6

Partnering with Like-Valued People

In 1987 I turned forty. I saw this birthday as a major milestone, so I approached it as an athlete would halftime. I saw it as an opportunity to check the scoreboard of my life, assess my performance, analyze my deficiencies, and begin making adjustments before going back out on the field to play my second half. In the eyes of others, I had accomplished some major achievements. But when I stopped to examine my life, I was not satisfied. I felt there was something greater I wasn’t doing.

The Next Steps in My Journey

To help you understand this, I need to catch you up on my story and tell you what I was doing during the ten years before my fortieth birthday. Margaret and I left Lancaster in 1979. Why would we leave people we loved, a church where we were making a difference, and an area where we felt at home? That’s a fair question.

We were highly successful in Lancaster, but I began to want to do more. And I started to wonder if the leadership principles I was developing and the values I was embracing could be used in organizations I wasn’t leading myself. In other words, I wondered if I could make a difference beyond my personal reach, through other leaders I trained in other parts of the country. Could I make a more significant impact?

I got a chance to test that idea when I was offered a position with another ministry organization at their national office. The new position would allow me to spend all of my time training pastors in churches around the country who were part of that organization. Margaret and I packed up Elizabeth and Joel, our two young children, and we moved to central Indiana.

The good news was that I discovered that the leadership ideas I had developed in Hillham and Lancaster did transfer. They really worked for anyone who valued leadership and was willing to become a better leader. Every leader I worked with who put my principles into practice was more successful. But there was also a downside. I was limited in whom I could help since I was allowed to work only with people in that one organization. I wanted to reach more people, and that made me realize that the best place for me to do that was as the pastor of a local church. When I got the invitation to lead Skyline (the church I mentioned in chapter 3), I gladly accepted, and our family moved from Indiana to California. That was in 1981.

The first thing I started doing when we got there was to get the church, which had plateaued, growing again. The task of building a great church was familiar territory for me. I understood that world and knew what it would take. I rebuilt the staff, changed how we did things, and found creative ways to reach out into the community. It wasn’t long before Skyline was recognized as one of the most influential churches in America by Elmer Towns, a church growth expert and college professor whom I admired and who became a good friend.

In the early 1980s I also started teaching leadership conferences outside of the church. When I took the position at Skyline, the board understood that I wanted to add value to other leaders, and they agreed to give me the flexibility to do that. When I was invited to start speaking for a training organization, I chose to teach R-E-A-L, the four things every person needs to be successful: relationships, equipping, attitude, and leadership.

Before long, I realized I wanted to emphasize leadership more in my communication, so I created a company called INJOY and started hosting my own conferences. To say that I believed big but started small would be an understatement. The first leadership conference I hosted myself was in Kansas City, Missouri. Only fourteen people signed up for it, and I stood to lose a couple thousand dollars if I went through with it. A friend told me doing it would be a bad business decision. But I could see that it would be a good significance decision, so I did it anyway.

That was the first of what became many dozens of conferences I ended up holding. Eventually hundreds and then thousands would attend and learn how to become better leaders. I wouldn’t have described it this way at that time, but what I was really teaching leaders was intentional living.

At a small conference in a Holiday Inn in Jackson, Mississippi, a group of leaders told me that they were grateful for what I had taught them during the conference, but they wanted ongoing training. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I wanted to help them. I could tell they wanted to make a difference. Have you ever been in a situation like that, where you felt compelled to do something, but you weren’t sure how to make it happen?

Then I had a thought. I asked, “If I created a one-hour training tape every month, would you sign up for it as a subscription?” They said yes, so I passed a legal pad around the room to get their information. All thirty-five attendees signed up for it. That’s how my monthly leadership tape club was born. That small list of people eventually exploded into more than fifteen thousand subscribers, with each tape being listened to by an average of five people. I was thrilled, because I was adding value to leaders, and they were multiplying that value to others.

The Key to the Next Level

So by the time I turned forty, I had done a lot. When I looked at each of the things I had accomplished, I was happy with it. I felt what I had done had made a difference. So why was I feeling dissatisfied? Why wasn’t I pleased? Why wasn’t what I’d done enough? What had I missed?

That’s when it hit me. I hadn’t developed a team. There was no way I could be any more productive as an individual. For twenty years I’d found new and better ways to get more done. But I was at the limit. If I could develop a team, we could be more productive. Not only that, but we could do things better than I could do alone. I was living in me world, and I needed to be living in we world.

Had I been training leaders? Yes. Had I been including others in my significance journey? Yes. But had I been truly developing my team and partnering with them? No.

This became the birthday that challenged me to make major changes in the way I did things. The change in my thinking was huge. It was in the top half-dozen most important decisions I ever made. And it was the most important business decision of my life. I finally understood that life isn’t made by what you can accomplish. It’s made by what you can accomplish with others.

From this point on in my life, every decision I made focused on developing others. And before long it began compounding. Not only did I accomplish more, but my team accomplished more. I watched as they developed as people. And I discovered that I actually found greater joy in seeing them succeed than I did in succeeding myself. Wow! What a change that was for me.

I also began to develop my staff in new ways. How could I travel often to train and develop other leaders yet still lead the church effectively? By developing great leaders who could lead without me. I partnered with Dan Reiland, who became my executive pastor; Steve Babby, who oversaw finances; and Tim Elmore, who did research and developed sermon outlines that he and I both taught. Every key person I partnered with shared the same values I did. But each had his or her own personality and skill set that contributed to the bigger vision to make a difference.

Out of this discovery came what later became the Law of the Inner Circle in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. It states, “A leader’s potential is determined by those closest to him.” The reason I have been successful in the years since my fortieth birthday is that I understand this law, and every decision I’ve made since then has been based on finding like-valued people, developing their potential, and partnering with them to accomplish a shared vision.

The Power of Partnership

Partnership with like-valued people is powerful. Perhaps the best way for me to explain it is to recount a conversation I had not long ago with a small group of leaders from Latin America. The eighteen men and women I was meeting with collectively had forty-five to fifty million people under their leadership. Although each of them was already extremely successful, none was hitting 100 percent of his or her capacity. By my estimation, almost every person in the room was averaging somewhere between 75 and 80 percent. My goal that day was to show them how to move up to the next level of impact.

When I asked the group their thoughts on how to make that happen, every answer they gave would have yielded only a very modest increase in their effectiveness—their best idea adding perhaps at most a 5 percent increase.

This was a sophisticated group of achievers, yet they didn’t give the answer that I knew was the key. I believed that if they’d been aware of the answer, they would have already been practicing it. I could sense that they were getting restless, so I finally gave them the solution. “Partnerships,” I said.

The room fell silent. It wasn’t at all what they were expecting. But they got it immediately. We went on to have a great discussion of partnership and to trade ideas about potential partners.

Here’s the most important thing to know about partnerships and alliances: to be effective, they must be made with like-minded but—more importantly—like-valued people. If you aren’t connecting and partnering with people who share your dream and values, you have no shot at making these partnerships work.

Having the right partners will help you gain momentum and build your dream into something bigger. There’s great strength in numbers. As the old adage says, two heads are better than one. Partnering with a community of like-valued people will help you multiply whatever dream you have of making a difference.

A community helps us go farther, and when it’s a community of talented, like-valued, complementary people, we can actually go faster, too. Great partnerships make you better than you are, multiply your value, enable you to do what you do best, allow you to help others do their best, give you more time, provide you with companionship, help you fulfill the desires of your heart, and compound your vision and effort.

The moment you partner with somebody, you tap into something you’ve never had access to before. You gain their knowledge, experience, influence, and potential. When you are already achieving at a highly effective level, you don’t gain a great increase by getting significantly better yourself. You gain it by partnering or connecting with other good people who bring something different to the table. And that makes you better. If the partnerships you make are with like-valued people, there’s no limit to the difference you can make!

Many things can bring people together in the short term: passion, opportunity, urgency, convenience. However, if a partnership is to last over the long haul, there must be shared values. When people’s values are different, there will inevitably be a parting of the ways.

It’s important to know what you’re looking for when it comes to shared values. Most people miss opportunities in life, not because the opportunity wasn’t there, but because they didn’t have a clue what it looked like when it arrived. They never took the time to figure out what they were looking for. It’s all about intentionality. You have to know what you’re looking for if you want to find it.

Finding the Right Partners

Early in my career, I had no clear picture of who I was looking for—not when I entered the pastorate and not when I entered the business world. When I got started in my business life, I made some decisions to hire people who weren’t the right fit. I had a blind spot when it came to people. I thought the best of everyone and couldn’t always see people for who they really were. Despite those in my inner circle warning me and cautioning me, I always wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt. That got me into trouble more than once.

Since the picture of who I needed wasn’t clear, I then allowed others to paint the picture for me. Invariably, they always painted their pictures. Then I discovered that the pictures they had painted of themselves had been greatly enhanced. They were like the glamour shots people take and then doctor in Photoshop.

How do I compensate for this now? I build in a 10 percent exaggeration factor.

The way this works became clear to me on the golf course. Bear with me for a moment, and you’ll understand what I mean. Most golfers, you see, exaggerate their skills. It starts when they give their handicap. Unless they’re sandbagging to try to win a bet, they typically overestimate their ability. Their best golf moment is on the first tee when they share their golf handicap. Then they hit the ball and their true game shows up.

Golfers make the same mistake when they select a club during a round. Most golfers check their yardage, then select their club based on how far the ball would go if they hit a true shot with that club 100 percent of the time. Maybe one time they hit their 8 iron 150 yards with a pure swing. The rest of the time they hit it 135 yards. Their ball is lying at 150 yards, so what club do they choose? The 8 iron—the club they think they should hit 150 yards, not the club they actually do hit 150 yards with most of the time.

When I select a club for a shot, I subtract 10 percent of my distance from a perfect shot. In a round I may hit one 100 percent perfect shot, but I will hit twenty-five 90 percent shots. I select my clubs based upon what I most often do, not what I have done only once or twice in my whole life. Wrong club selection is the number one mistake of amateur golfers who hit the ball short of the hole.

When partnering with people, don’t choose based on what they say they can do, or based on what they did once. Choose based on their regular behaviors. That’s what tells you what their values are. Too often our choices are made by what we could or think we should do rather than what we usually do. We are all human, so we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But we also need to be realistic. We need to have a picture of what we’re shooting for.

The Twelve Qualities of People Who Make a Difference

If you’re looking for people to join you in making a meaningful difference in the world, what do you look for? I’ve taken the time to identify what I look for in people when I am seeking to partner with them. I believe that this list will help you as you seek out people to partner with to achieve your goals.

1. Good Partners Think of Others before Themselves

My favorite description of humility is this: people who are humble don’t think less of themselves; they just think of themselves less. Maturity isn’t growing older, nor getting wiser. It is developing the ability to see things from another person’s point of view. When you combine humility with maturity you have the ideal person that I want to partner with, and probably the kind of like-valued person you want to look for, too. I’m drawn to people who understand that with one tiny exception, the world is composed of others.

2. Good Partners Think Bigger than Themselves

People who want to make a difference have expanded their worlds over the years from me to we. They have broken out of their selfish what’s-in-it-for-me mind-sets and have stretched beyond their own needs first. Their dreams now include helping others and reaching across fences to show that they are their brother’s keepers. They are grateful for the opportunity to serve their communities. They always approach others with a win-win mind-set and always cross the finish line as relay team members, not single sprinters.

3. Good Partners Have a Passion That’s Contagious

The people I want to partner with have a love for people and life that can be easily felt by everyone around them. When they walk into a room, their presence is palpably positive. Others are energized by their spirits, lifted by their love, and valued by their actions. To know them is to want to be around them. Their presence marks others and soon, everyone is inspired to live on a higher level so they, too, can pass on the joys of significant living to others.

4. Good Partners Have Complementary Gifts

Mother Teresa said, “I cannot do what you can do. You cannot do what I can do. Together we can do great things.” Nothing is more rewarding than a common mission being achieved by people with complementary gifts working together in harmony. For years, the members of my inner circle have made me better because they are gifted differently than I am. Each person brings something unique to the table, and they are not afraid to share their knowledge or perspectives. Their presence adds value to everything I do. No one is the total package. But if you put the right group of people together, you can create the total package.

5. Good Partners Connect and Provide Great Support

You can’t genuinely partner with people when you’re not connected with them. Besides, today we live in a world of connections. There was a time when people could retreat to their own little castles, each surrounded by a moat to protect their privacy, and try to live in isolation. Today the moats are dried up.

Partners need to connect, and they need to support one another. Some of my closest friends are those who help me carry out my mission every day. Our worlds are forever linked. I often ask myself, What would I do without them? The answer is, Not much.

6. Good Partners Show a Can-Do Creative Spirit about Challenges

If we want to fulfill our dreams and live out our whys, we need to partner with people who have a can-do spirit. Not everyone possesses that. When faced with obstacles, people have different responses. There are…

• “I Can’t” People: They are convinced that they can’t, so they won’t and don’t.

• “I Don’t Think I Can” People: These people might be able to, but they talk themselves out of it. As a result they fulfill their words by not trying.

• “Can I?” People: These individuals allow their doubts to control their actions, which can lead to failure.

• “How Can I?” People: These people have already made the decision to tackle their tough assignments. The only substantial question they struggle with is how they are going to do it.

This last group is my kind of people. Why? Because when we work together, everything is possible. It may take a while, but the vision will be accomplished.

7. Good Partners Expand Our Influence

For more than forty years I have taught that leadership is influence. During those years I have intentionally expanded my influence with others because I know it allows me to make a greater difference in the world. However, twenty years ago I made a great discovery. When I partner with like-valued people, I go from increasing to multiplying my influence.

Successful people understand that working hard at networking with other people is time well spent. It’s the quickest and best way to find partners and opportunities to expand our influence.

8. Good Partners Are Activists

People who are willing to take a stand for what they believe in have an inherent bias toward action. There is no “ready, aim, aim, aim… fire” in their lives. If they err, it’s on the side of “ready, fire, aim.”

Activists don’t merely accept their lives as they are; they lead their lives. They take things where they want them to go. They live their stories—100 percent. Nothing less is good enough for them. Every day they maximize opportunity and seize the chance to make their day a masterpiece.

9. Good Partners Are Ladder Builders, Not Ladder Climbers

My friend Sam Chand, the speaker and consultant, taught me the difference between ladder climbers and ladder builders. He says, “We all start out life climbing our own ladders and living for ourselves. Over time, some people begin to shift from climbing to their own success, and they start building ladders for others to climb.”

Sam has built a lot of ladders for others, including me. He’s my kind of guy because he has dedicated his life to climbing with others toward a life of significance. If you want to make a difference, look for people like him.

10. Good Partners Are Head and Shoulders above the Crowd

The kinds of people I enjoy partnering with are easy to find. Why do I say that? Because they stand out from others. They take action when others won’t. They add value to others every day. And their growth as human beings is dramatic as a result of intentionally making a difference in the lives of others. The only time you can’t see them is when they’re stooping down to help someone else.

My kinds of people want others to do better than they do, so that they, too, can rise higher and accomplish more. Metaphorically, they allow others to stand on their shoulders. They are record setters who want to help others break their own records. As you look for partners who will help you make a difference, search for those who stand out in a crowd.

11. Good Partners Provide Synergy That Gives a High Return

When you partner with the right person, it’s like 1 + 1 = 3. There is a synergy that comes when the right people are working together. It’s similar to what happens when a group of horses work together. Maybe you’ve heard about that. For example, two horses can pull about nine thousand pounds together. How many pounds can four horses pull? Without synergy, you’d do the math and assume the answer is eighteen thousand pounds. That would be reasonable, but it would be wrong. Four horses working together can actually pull over thirty thousand pounds.

When it comes to partnerships, synergy enables the group to outperform even its best individual members. That teamwork will produce an overall better result than if each person within the group was working toward the same goal individually. What can’t be accomplished when there’s synergy and commitment involved? United you can do much, much more!

12. Good Partners Make a Difference in Us

When I started partnering with other people, it was my intent that together we would make a difference for others. What surprised me was that the partnerships also made such a great difference for me. I discovered it is much more fun to do things together. But more important, I became a better person because of those who came alongside me.

As you seek out the right people to develop partnerships with, I need to let you know what the best foundation is for building a good partnership: similar capacity. Partnerships are lost more out of mismatched capacity than anything else. A solid partnership comes together because two people have something to offer each other, and what they give and receive are equally valued. It works like a scale. If one person is doing more giving than the other, then the partnership becomes unbalanced and it becomes strained. For the partnership to last, it has to come back into some kind of balance where the two feel the give-and-take works for both of them. And if the partnership is going to last, as it goes down the road and it grows, adapts, and evolves, both members must be able to change and adjust. If they don’t, it will end. As long as each partner continues adding value to the other and as long as there is capacity on both sides, the partnership can blossom.

Most times when you enter into a partnership, you don’t know in advance how it will go or if it will last. For it to have a chance, you have to spend a lot of connecting time with your partner, nurturing the relationship like any other. If you don’t nurture that relationship, it’s like any other living thing you ignore: it dies. Partnership starts with finding common ground and common goals. From there it builds from the relational to the inspirational.

And you have to remember that partnerships are more like movies than photographs. They change from moment to moment. Only time lets you know what’s coming next. Capacity can’t be predicted any more than trust can. But if you share intentionality, if you share vision, if you have common goals and a common purpose, if you’re moving in the same direction, and if you are like-minded and like-valued, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making the partnership work. A strong partnership divides the effort and multiplies the effect. And if both keep giving, it has a shot at lasting.

Whatever your passion is, think about how your effectiveness could be multiplied if you started connecting and partnering with the right people. Whatever difference you’re able to make will be multiplied.

Every person who has partnered with me over the years on this significance journey deserves credit, just as everyone who partners with you will deserve it. As you look for like-valued people to partner with, make sure they possess what I call “the great separators.” All of my most effective partners shared these qualities that make a difference. They possessed commitment. I always asked for that up front, because commitment separates the players from the pretenders. They thought beyond themselves, because to make a difference, people have to put others first. They had the capacity to dream big dreams. I wanted to partner with people who thought without limitations. And they possessed passion. This was most important, because passion is contagious and influences others. It invites energy and it creates movement.

Perhaps at the time I could not have told you that these were the exact things I was looking for, because I didn’t have enough experience yet to articulate them. But I followed my intuition. I sensed that much more energy was required to do something significant. And I knew I’d need a group of like-valued people around me—people who wanted to make a difference.

Teaming up with other people who want to make a difference is the multiplying factor that makes it possible for an individual to change a family, a community, a city, a country—the world. If you have a vision of significance that promises to help other people, and you partner with others who share that same vision, there is no limit to what can be done.

In our busy and hectic lives, it is sometimes easy for us to overlook or forget the power of partnership. However, when you live with intentional significance, your inclusion of others also has to become intentional. As you make plans, you must involve other people and invite them not just to follow you as a leader, but also to become your partners. To receive their full engagement, you must be ready to commit, compromise, sacrifice, and connect with them. You don’t get more than you give. But when you give those things, they are likely to reciprocate. And there’s an amazing and powerful compounding effect that takes place.