5
How Does Leadership Work?
When I began my career, leadership wasn’t something I thought about. There were things I thought were important, such as attitude. When I was a junior in high school, my coach made me a captain because he said my attitude was good, so that became important to me. I had been taught that a strong work ethic was crucial to success, so I worked hard. I went into my first position thinking that my title made me a leader, but I quickly found out that people in the organization followed others instead of me.
In those early years, my goal was to get things done. I wanted to help people and grow the organization. I tried different things. Some worked, others didn’t. Then I read J. Oswald Sanders’s book Spiritual Leadership. In it I came across this:
Leadership is influence, the ability of one person to influence others to follow his or her lead. Famous leaders have always known this.20
These words changed my life. It became clear to me why my position and title had done little to help me. I needed to become a better leader. I needed to learn how to influence people. Leadership became the focus of my personal growth.
Everything rises and falls on leadership. Armed with the knowledge that leadership was the key to building teams, growing organizations, and fulfilling visions, I set out to teach leadership. I organized my first leadership conference and—nobody came. Well, that’s not exactly true. Seventeen people showed up, but I had hoped and planned for ten times that number. The next conference was poorly attended too. And the next. When I began talking to people about it, I discovered that people thought, “I’m already a leader. Why would I come to a leadership conference?” They believed that their positions made them leaders, just as I had. That’s when I started telling everyone who would listen, “Leadership is influence.” In time, people started coming to the conferences because they wanted to have more influence with others. As they developed more influence, they became more effective and so did their organizations.
Leadership is a complex subject. I’m sixty-seven years old and I’m still learning. I intend to be a student of leadership until the day I die. But I will never lose sight of the truth that leadership starts with influence and builds from there. Please keep that in mind as you read this chapter.
1. Does Everyone Have the Potential to Be an Effective Leader?
I believe what you’re really asking is whether leadership is an exclusive club only for those who were born with the ability. My answer to that is no. Everyone has the potential to lead on some level, and anyone can become better at leading. While it is true that some people are born with traits that help them to become better leaders than others, those natural traits are only the beginning.
British author Leonard Ravenhill told the story of a group of tourists visiting a picturesque village where they saw an old man sitting by a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one of the visitors asked, “Were any great men born in this village?”
Without looking up the old man replied, “No, only babies.”21
Great leaders don’t start out great. Like all people they start out as babies, and grow to become adequate, then good, then great leaders. Leadership is developed, not discovered. It’s a process. Three main components come into play in the development of a leader:
Environment: Incarnation of Leadership
A person’s environment has a tremendous impact on him. Leadership is more caught than taught. I learned this at home as a kid because I grew up in the home of a fantastic leader: my father. Not only did he model good leadership, he also did his best to draw the best out of us. He identified our gifts and talents early, and encouraged us to go with our strengths in our development. And he praised and rewarded us when we demonstrated strong character and good leadership.
Leadership is developed, not discovered.
If you grew up in a leadership environment, you probably recognized your own leadership ability early, as I did. Your environment and the leaders who created it put leadership in you. It became part of you and maybe you weren’t even aware that it was happening.
If you’re in a positive leadership environment now, you are probably having leadership qualities encouraged in you and they may be starting to come out. The right environment always makes learning easier. Live in an artistic environment, and creativity often becomes natural to you. Live in a sporting environment, and you gravitate toward sports. Live in a leadership environment, and you become a better leader.
If you’re not in a leadership environment now, and have never spent time in one, you may be having difficulty knowing what it means to lead. If so, you will need to find a positive leadership environment to help you in your leadership development. Is it possible to learn leadership without a conducive environment? Yes, but it’s difficult, and your development will be slow. William Bernbach, co-founder of the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, was indicating this when he said, “I’m amused when other agencies try to hire my people away. They’d have to ‘hire’ the whole environment. For a flower to blossom, you need the right soil as well as the right seed.”
Exposure: Inspiration for Leadership
One of the things I find most inspiring is exposure to great leaders. My father gets the credit for first introducing me to leaders. When I was in high school, he took me to see Norman Vincent Peale and E. Stanley Jones. He required me to read books that introduced me to leadership concepts. After I graduated from college, I continued to seek out leaders and speakers to learn from them, people like Zig Ziglar, Elmer Towns, Peter Drucker, and John Wooden. I’ve learned so much from them and been inspired to pursue larger visions by them.
I love to hear great leaders speak. I get ideas from reading their books. I enjoy asking them questions. I get fired up watching them lead. I am even inspired by getting to visit their work spaces. I particularly enjoyed visiting Adolph Rupp’s office at the University of Kentucky and sitting in the original locker room he coached from. I loved playing basketball as a kid, so I imagined myself as one of his players, listening to one of his fiery speeches before a game or going through his half-time adjustments before taking the court.
I’ve also visited every presidential library, from Washington’s to Clinton’s. (As I write this, the libraries of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have not yet been opened.) When Margaret and I visit a library, we spend an entire day just soaking in leadership and being inspired by it.
Equipping: Intention for Leadership
Leadership is influence, and for that reason it can be taught. You can learn to connect with people. You can learn how to communicate. You can learn to plan and strategize. You can learn to prioritize. You can learn how to get people to work together. You can learn how to train and equip people. You can learn to inspire and motivate others. Most leadership skills can be taught to people; people can be equipped to lead.
This is the reason I’ve spent the last thirty years of my life focused on writing books and developing resources to help people grow and learn. I believe every person can be equipped to lead. I find it highly rewarding when people let me know that I have helped them in some way to grow as leaders.
Recently I received an e-mail from J. M. Hardy in which he said,
Tonight I write to give you thanks for the impact you have made on my life. I have collected hundreds of your tapes and every book or CD that you ever produced. Through your long distance mentoring I have overcome the challenges of my youth. Today I have things many others only dream of. I have a bachelors and masters degree in leadership studies. I am now preparing for my Ph.D. I work for a Fortune 100 company where I am responsible for over $120 million in sales and 500 employees. I have a beautiful wife and three children in college.
From my family to yours, God bless you and thank you. I will be waiting for your next lesson and the next book you write. I can never say thank you enough. I will most likely never meet you or get to shake your hand, but I want you to know how much I appreciate you and all you have done, even when you didn’t know you were doing it.
When I read a message like that, I could teach and write for another thirty years!
The one thing you can do to have the greatest impact on your leadership potential is to be intentional every day about becoming equipped to lead. Every book you read, every lesson you absorb, every principle you apply helps you to become a better leader and takes you another step forward in your leadership potential.
The one thing you can do to have the greatest impact on your leadership potential is to be intentional every day about becoming equipped to lead.
2. How Can You Be a Leader Right Where You Are, Even if You’re at the Bottom?
The good news is that you can be a leader no matter where you are. You don’t need a title. You don’t need a position. You don’t need a formal education. All you need to begin is the desire to lead and the willingness to learn. The key is influence.
Leadership Is Influence
As I’ve already discussed, leadership starts with influence. Your ability to influence others will be the single greatest factor in your success as a leader. Author and professor Harry Allen Overstreet asserted, “The very essence of all power to influence lies in getting the other person to participate.” Influence is an invitation anyone can make to another person.
I love the leader’s prayer written by Pauline H. Peters: “God, when I am wrong, make me willing to change. When I am right, make me easy to live with. So strengthen me that the power of my example will far exceed the authority of my rank.”
Influencing Others Is a Choice
Recently I had dinner with Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. We talked about many things, including leadership. One of the things Jim told me was, “You’re not the first person to say that leadership is influence, but you have proven it to be true.”
At the beginning of this chapter, I told you the story of why I started telling people that leadership is influence. The reality is that influence is a choice. We can be indifferent to people, pursue our own agendas, have bad attitudes, and refuse to work with a team. Or we can care about people, be inclusive, work to be positive, cooperate with others, and try to positively influence them. Every day it is our choice. If we choose to try to influence people, we can lead from anywhere.
Our Influence Is Not Equal in All Areas
Just because you have influence with someone doesn’t mean you have influence with everyone. Influence must develop with each individual. If you don’t believe me, try ordering around someone else’s dog! I once came upon a poem called “A Born Leader” that describes this well:
I’m paid to be a foreman.
My job is leading men.
My boss thinks I’m a natural,
But if I am, why then,
I wish someone would tell me
Why snow-swept walks I clean,
When in the house sit two grown sons
Who made the football team.22
I discuss the process of developing influence with others in The 5 Levels of Leadership. In summary, it starts with Position, grows to Permission as you develop a relationship, builds upon Production as you help others get things done, strengthens as you engage in People Development, and culminates at the Pinnacle when you raise up other leaders who develop people. The most effective leaders are intentional about trying to positively influence others. And they understand that they have to work to increase their influence with individual people.
With Influence Comes Responsibility
In our culture, people tend to focus on their rights. Because much of the history of humanity is the story of leaders trampling those they lead, the founders of the United States had a strong conviction that they should protect certain inalienable rights with which people are endowed by their creator. That has led to unprecedented freedom in our nation, which is an extraordinary thing. Unfortunately it has overemphasized rights to our culture’s detriment.
People who desire to lead often seek leadership positions because of the perks and privileges. However, as leaders we should always be aware that leadership carries responsibility, that what we do affects the people whose feelings and well-being are within our influence. The influence we have with others will be positive or negative. We choose which one it will be.
People of Positive Influence Add Value to Others
Groundbreaking Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson observed, “A life isn’t significant except for its impact upon other lives.” If you choose to influence others and become a better leader, I hope you will do so to add value to others.
“A life isn’t significant except for its impact upon other lives.”
—Jackie Robinson
3. What Is the Ultimate Purpose of Leadership?
First and foremost, leadership is about adding value to people. Author Norman Vincent Peale said, “To be successful is to be helpful, caring, and constructive, to make everything and everyone you touch a little bit better. The best thing you have to give is yourself.” If you want to be successful as a leader, you need to make others better. You need to help them remove self-imposed limitations and encourage them to reach their potential. You can do that by doing the following:
Listen to Their Story and Ask Questions
You don’t really understand people until you hear their life story. If you know their stories, you grasp their history, their hurts, their hopes and aspirations. You put yourself in their shoes. And just by virtue of listening and remembering what’s important to them, you communicate that you care and desire to add value.
Make Their Agendas Your Priority
Too many leaders think that leadership is all about themselves. Good leaders focus on the needs and wants of their people, and as far as it is within their power, they make their people’s hopes and dreams a priority. There is great power when the vision of the organization and the dreams of its people come into alignment, and everybody wins.
Believe in Them
If you want to help people, believe in them. When people believe in themselves, they perform better. That’s why I say it’s wonderful when the people believe in the leader; it’s more wonderful when the leader believes in the people.
How do you increase people’s belief in themselves? You express your belief in them. In general, people rise to the level of your expectations. I call this putting a “10” on people’s heads, meaning that you see everyone as a winner or potential winner. If you see the value in everyone and let them know that you value them, it helps them, it helps the organization, and it helps you as a leader.
Discuss Ways to Accomplish Their Visions and Create Plans that Fit Them
When you know what makes people tick and you understand their hopes and dreams, you have the potential to add value to them in a powerful way. Talk to them about ways to help them accomplish their vision while they do their work and help the organization. Then, together, formulate a plan to help them do it.
Help Them Until the Vision Is Accomplished
It’s one thing to say you want to help people on your team. It’s another to actually follow through and assist them all along the way. When you follow through, you not only help them, you also build your leadership credibility and your influence, not only with them, but with everyone on the team.
There is no downside to adding value to people. Yes, it will cost you time and effort. But when you add value to people, you help them and make them more valuable. If you’re a leader, when your people are on purpose and content, you help your team. When your team is more effective, you help your organization because it becomes better. And the whole process will bring you a deep sense of satisfaction.
There is no downside to adding value to people.
4. What Is the Difference Between Delegating and Abdicating Responsibility?
When leaders hand off tasks to others, they typically do it in one of two ways: they delegate tasks or they dump them. Author Roger Fritz asserted, “Dumping is indiscriminate. It’s done for expedience, taking no account of the strengths and weaknesses of the person who is supposed to do the work.”
People who abdicate responsibility neglect leadership when they dump tasks on other people. Good leaders always take into account the skills, abilities, and interests of the person doing the work. Dumping usually happens on the spur of the moment. It ignores the person’s need for more information or training. Dumping often occurs when people in authority want to get rid of a problem or remove an unpleasant task from their plate.
In contrast, good delegation includes carefully selecting the right person for a task. Good leaders take into account the skills and abilities best suited to complete the task at hand. Leaders who delegate well establish what the goals are, grant the authority to get the job done, and supply the necessary resources for the job, yet encourage independent action on the part of the person doing the work. They buy into the philosophy expressed by General George S. Patton, who said, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”
In the end the leader who delegates the job is still responsible for seeing that the job gets done. Byron Dorgan observed, “You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.” If the task doesn’t get done, if you’re the leader, the buck stops with you.
5. What Is the Greatest Challenge in Answering the Call to Leadership?
The greatest challenge in leadership is making decisions that affect other people. It’s hard to make good decisions every day for people. That’s why some leaders would rather act like the French revolutionary who said, “There go my people. I must find out where they’re going, so I can lead them.”
The greatest challenge in leadership is making decisions that affect other people.
The loneliest place in leadership is reserved for the person who makes the first decision. What leaders do and why they do it are often misunderstood. But the fact that decision making can be difficult and painful doesn’t let leaders off of the hook. They still need to make early and tough decisions, because leaders who decline to make decisions create insecurity among followers and undermine their own leadership.
If you want to become a better leader, become willing to make tough choices and uncomfortable decisions. Those may include the following:
Courageous Decisions: What Must Be Done
Peter Drucker, who has been called the father of modern management, observed, “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” Hard-won progress often comes as the result of difficult decisions that can be scary. Sometimes the organization is on the line and the only people in a position to make the courageous calls are the leaders.
Priority Decisions: What Must Be Done First
It is the responsibility of leaders to look ahead, see the bigger picture, understand the greater vision, and make decisions based on the priorities of the whole team and organization. Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto said, “If you’re Noah, and your ark is about to sink, look for the elephants first, because you can throw over a bunch of cats and dogs and squirrels and everything else that is just a small animal—and your ark will keep sinking. But if you can find one elephant to get overboard, you’re in much better shape.”
Change Decisions: What Must Be Done Differently
One of the most difficult yet vital roles of leaders is to be change agents for the sake of the team and organization. Most people don’t like change. They fear it and resist it. Jim Rohn asserted, “If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.” Leaders often provide the education and impetus for making changes.
Creative Decisions: What Might Be Possible
Someone once said that 95 percent of the decisions leaders make can be made by a reasonably intelligent high school sophomore. Leaders get paid for the other 5 percent. Sometimes making those tough decisions calls for experience. But often what’s really beneficial is creativity. Good leaders think outside the box and help the team break through barriers and cover new ground.
People Decisions: Who Should—and Should Not—Be Involved
The most difficult of all decisions often directly involve people. It’s not always easy to find the right person for a given job. It’s even more difficult to decide whether someone is no longer right for the team. In fact, this is such an important and complex process that I’ve dedicated an entire chapter to resolving conflict and leading challenging people.
Though decision making is difficult, it is vital to good leadership. H. W. Andrews asserted, “Failure to make a decision after due consideration of all the facts will quickly brand a man as unfit for a position of responsibility. Not all of your decisions will be correct. None of us is perfect. But if you get into the habit of making decisions, experience will develop your judgment to a point where more and more of your decisions will be right.” And as a result, you will become a better leader.
6. Can a Leader Actually Lead and Serve at the Same Time?
It is a common misconception that it’s the role of followers to serve and of leaders to be served. That is a faulty view of good leadership. When Ed Zore, chairman and former CEO of Northwestern Mutual, was working his way up in the company, he thought that when he reached the top, he would be in complete control of his life and organization—the captain of his own ship, someone who could do whatever he wanted. What he discovered was that leadership is actually servanthood.
Most potential leaders overestimate the perks and underestimate the price of leadership. When they focus on the benefits of leadership, they become self-serving. Here’s the difference between the two kinds of leaders:
Self-serving leaders ask, “What are others doing for me?”
Serving leaders ask, “What am I doing for others?”
Self-serving leaders see people as workers they own.
Serving leaders see people as teammates on loan.
Self-serving leaders put their own interests ahead of the team’s.
Serving leaders put the team’s interests ahead of their own.
Self-serving leaders manipulate people to their own advantage.
Serving leaders motivate people for mutual advantage.
If you want to be the best leader you can possibly be, no matter how much or how little natural leadership talent you possess, you need to become a serving leader. And here’s the good news: it’s a choice. What it takes to serve others is within your control:
1. Serving Others Is an Attitude Issue
Leon A. Gorman of L.L. Bean observed, “Service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.” First and foremost, it’s a matter of attitude. And it’s contagious.
I have been blessed for over twenty-five years by the fantastic attitude of one of my team members: Linda Eggers. She has a heart to serve, and when others see her serving, it makes them want to serve. Linda says, “One of the greatest gifts God has given me is the opportunity to work as John’s assistant. Since one of my gifts is service, doing tasks for him is relatively easy. So I am always looking for ways to go the extra mile and do more than what is expected for him, his family, and for the people I interface with on his behalf. I have a ‘whatever it takes and whenever he needs it’ mentality knowing that I share in his ministry behind the scenes.”
I am a better person because Linda serves me so well, and it motivates me to serve her and the other people on my team.
2. Serving Others Is a Motives Issue
Robert K. Greenleaf, founder of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, observed, “The servant-leader is servant first.… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.… The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are served.” If you go into leadership with the motive to serve others, the team, and the organization, it will be hard for you to go wrong.
3. Serving Others Is a Values Issue
If you value people, you will want to add value to them and serve them. I know that may sound idealistic to some leaders. However, there is also a very pragmatic value to serving others. Everything you will accomplish as a leader ultimately hinges on the people you work with. Without them your success as a leader will be greatly limited. Every day, organizations are responsible for the greatest waste in business—that of human potential. If you can develop people and help them discover their strength zones, everybody wins.
If you value people, you will want to add value to them and serve them.
I believe there is no division between serving and leading. The foundation of effective leadership is actually service. On a personal level, I can’t imagine serving without leadership, and can’t imagine leadership without serving. And people can tell what your attitude is. It shows in everything you do. For example, whenever one of my organizations puts on an event, I tell them not to create a head table. Most big functions put all the dignitaries together at a table in the front of the room. It creates a separation between them and everyone else. That’s not the right attitude for a serving leader, and it sends a negative message.
Good leaders serve. They see their role as that of servant, facilitator, value adder, success-bringer—but they do this quietly, without fanfare. Their mind-set is like that described by tennis star Arthur Ashe, who said, “True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”
7. What Are the Top Skills Required to Lead People Through Sustained Difficult Times?
One of the most challenging tasks any leader faces is being a change agent and leading people through tough times. But it can also be one of the most rewarding. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith asserted, “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.”
Tough times show us ourselves. The people we lead find out who they are. As leaders, we also find out what we’re made of. As author Jack Kinder says, “You’re not made in a crisis—you’re revealed. When you squeeze an orange—you get orange juice. When you squeeze a lemon—you get lemon juice. When a human being gets squeezed—you get what is inside—positive or negative.”
The best way to approach tough times is to try to see them as opportunities. Most people want their problems to be fixed without their having to face them, but that is an impossibility. As a leader, as a coach, as a catalyst for turnaround, you need to help people solve problems, take responsibility, and work to make things better. Most of the time, people need to dig themselves out of their difficulties—whether or not they were the cause of them. They need help, which you can give them in the form of advice, encouragement, and positive reinforcement, but everyone needs to do his or her part and work together.
With that context in mind, here is how I would recommend that you lead and serve people during difficult times:
1. Define Reality
Most people’s reaction to tough times or a crisis is to say, “Let’s forget the whole thing.” Maybe that’s why Peter Drucker said, “A time of turbulence is a dangerous time, but its greatest danger is a temptation to deny reality.” So what is a leader to do? Define reality for people. That’s what Max De Pree advised. He said it was a leader’s first responsibility.
The Law of the Scoreboard in my book The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork says the team can make adjustments when it knows where it stands. As the leader of a team, you need to help people define the things that are holding them back. Then you need to define the things that will free them up. People cannot make good choices if they don’t know what these things are, and many have a hard time figuring them out on their own. You’re there to help them.
2. Remind Them of the Big Picture
Winifred E. Newman, associate professor in the Architecture Department of Florida International University, observed, “Vision is the world’s most desperate need. There are no hopeless situations, only people who think hopelessly.” Leaders are keepers and communicators of the vision. They bear the responsibility for always seeing the big picture and helping their people to see it. People need to be reminded of why they are doing what they do, and of the benefits that await them as a reward for their hard work.
That doesn’t mean that the vision is 100 percent clear to the leader, especially during difficult times. But that’s OK. Author and friend Andy Stanley says, “Uncertainty is not an indication of poor leadership; it underscores the need for leadership.… The nature of leadership demands that there always be an element of uncertainty. The temptation is to think, ‘If I were a good leader, I would know exactly what to do.’ Increased responsibility means dealing more with more intangibles and therefore more complex uncertainty. Leaders can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will not follow fuzzy leadership.”
When I’m leading people through a difficult situation, I often don’t know all the answers. But I know there are answers, and I will do everything I can to make sure we find out what they are. That gives people reassurance.
3. Help Them Develop a Plan
Before you can develop a strategy to get out of a difficult situation, you must know where you are and where you want to go. If you have helped people by defining reality and showing them the big picture, the next task is to identify the steps required to go from here to there. Not everyone finds it easy to do that. As a leader, you need to come alongside them and help them figure it out.
4. Help Them Make Good Choices
One of my favorite sayings is, “There is a choice you have to make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make, makes you.”23 People’s choices define who they are and determine where they go. It’s true that we don’t choose everything we get in life, but much of what we get comes from what we’ve chosen.
As a leader, the more good choices you have made throughout your life, the better you have probably positioned yourself to help others, not only because you have gained experience and developed wisdom, but also because repeated good choices often lead to personal success and greater options. If these things are true for you, put them to good use by helping others navigate difficult waters.
5. Value and Promote Teamwork
Two shipwrecked men in tattered clothes slouch together at one end of a lifeboat. They watch casually as three people at the other end of the boat bail furiously, trying to keep the vessel afloat. One man then says to the other, “Thank God that hole isn’t in our end of the boat!” When times get tough, everybody needs to work together if they want to get the team out of trouble.
The Law of Mount Everest in The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork states, “As the challenge escalates, the need for teamwork elevates.” No team can win and keep winning unless everyone works together. It’s the responsibility of leaders to promote teamwork and get team members cooperating and working together.
6. Give Them Hope
John W. Gardner, former secretary of health, education, and welfare, said, “The first and last task of a leader is to keep hope alive—the hope that we can finally find our way through to a better world—despite the day’s action, despite our own inertness and shallowness and wavering resolve.” Hope is the foundation of change. If we continue to hold hope high, and we help others to do the same, there is always a chance to move forward and succeed.
Crisis holds the opportunity to be reborn. Difficult times can discipline us to become stronger. Conflict can actually renew our chances of building better relationships. It’s not always easy to remember these things. As leaders, our job is to remind people of the possibilities and to help them succeed.
8. Is It Possible to Be a Leader in All Areas of Your Life?
The short answer to this question is no. And here’s why. You cannot develop influence with everyone. There isn’t enough time in a day or enough days in a year. Developing influence is a process. I describe this in The 5 Levels of Leadership. People start their influence journey at Level 1: Position. You don’t have to hold a position or title to start developing influence with others, but if you do have a position, you must recognize that it’s only a starting point.
To begin to truly influence people, you must develop relationships. This is accomplished on Level 2: Permission. To build upon that and gain more influence, you must help people to be effective and work together with others on a team. This occurs on Level 3: Production. All these things take time. You cannot develop deep enough relationships in every area of your life. You cannot help everyone you know to be productive. It’s impossible.
So what do you do? Choose where you will invest yourself to develop influence and become an effective leader. The leadership skills you develop will help you in all areas of life, but you cannot expect to lead in every area of life. That simply isn’t realistic.
9. What Are the Rhythms of Leadership as You Go from Your Twenties to Your Thirties to Your Forties and Beyond? What Should You Develop, Change, Take Hold of, or Let Go of as You Grow into Each Season?
The decades of life are not the same for everyone. We all know that. And there are both positives and negatives to every age. For example, when we’re young, we have tremendous energy, but we don’t know what to do with it; when we’re old, we know what to do, but our bodies wear out and our energy starts to flag.
You can look at the decades of a leader’s life and make some generalizations about them:
- Twenties—Alignment: We build our foundation and prepare for future success.
- Thirties—Adjustment: We try different things and find out what works and what doesn’t.
- Forties—Advancement: We focus on our strength zone and make the most of what works.
- Fifties—Assessment: We reevaluate our priorities and hopefully shift from success to significance.
- Sixties—Ascendance: We reach the top of our game and the height of our influence.
Of course, not everyone’s life works out this way. That’s why I think it’s more useful to think of our lives in terms of seasons. I learned about seasons in my first leadership position, in rural Indiana. Most of the people I led were farmers, and everything they did related to the seasons of the year. As leaders, we have seasons that aren’t equal in length, unlike farmers. And we usually experience only one cycle in our lifetime, not cycles continually repeated annually. But we can still learn a lot from some of the truths farmers understand.
For example, every season has a beginning and an end. Our lives are not static. Even if a person chooses not to grow, life does not remain the same. (People who refuse to grow professionally, decline.) While we are in a season of life, we should do all we can. Too often people give less than their best, thinking they can make it up later. What they don’t understand is that once a season has ended, they often can’t go back. They don’t get another chance. When the new season comes, we need to be ready to make the appropriate changes to move on to it.
Another truth is that the seasons always come in sequence. Spring always follows winter. Autumn always comes after summer. We have no control over the order in which the earth’s seasons occur. The same is true of the seasons of success. You cannot harvest life’s rewards without first planting seeds. Yet many people want to spend their entire lives in the harvest season. It just doesn’t happen.
Each of us is responsible for managing the seasons of our own lives. We have all been given seeds. We all have to weather storms and drought. And it’s up to us to plant and cultivate several “crops” for life simultaneously. Farmers know that beans, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, and cotton can be grown side by side. Yet they are harvested at different times. Likewise, we must recognize that we may be in one season of family life, a different season of spiritual life, and yet another of leadership life. We must do what’s right for the season in each area, and do things in order, if we want to eventually see harvests in life.
Ecclesiastes says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”24 Many people fail because they are out of sync with time and place in their seasons of life. Sometimes their failure has nothing to do with determination or willingness, but comes from their efforts being out of proper sequence. When this happens they become frustrated and may begin to believe that it’s impossible for them to achieve anything significant, and that leads to discouragement. I believe it is possible for all people to reap a rewarding harvest according to their ability, but they must learn the secret to mastering each of the four seasons:
Winter Is the Season for Planning
To people who don’t understand success and the seasons of life, winter is a bleak time. The ground is cold. The earth is unproductive. The trees are bare and seem lifeless. For unsuccessful people winter is a time of hibernation, drudgery, and low expectations.
For successful people winter is a time of beginnings. This is the time for vision and dreams. It is a time of anticipation. Goals are set and plans are made during winter, and without them, the chance of a successful harvest is slim.
In any individual area of life where you’re experiencing a winter, spend some time thinking about the harvest you hope to someday reap. Winter is the season of dreaming and details. You must think big and plan little. Think big about what could be. Then plan how you will get there. (If you’re not sure how to go through that process, you may want to look at my book Put Your Dream to the Test.)
Spring Is the Season for Planting
People who don’t understand the seasons of life get spring fever. They continue to daydream when they need to be working. Successful people have spring fervor. They understand that spring is the time to take winter plans and ideas and put them into action. It’s a time for enthusiastic activity—getting the seeds, preparing the soil, and planting. It takes energy. It takes perseverance. It takes sacrifice. And it takes good timing.
Anyone who has planted a garden knows that you want the plants to sprout as soon as possible after the last frost date. That ensures the longest growing season and the biggest harvest. Sometimes that means sacrificing sleep to make it happen. Is it possible to plant later? Of course. But the longer you wait, the more it will reduce the harvest.
In the leadership realm, this is why people who get a head start in life are sometimes able to make such a great impact. People like Bill Gates started their planning season as teenagers, and were planting early. So if you’ve missed opportunities to plant in the past, don’t keep waiting. Start moving! The sooner you plow and plant, the better your chance to see a good harvest.
Summer Is the Season for Perspiration
When you mention summer to most people, they think of vacation. It’s the time when children are out of school, and adults try to take time off. That’s not true for a farmer, nor is it for a successful person. To them summer is the time for cultivation. If you neglect in summer what you planted in spring, you will see no harvest in autumn. For the successful person, summer is the time for continual and regular cultivation, watering, and fertilization. It is a time of great growth.
What does summer mean for someone who’s not growing food for a living? It means following through on your personal growth plan. In winter many people dream of success. Some realize that they must learn and grow to achieve their goals and live their dreams. Those people plant in spring by taking a tangible step toward growth: buying a book, subscribing to certain podcasts, finding a mentor, identifying a conference that will help them. But for many people, the effort stops there. They don’t read the book. They stop taking time to listen to the podcasts. They don’t follow through with the advice of their mentor. They don’t attend the conference, or they do but don’t apply what they learn. They stop sweating through the hard, tedious, sometimes painful, but always productive work that summer requires.
Good leaders cultivate themselves through personal growth. They also cultivate relationships and grow teams. That too can be slow and difficult work. It usually takes longer than we expect and it’s harder than we hope. But there is no such thing as solitary success. Nothing of significance was ever achieved without people working together.
Summer can be a taxing season. The days are long and there’s more work that needs to be done than there are hours in the day. But successful people keep at it. They put in the effort—even though they can’t really see that it’s paying off. And that’s how it often is when you’re cultivating. You just have to keep working and trust that the plans you made in winter and the hard work you’re doing now are going to pay off if you stick with them.
Autumn Is the Season for Produce
To people who haven’t understood the seasons and who neglected to plan in winter, plant in spring, and perspire in summer, autumn brings regret. Just as watching trees lose their leaves can bring some people feelings of loss, some people realize only when it’s too late that they should have made hay while the sun shone. However, to successful people who have made the most of each season, autumn is a time of reaping. It is the time when they receive the products of their labor. It brings feelings of accomplishment. There is no better season of life.
Your ultimate goal as a leader should be to work hard enough and strategically enough that you have more than enough to give and share with others. As I approach age seventy, I understand this in a way I never have before. I believe God gave me a head start in life. I started early and I’ve spent my life planning, planting, and perspiring. And now I’m reaping in ways I never expected. I have influence beyond anything I deserve or ever imagined having, and in the time I have left on this earth, my goal is to pour out every bit of it to add value to leaders who multiply value in others. My hope is that by the day I die, I’ll have been able to give away everything I’ve been given.
Your ultimate goal as a leader should be to work hard enough and strategically enough that you have more than enough to give and share with others.
Maybe you didn’t get to start as early as I did. That doesn’t matter. Wherever you find yourself, do what’s right for the season. Give it all you’ve got, and don’t worry too much about the outcome. In time, if you understand the seasons and work with them, the harvest will come.