Leadership Hacks

“Leadership it’s not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those people that are in our Charge. The very responsibility of a leader is not to drive performance and get results. The responsibility of the leader to lead those who are responsible to achieve those results.” – Simon Sinek

There is little doubt that leadership is a skill, and some people are better at it than others. First and foremost, to be an effective leader, you need to have the right mindset.

How Do I Become the Leader I Wish I Had Hack – Simon Sinek

Certain leaders get a lot of training and get to the junior level management. But unless they actually had great training from one of their leaders at some point, the business fails because the core element is to drive results, not to develop leaders! So how do you develop leadership? That’s like asking someone how to be a great parent? So, you read books, you look at others, and you deal with your own individual team members! Do you do the overall two essential themes? One, the leader looks to develop other leaders, not just hit goals. When you develop leaders, the goal achievement becomes a natural byproduct. Two, the leader is open to constantly growing and willing to make dynamic changes! This again is like becoming a parent, you have to take it on a case-by-case basis, listen, and make the necessary changes. A great question to ask as you cultivate your leadership skills is, the Great leadership Question Hack of “How Do I Become the Leader I Wish I Had?”

Many people confuse being a leader with being a dictator. You do not need to bark orders and demand results to be a good leader. In fact, sometimes it is a good idea to show the people you are leading that you have flaws just like everyone else.

The Three Areas to Focus on to Develop Leadership Hacks – John C Maxwell

After 50 years of doing leadership I think there’s really three areas of focus that you can nurture to develop great leaders. Number one is what they used to say is the old adage of, follow me, which means that any 89% of people are visual and they’re going to watch what you do rather than what you say! So, go ahead and take the action that you want emulated with your other leaders. This is probably one of the biggest influences on cultivating leadership.

The Second focus of leadership is you have to be intentional! This means you have to intentionally focus on the fact that leadership among your team is one of your main areas of focus and build it into the weekly and daily activities. We’re training one of our companies at AT&T, and the guy said, you know you guys as our employees are one of our most appreciate assets. Everybody clapped and that sounded good and all, but the only way they become appreciable assets is if you actually nurture and teach them leadership. What I mean by that is getting older is automatic! But growing is not automatic, so you have to nurture that. You have to be intentional in saying that I’m in a developing leadership culture and I’m going to develop leaders intentionally.

The Third focus of leadership is to empower them. You have to give them the ball and let them lead. I always get pushback on this from other leaders as they’ll say, well they’re not as good as I am when they do it. And I say, it doesn’t matter! You have to let them lead and coach them through the process until they do. This is that five step process which I teach, which is, 1) I lead, and you watch me. 2) You lead and I watch you. 3) You lead by yourself. 4) You lead with someone else that watches you. 5) You watch someone else lead that establishes the multiplication process of developing leaders. When we did our hiring process, we would always tell them, hey, you got the job and let me see you do a good job now that you got it! And while you are you doing a good job, find someone to replace you so we can move you up! Now you want to talk about empowering someone and cultivated leadership, boy, that gets them fired up! Mark Kohl, who’s now a partner in my company, started as a store clerk at his company. Nine times he worked himself out of a job, where he trained someone to take over his position so he can continue to move up until he got to where he wanted to be! I think if you focus on those three core principles, which is take action, being intentional, and empowering your team to be leaders to where they elevate themselves up while building a duplicable process, that’s where others will look and see that there’s a leadership culture and if they want to grow and become a leader, this is where you want to be!

Learning these three areas of focus can help you become a leader that people want to follow. In essence, you become someone that influences others to be great.

Meet People Where They are at Hack – John C. Maxwell

How to influence others. As I mentioned before, leadership is not a title or a position, it is the ability to influence. I think one of the best things you can ever do is to influence! It’s a go to where those you want to lead a pack and meet them in their environment. Go to their homes or go to their environment and get to know them at that level, because they’re not going to come to you at the top. So, you’re going to need to meet them on their ground, so they feel comfortable with you. To give you the best example I can of showing how influence works is my own story of Claude and Danny.

Claude is one where influence works and Danny is one who chose not to use influence and ended up destroying the organization. The story goes like this! I was 22 and first time in leading a church group of farmers and they didn’t know me, and I could care less about my position. So, they weren’t going to listen to me! We held our first board meeting and I was a chairman of the board and asked if there was anything that they wanted to talk about. A farmer named Claude raised his hand and said, well Pastor, one of the things we need is to paint the door because it’s old and rusted and that’s the first thing people see when they come in our church, so we need to paint that door! There was a guy named Benny next to him. He seconds that, and then everybody else agrees and so that was that. I asked if there was something else and Claude raises his hand again and says, well pastor, we got all the storage in the back and we need to move that out so we can use that as a daycare for the church. Benny seconds that and everybody else agrees! And for everything Claude would bring up I noticed Benny would agree to it and the rest of the church would fall in place. So, I went home, and my wife asked me how did it go? I responded I learned a very valuable lesson today. There are only two things I need to lead the church; I need God and Claude.

So, I call Claude later on that week before the next board meeting and said hey, do you mind if I come down and run some chores with you at your farm, and he said, sure, I’d love that pastor! I went down there and I asked him what else do you think we need to work on and at the same time I brought up some of the points that I thought were important and asked him if he wouldn’t mind bringing that up at the next board meeting. And he would agree to my proposals and say, yeah that sounds good and he would bring it up! For the next three years we grew the church of a few dozen to 300, but every board meeting we had I would ask if there’s anything that needed to be brought up, and Claude would raise his hands and bring up the proposals that we had talked about, and then Benny would second it and everybody else would agree.

On my next job I got a chance to work with the pastor where when I came in, I shared with him the Claude’s story and how we were able to transform the church. The main pastor there, Danny, I’ll never forget that when I shared this with them at a local restaurant and we’re having breakfast. He was getting all uptight and said, look, we’re not going to go to a Farmer’s house and start doing chores. This is my church and people like Claude need to know their place. And I remember just laying back and not saying anything but just thinking this is one stupid man. Sure enough, that church went down eight months later and then he went on to work three other churches in the next two years, but he was done. All those churches went down and he got burnt out.

Those are the leadership principles you want to look at when it comes to influence, which is do you want to run it like Claude, or do you want to run it like Danny. The ability to meet people where they’re at and build up leaders and build your influence will go a long way when you do the Claude principle. The biggest thing to note here is you don’t need to get the credit, just the results!

This story is a great example of how influence can work when it is done the right way. When it comes to leadership, teaching, or coaching, the way you influence someone is to find out what motivates them to do the things they do. When it comes to motivation, there are two ways to go about it.