people in it don’t know what the target is?

The commitment of the team begins with the commitment of the leader. Teams don’t win unless their leaders are determined to do everything they can to succeed, to dedicate their productivity to advancing the organization toward the vision. Once they have committed to use
their time, talents, and resources to achieve the vision, they gain credibility and their people gain the confidence to follow suit. Only then has the groundwork been laid for team building.

Few things inspire people like victory. The job of a leader is to help the team succeed. As individuals on the team get to experience small successes, it motivates them to keep going and reach for larger successes. If you want your people to be inspired to win, then reward and celebrate the small daily victories that they achieve. And make them part of your personal victory celebrations whenever possible, giving them as much of the credit as you can. Not only does that motivate people, but it also helps them to enjoy the journey.

When you get to Level 2 with people in your organization, they begin to like
being
together. But when you get to Level 3, they begin to
work
together. Production makes team building possible. That can be accomplished only by a leader who is willing to push forward and lead the way for the people.

In his book
Principle-Centered Leadership
, Stephen M. R. Covey tells how Columbus was once invited to a banquet, where he was assigned the most honorable place at the table. A shallow courtier who was meanly jealous of him asked abruptly: “Had you not discovered the Indies, are there not other men in Spain who would have been capable of the enterprise?”

Columbus made no reply but took an egg and invited the company to make it stand on end. They all attempted, but in vain; whereupon he tapped it on the table, denting one end, and left it standing.

“We all could have done it that way!” the courtier accused.

“Yes, if you had only known how,” retorted Columbus. “And once I showed you the way to the New World, nothing was easier than to follow it.”

Team building is one of my favorite aspects of leading people. Why? Because a good team is always greater than the sum of its parts and is able to accomplish more than individuals working alone. Working as a team is also just plain fun! I love teamwork and team building so much that I’ve written a few books on it, including
The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork
. There’s a lot to say about teamwork—more than I have space for here. But I want to give you some critical things to think about related to team building as you strive to become good at leading on Level 3 (and I’ve listed the Laws of Teamwork that apply to each for your reference):

Author Stephen Covey asserted, “The job of a leader is to build a complementary team, where every strength is made effective and each weakness is made irrelevant.” That is the ideal that every leader should shoot for—people working together, each bringing their strengths to make the team better and compensating for each other’s weaknesses. How does that happen? First, you must know the strengths and weaknesses of each player.

John Wooden, the great UCLA basketball coach, once told me, “Most of my college players shot for a higher percentage at UCLA than they did in high school.” I played basketball, so I knew it was unusual for a player to move in that direction when going to a higher level.

“How did you accomplish that?” I asked.

“The first few days of basketball practice,” he explained, “I would observe the players shooting the ball from various places on the court. When I determined the place they made the best percentage of shots, ‘their spot,’ I would take them to that place and say, ‘This is where I want you to shoot the ball. I will design plays to make sure that happens.’ ”

Coach Wooden would also point out places on the floor where they needed to pass the ball instead of shoot it. In this way, he made the most of a strength (by having them shoot) and turned a potential weakness into a strength (by having them pass to someone in their place of strength). That practice really sheds light on one of Wooden’s most famous quotes: “The one who scores a basket has ten hands.” In other words, it takes all the players to help one player make a basket. And it takes a leader to help them figure out how to do it and lead them through the process.

The Law of Significance: One Is Too Small a Number to Achieve Greatness

The Law of Mount Everest: As the Challenge Escalates, the Need for Teamwork Elevates

The Law of the Catalyst: Winning Teams Have Players Who Make Things Happen

The Law of the Bench: Great Teams Have Great Depth

The Law of Dividends: Investing in the Team Compounds over Time

Good leaders never assume that their team members understand the mission. They don’t take anything for granted. No doubt that was the reason the legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi’s first speech
every season began with the sentence, “This is a football.” It’s the reason Coach Wooden taught his players at the beginning of every season the proper way to put on socks so that they wouldn’t sustain foot injuries. They made sure their players knew what they needed to in order to accomplish their mission.

As you lead people on Level 3, don’t take for granted that they know what you know or believe what you believe. Don’t assume they understand how their talents and efforts are supposed to contribute to the mission of the team. Communicate it often.

The Law of the Big Picture: The Goal Is More Important Than the Role

The Law of the Niche: All Players Have a Place Where They Add the Most Value

The Law of the Compass: Vision Gives Team Members Direction and Confidence

The Law of the Price Tag: The Team Fails to Reach Its Potential When It Fails to Pay the Price