The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential (33 page)

The people in my inner circle give me these things, and in return I give them my loyalty, love, and protection; I reward them financially; I develop them in leadership; I give them opportunities; and I share my blessings.

4.
Do What Only You Can Do:
There are always a handful of things that only the top leaders can do for their organization, department, or team. What are yours? Have you dedicated
time to thinking that through? If not, do it now. And make sure you make them a high priority.

5.
Create a Supercharged Leadership Development Environment:
One of the most important factors in creating a Level 5 organization is developing and maintaining an environment where leaders are constantly being developed. If you lead an organization, you must take responsibility for creating it. Strategize ways to create that environment and to promote leadership development at every level of the organization. And be sure to release your best leaders to spend time developing others. It must not be an extra; it must be part of their core responsibilities.

6.
Create Room at the Top:
Take a look at your organizational chart. Are there openings available for talented leaders who desire to move up? Take a look at the leaders who are near the top of the chart. Of what caliber are they? How long have they been with the organization? How long are they likely to stay? Are they so firmly entrenched that the talented leaders below them in the organization have little hope of advancing? If there are no openings and the leaders you have aren’t going anywhere, then there is no room at the top for other potential leaders. How can you create some? What new challenges can you give your existing top leaders to open up their current positions to others? What kinds of expansion or types of initiatives could your organization tackle that would require additional leaders? If you don’t create room at the top for developing leaders, you will waste much of your potential horsepower, and you will eventually start to lose your up-and-coming talent.

7.
Develop Your Top Leaders:
Level 5 leaders need to dedicate themselves to developing the top leaders in their organization. Anyone who has the potential to lead as well as you do (or even
better) should be on your radar for one-on-one mentoring. Begin with the best of the best. If you’re not setting aside time every week to work with these leaders, begin doing so today. And make sure you use the crucible moments to develop them by doing the following:

8.
Plan Your Succession:
As I already mentioned, Peter Drucker is the person who got me to thinking about succession in my organization. Prior to his asking about it, I honestly hadn’t given it much thought. What about you? Have you thought about who would be able to step into your leadership position if you were no longer in it? If you have developed a lot of Level 4 leaders, then begin focusing on the few who have the best potential to succeed you. If you haven’t been developing high-caliber leaders, then start there. Begin to help your Level 3 leaders move up to Level 4.

9.
Plan Your Legacy:
It’s been said that Alfred Nobel read his own obituary, which had been mistakenly published in the newspaper, and that prompted him to change his focus from manufacturing explosives to rewarding scientists and statesmen who advanced the cause of peace and development. He recognized that he wanted to create a positive legacy during his time on earth. What legacy do you want to leave? What will the end result be of your leadership efforts and career? Don’t wait for someone else to determine what your life stood for. Identify it while you’re still able to affect it, and start doing whatever you must to try to fulfill your legacy.

10.
Use Your Leadership Success as a Platform for Something Greater:
If you are a Pinnacle leader, then people respect you outside of your organization and industry, and you have a reputation that gives you a high degree of credibility. How will you use it? What opportunities do you have to contribute to causes greater than your own? Give that some thought, and then leverage your ability for the benefit of others outside of your direct sphere of influence.

M
y favorite birthday of all time was February 20, 2003. That was the day I got to meet and have lunch with one of my heroes—not a general or politician or movie star. I got time with a teacher named John Wooden, who happened to be the most successful and well-known college basketball coach in the world. He taught young men at UCLA to play basketball and—more important—how to live a successful life. He was a Level 5 leader through and through.

My admiration and respect for John Wooden began when I was just a kid. You see, basketball was my first love. I’ll never forget the day in fourth grade when I attended a high school varsity basketball game. It enthralled me. For the next dozen years, I played basketball just about every day. And because I was a great fan of the game, I knew about Wooden. How could I not! During his tenure with the UCLA Bruins, Wooden won 620 games in twenty-seven seasons. His teams won ten NCAA titles during his last twelve seasons, including seven in a row from 1967 to 1973. At one point, his teams had a record winning streak of 88 consecutive games. They had four perfect 30-0 seasons.
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They also won 38 straight games in NCAA tournaments and a record 98 straight home-game wins at Pauley Pavilion. John Wooden was named NCAA College Basketball’s Coach of the Year in 1964, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1973. In 1967 he was named the Henry Iba Award USBWA College Basketball Coach of the Year. In
1972, he received
Sports Illustrated
magazine’s Sportsman of the Year award. He was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 1973, becoming the first to be honored as both a player and a coach.
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When I got the chance to actually meet him in person, I was beside myself. I’d admired the man for almost forty years! How often do you get the chance to meet one of your greatest heroes? And for it to happen on my birthday simply made it sweeter.

My day with Coach Wooden started at his favorite restaurant. For the first thirty minutes over lunch, we chatted and got acquainted. Coach was a delight and very easy to talk to. Before long, I opened up a notebook I had brought with me and requested, “Mr. Wooden, would you mind if I asked you some questions?” I had spent several hours preparing for my meeting, since there were many things I wanted to learn from him. After graciously agreeing to answer my questions, he patiently did so for the next three hours, starting at the restaurant and finishing at his home nearby.

John Wooden was more than a teacher and coach. He was a homespun philosopher. His thoughts and theories have been recorded in dozens of books. But reading about him and knowing his quotes couldn’t hold a candle to hearing from the man himself. Coach exuded an inner dignity that made me feel worthy and humble at the same time. The wisdom of his words was amplified by the extraordinary character he displayed in his life. I didn’t just meet the coach; I experienced him.

As Coach spoke, I carefully wrote notes, and his ideas had extra credibility to me because I could feel his concern for me and desire to be helpful. Integrity, respect, and kindness pervaded everything he said. His wisdom was the result of his having lived by his principles for ninety-three years. Even more striking, everything he did seemed effortless.

During our conversation, Coach showed me a card that was important to him. He said that his father had given it to him when he was twelve. (That would have been in 1922!) Coach said that he read it every day, and he always did his best to live what it said. On the card was written:

I believe the people who knew him would agree that he succeeded in following his father’s advice, and his efforts made an extraordinary impact on the lives of many people. That day, as I left John Wooden, I realized that I had been in the presence of an extraordinary man—a true Level 5 leader.

I was fortunate to get the chance to meet John Wooden. I was even more fortunate that for the next seven years I had the privilege of meeting with him several more times and continuing to learn from him—for while he had made a great impression on me from afar, he made an even stronger one up close. In fact, when I teach the 5 Levels of Leadership and I am asked to give an example of a Level 5 leader, John Wooden is the person I most often talk about, because I think that by studying his life anyone can learn great leadership lessons. And as the closing thought in this book, I’d like to show you how John Wooden’s life exemplified the 5 Levels of Leadership.

John Wooden coached basketball for thirty years. Like all leaders, he started by receiving a leadership position and got the opportunity to make the most of it. Many coaches rely very heavily on their positions. Their attitude is
I’m the coach; you’re the player. Do it my way.
That’s not always the best approach to take, but there are moments when it’s appropriate. And Coach used his position when needed, though he did it with a soft touch.

For example, Coach Wooden’s practices were not long, but he demanded the full attention of every player each time they practiced. If a player lost focus and slacked off, Coach would kick him out of practice.

Coach Wooden told me once that the bench was the greatest power a coach had in getting the best out of his players. If they failed to play the game his way, he would use his position as coach to put them on the bench and not allow them to play in the game. That happened to Sidney Wicks, a very gifted basketball player at UCLA. The first day that Sidney joined the team and practiced with them, everyone knew that he was the most talented player on the team. However, he also came to the program with a very selfish attitude. He wanted to play the game his way and not do what Coach Wooden required.

Coach said that Sidney spent a lot of time sitting on the bench his first year on the team. That frustrated Sidney, because he wasn’t playing as much as he wanted to. Coach told me Sidney would say, “Why can’t I play more? You know I’m the best player on the team!” Coach would reply, “Yes Sidney, you’re the best player on the team, but the team doesn’t play their best when you’re in the game.”

Being the coach of the team gave Wooden authority, and with someone like Sidney, he had to use his authority—at least in the beginning. When needed, Coach didn’t hesitate to use his position. But
like all great leaders, he realized the limitations of positional leadership and did all he could to increase his influence with his players. Position may get a leader compliance from players, but it won’t give championships. For his team to do better, Coach knew he had to function at a higher level of leadership, which he did.

One of John Wooden’s heroes was Mother Teresa. He often quoted her, saying, “A life not lived for others is not a life.” Coach also lived those words. He built strong relationships with his players, and he always did what was right for them. For example, Wooden’s first college coaching job was at Indiana State in 1947, after his World War II service in the U.S. Navy. That first year, his basketball team won the Indiana Collegiate Conference title. As a result, they received an invitation to the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball (NAIB) National Tournament in Kansas City. But Wooden declined the invitation. Why? At that time, the NAIB had a policy that banned African-Americans from playing in the tournament, and Coach was not willing to exclude Clarence Walker, one of his players who was black, from playing. However, the next year when Coach again led Indiana State to the conference title, he accepted the invitation for the same tournament after learning that the organization had reversed its policy banning African-American players. Wooden coached his team to the tournament final, where his players lost to Louisville. (That was the only championship game his teams ever lost during Coach’s career.) And Clarence Walker became the first African-American player in postseason tournament play.
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Throughout his long career, Coach’s relationships with all of his
players were special. And after his career as a coach was completed, he maintained his close ties to the men he had once led on the court. Every time I visited him, our conversation was interrupted by a phone call from one of his former players checking to see how he was doing. And every time we rode in a car together, he would ask to stop at the post office so that he could mail letters he’d written in response to people who wrote to him or asked him to autograph something. More than once he told me, “If, as a leader, you listen to them, then they’ll listen to you.” He understood that leaders listen, learn, and then they lead.

After he died, I had the privilege of attending Coach John Wooden’s memorial service at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion on June 26, 2010. His pastor, Dudley Rutherford, said,