At this point in previous sections of the book, I discussed the beliefs that will help you to move up to the next level of leadership. However, when you’re on the Pinnacle level, there is no higher place in leadership. So in this section I am going teach you how to help others to move up to the higher levels of leadership. Besides, once you reach Level 5, your focus shouldn’t be on advancing yourself; it should be on helping others move up as high as they can go.
What is the secret of learning to lead? Leading. That’s like saying that you learn to drive a car by driving a car. Or that you learn to cook by cooking. A little experience goes a lot further than a lot of theory. As a mentor, you can give the inexperienced leaders leadership experiences that make them better. As an experienced leader, you can identify potential leaders, you can figure out what kinds of experiences they need, and you can help to provide them in a controlled environment where their failures and fumbles won’t completely take them out of the game of leadership. I call these experiences crucible moments. The key incidents in your life—the crucible moments—have shaped you. They’ve created breakthroughs for you. And the leadership experiences you’ve had—both good and bad—have made you the leader you are today. The same will be true for those you lead and develop.
If you want to make the most of your influence on Level 5, then you need to create crucible moments that will enable your best leaders to reach their leadership potential. Here’s how I suggest you go about doing it.
1. Identify and Create the Crucial Lessons
Leaders Must Learn
Begin by identifying the essential qualities and skills any good leader must possess. This will be your blueprint for introducing key experiences and testing potential leaders as they become ready. Here is a list I developed after my fortieth birthday, when I realized I needed to dedicate myself to developing my inner circle of leaders:
Once I had settled on the list, I began to look for opportunities to put leaders in situations where they could learn experience-based lessons in those areas. For example, whenever there was a problem in the organization, I didn’t solve it myself. Instead, I sent one of the leaders I was developing to try to figure it out. Afterward, we’d discuss how he or she solved the problem and what he or she learned. To help their communication, when leaders were ready, I’d give them an opportunity to speak: to various groups, to the organization’s leaders, or to the entire organization. Afterward we’d talk about what went wrong and what went right, and what they could do the next time to improve. If I wanted to help them develop their influence and improve their teamwork, I’d ask them to recruit a team of volunteers for an event or a program and work with that team to follow through. You get the idea. When you lead an organization, you can’t be focused on just fulfilling the vision or getting work done. Every challenge, problem, opportunity, or initiative is a chance for you to pair potential leaders to a leadership development experience that will change who they are. Try to think in those terms every day.
2. Look for Unexpected Crucible Moments
Leaders Can Learn From
People don’t learn things just because we want them to. Level 5 leaders understand that teachable moments often come as the result of “levers” in their lives. Change occurs in people’s lives when they…
Hurt enough that they have to (Pain and Adversity),
Learn enough that they want to (Education and Experience), or
Receive enough that they are able to (Support and Equipping).
Wise leaders look for moments that fall into those three categories. Some moments can be created, but many simply occur. Good leaders help the people they are mentoring to learn from them and make the most of them by explaining the experience and asking the right questions. All of us experience far more than we understand. Your job as a Level 5 leader is to help the high-level people you are developing to make sense out of what they experience and find value in it.
3. Use Your Own Crucible Moments as
Guidelines to Teach Leaders
Every leader needs to draw upon his or her own crucible experiences and breakthroughs as material to help the next generation of leaders lead. To do that, you must have examined those experiences and identified the lessons you’ve learned from them. It’s very likely that the experiences and lessons that allowed you to break through the leadership lids in your life will help others break through theirs.
My recommendation is that you set aside time with pen and paper (or computer) to identify your own crucible moments. Figure out how they might be able to help the people you’re developing. Then tell your breakthrough experiences as stories to the leaders you desire to develop.
I have to warn you: some people will call you arrogant or egocentric when you tell them. Don’t let that deter you. I know of no better way to communicate important truths to others. People have been using stories to teach life’s lessons for as long as human beings have been walking the earth. Tell yours and help the next generation to take its place as leaders.
4. Expose Leaders to Other People and
Organizations That Will Impact Them
One of the best ways I found to instill leadership qualities and skills into my developing leaders is to ask them to interview good leaders. Asking questions and looking for ways to develop a certain quality is a wonderful way for a person to grow. First, your developing leaders have to keep their eyes open for good leaders and well-led organizations, which begins to develop a leadership awareness in them. Second, they have to take the initiative (and sometimes be persuasive) to get the interview. Third, they have to prepare for the interview, which causes them to go deeper in their thinking about leadership. Fourth, the experience of the interview itself puts them in another leader’s world and exposes them to another culture, which helps them to grow. And finally, analyzing the interview and talking about it with the person who gave them the assignment helps to make the lessons concrete—especially if they are required to implement and teach what they’ve learned. Many a time after I asked my developing leaders to do an interview, they came back and said, “I thought that this leadership quality was strong in my life until I witnessed it in another leader’s life. I’ve got a long way to go.”
Leaders on Level 5 have access to leadership, organizations, opportunities, and experiences that your emerging leaders don’t. Make the most of them for their benefit. Even if you are not yet on the Pinnacle level, you still have access that your leaders don’t. Share it. You can give your leaders experiences that will impact them for the rest of their lives and that may continue to create leadership ripples in future generations. Don’t squander that opportunity.
Every time you develop a leader, you make a difference in the world. And if you develop leaders who take what they’ve learned and use it to develop other leaders, there’s no telling what kind of an impact you’ll have or how long that impact will last.