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How Can I Develop Leaders?
Everything rises and falls on leadership. If you want to maximize your potential and make a difference, you must become a better leader. That is the key to personal success. If you want to make an impact on your world, you must help others to become better leaders.
Leaders are hard to find, hard to train, and hard to hold. They want to go their own way. But developing leaders is perhaps the most rewarding activity you will ever engage in during your lifetime.
1. What Is the Best Way to Identify Leadership Potential in Others?
If you desire to develop leaders and maximize your impact in this world, the most important question you can ask is how to identify potential leaders. Your success is more dependent on your ability to find and attract good people than on anything else. As successful college football coach and friend Lou Holtz says, “I have coached good players and I have coached bad players. I’m a better coach with good players.”
You will develop good leaders only if you find people who have strong leadership potential. That becomes much easier if you know what you’re looking for. Is it possible to find people through trial and error? Sure. Is it effective? Not really.
Have you ever gone looking for an unfamiliar book on unorganized shelves? When you don’t know what a book looks like, or you can’t remember the title, it can take forever to find it. You pull a book off the shelf. No, that’s not it. And another. And another. It’s tedious work and you might become so discouraged that you give up. But what about when you’re looking for a book that you know well? Maybe you remember the distinct color of it or the look of the font on the spine. Even without reading any of the words on the cover, you may be able to identify it with merely a glance. It’s much easier to find something when you know what you’re looking for.
I’ve looked for people with leadership potential for so long that I have a strong sense of what they look like. When I started out in leadership, that wasn’t the case. Now that I’ve been developing leaders for nearly forty years, it’s second nature. I want to share my list of criteria with you so that you too will be able to spot people with leadership potential, recruit them to your team, and begin developing them.
1. Leaders Are Catalysts
Every leader I’ve ever known has had the ability to make things happen. This is often how they first become recognized. They are like the scrawny withered man in the joke about the lumber camp. The little old man walked into the headquarters of a lumber company in western Canada.
“I’d like a job as a lumberjack,” he said.
The foreman tried to talk him out of the idea. After all, he was small. He was old. And he looked too frail and weak for such a demanding job. Undaunted, the old man took up an ax and proceeded to chop down a huge tree in record time.
“That’s just astounding,” the foreman said. “Where did you learn to fell trees like that?”
“Well,” said the old man, “you’ve heard of the Sahara Forest?”
Replied the foreman, “You mean the Sahara Desert.”
“Sure,” the old man replied, “that’s what it’s called now.”
When I see someone who can make things happen, it grabs my attention. The ability to make things happen doesn’t automatically make a person a leader, but I’ve yet to meet a leader who didn’t have the ability to make things happen.
2. Leaders Are Influencers
Leadership is influence, so of course potential leaders must have the ability to influence other people. Influence is something that cannot be delegated. Every person who wants to lead must possess it, at least to some degree.
As you look at potential leaders and try to gauge their level of leadership, pay attention to whom they influence. Do they influence only their friends and family? That’s a pretty low level of influence. If other workers in their department or on their team are influenced, that shows a greater level of ability. When workers outside their department or team follow, that shows even greater promise. If their colleagues follow them, they’ve developed a pretty high degree of influence. And if they influence you and other people higher than they are in leadership, it indicates quite a bit of ability. These people are already leading and have great promise.
3. Leaders Are Relationship Builders
One thing that holds many talented and intelligent people back from being good leaders is a lack of people skills. Someone with weak people skills can become a reasonably good manager, because management is focused on systems and procedures. But nobody without good people skills can be a great leader.
When people on the team don’t like someone, they will often try to hurt that person. If they can’t cause harm, they will simply refuse to help. If they have no real choice and are required to help, they will still be mentally and emotionally against the individual and will hope he or she doesn’t succeed. And even if the person does manage to succeed, the victories he or she achieves can feel very hollow and be short-lived. Elevating someone with bad people skills is a recipe for failure.
Good leaders like people and people like them. They work at connecting with others and they continually look for opportunities to connect. That’s why you need to select potential leaders with excellent people skills.
Good leaders like people and people like them.
4. Leaders Are Gatherers
Potential leaders have a quality about them whereby they are always “holding court.” Other people are attracted to them. They want to hear what they say. They like being around them because exciting things happen. Often these people are funny and entertaining. They just seem to possess the quality of attraction. People like spending time with them.
When leaders speak, people listen. In a meeting people often wait to hear what leaders have to say. When outgoing people without leadership potential speak, nobody listens. They’re merely making a speech without an audience. They find it hard to gather people and grab their attention. Whenever I see a person who continually gathers a crowd, I pay attention, because I want to assess whether that person has other qualities that signify leadership potential.
5. Leaders Are Value Adders
Once when I was in Africa, I had the opportunity to go on a safari trip in Kenya. While we were on the plains, I got to meet a Maasai chief. It was a fascinating experience. One of the questions I asked him was “How did you become the chief?” His answer: “I was seen as someone who added value.”
That’s what all good leaders do—add value. They see their role as leader as a means to help others, not just themselves. They are givers, and they approach life very differently from takers:
Takers ask, “What are others doing for me?”
Givers ask, “What am I doing for others?”
Takers see team members as things that they own.
Givers see team members as people on loan.
Takers consolidate power for personal gain.
Givers share power for the sake of the team.
Can someone lead others without adding value? Certainly. The world is filled with leaders who push others down to raise themselves up, who lead for the power and perks. History is littered with such leaders. But their leadership is fleeting. It adds no value to others. And its impact on the world is negative. Who wants that kind of person on their team?
6. Leaders Are Opportunists
Good leaders see and seize opportunities. They are continually on the lookout for ways to help their organization and advance their team. Leadership authors James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner liken leaders to the settlers who founded the United States or tamed the Western frontier. They write, “Leaders are pioneers—people who are willing to step out into the unknown. They are people who are willing to take risks, to innovate and experiment in order to find new and better ways of doing things.”
“Leaders are pioneers—people who are willing to step out into the unknown.”
—James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Leaders, by definition, are out front. They take new territory and others follow them. Great leaders don’t merely send others out. They lead the charge. They’re more like tour guides than travel agents. They see opportunities, prepare to move forward, and then say, “Follow me.” When you see someone who is able to see opportunities and is willing to take good risks, pay attention. You may be looking at a leader.
7. Leaders Are Finishers
Founding father Benjamin Franklin asserted, “I never knew a man that was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.” Leaders don’t make excuses. They take responsibility, embrace opportunity, and follow through. They live up to their commitments and they can be counted on to finish. To quote the old poem “The Welcome Man” by Walt Mason, which my father often read to me when I was growing up, leaders are the ones who “Deliver the Goods.”
Author Kenneth Blanchard says, “There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.” That’s what leaders do. They commit and follow through. They are like Confederate general Jeb Stuart, who used to sign his letters to General Robert E. Lee with the following words: “Yours to count on.”
Few things are harder than trying to help people without leadership potential to lead. It’s like sending ducks to eagle school. It just doesn’t work. However, when you pick the right people, developing them is a pleasure. Jack Welch asserted, “If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don’t have to manage them.” That’s what you’re going for.
2. Is Developing Leaders More Art or Science?
Some people want to develop leaders through a highly structured and inflexible system, to try to produce them the way manufacturers punch shapes out of sheets of metal. Other people want the development of their leaders to be entirely organic and without planning, every lesson growing out of the situation at hand. But the truth is that leadership development is both science and art.
ART: Based on Intuition
SCIENCE: Rooted in Fact
ART: Recognizing Talent
SCIENCE: Sharpening Talent Through Practice
ART: Inspiring Performance
SCIENCE: Evaluating Performance
ART: Developing Relationships
SCIENCE: Developing Skills
ART: Identifying Teachable Moments
SCIENCE: Implementing a Training Method
ART: Knowing When to Move
SCIENCE: Preparing Before the Move
Daniel Goleman has done a lot to help people understand the intuitive side of leadership. His research and writing on emotional intelligence shows that while the qualities traditionally associated with leadership—such as intelligence, technical skills, and determination—are required for success, they tell only part of the story. Effective leaders also possess emotional intelligence, which includes self-awareness, intuition, a capacity for self-leadership, empathy, and people skills. These “softer” skills represent the more creative side of leadership and must be developed as much as the hard skills.
Daniel Goleman says, “It would be foolish to assert that good, old-fashioned IQ and technical ability are not important ingredients of strong leadership. But the recipe would not be complete without emotional intelligence. It was once thought that the components of emotional intelligence were ‘nice to have’ in business leaders. But now we know that, for the sake of performance, these are ingredients that leaders ‘need to have.’ ”
As you develop leaders, you must identify, nurture, and develop both skill sets. If you’re familiar with The 5 Levels of Leadership, you know that both permission (the relational aspect of leadership) and production (the results aspect of leadership) are essential to developing influence with people and becoming an effective leader.
3. How Do You Help People Realize the Talent Within Them? How Do You Help People Believe in Themselves?
Napoleon said, “Leaders are dealers in hope.” They help people to believe in the vision and in their leadership. But they also help people to believe in themselves. They help people turn hope into action.
Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of leadership is seeing people with hope believe in themselves, develop themselves, and blossom into effective leaders. If you desire to help your people do that, proceed in this way:
Find Evidence That They Want to Grow
You cannot get someone who does not want to grow to embrace personal growth. People must ultimately make that decision for themselves.
You cannot get someone who does not want to grow to embrace personal growth.
I didn’t always understand this. There was a time when I believed that I could encourage and inspire everyone to take the growth journey with me. I no longer think that. Life is too short to spend time trying to convince people to change and grow while others who do desire to grow stand by waiting for you to give them your time and energy. So if you want people to realize their talent, the first thing you’ve got to do is know the difference between those who want to grow and those who don’t. Pour your effort into the best you have, because they will give you the greatest return.
How can you tell who wants to grow? Attitude and effort. People worthy of your time and attention have a learning attitude. They’re open to instruction and hungry to grow. They may not yet be convinced that they can reach what you recognize as their potential, but they have the desire. And they are already making an effort to grow. Their efforts may not be strategic. They may not be focused. They may not even be effective. But you can see a spark there. That’s all you need to get started.
Identify Their Strengths
The number one problem of people who want to grow but aren’t reaching their potential is that they major in their weaknesses. Why is that? I believe it’s because that’s what they’ve been taught to do for most of their lives. Think about when you got your report card when you were a child. If you got an A in math and a C-minus in reading, what did your teacher say you needed to work on? Your reading.
That’s a good idea when you’re dealing with the basics. Everyone needs to learn how to read and do basic math. It’s difficult to succeed in life if you can’t read a book or look at a bill to see if you’re being cheated. However, that’s not a good strategy as you get older. If you want to be successful, you need to build on your strengths, not shore up your weaknesses. Nobody pays for average. Nobody purposely hires mediocrity. People pay for excellence. If you’re above average at something, you have a shot at becoming excellent at it. If you start out as excellent, you have a chance to be great.
The people you lead may not know what they’re good at. Many people grow up with little or no encouragement from the significant adults in their lives. Many people take a convenient job and never give thought to what they could be great at. As a leader you need to help people figure out where they have potential and should grow.
Increase Their Confidence
There are two kinds of people who have confidence, those with a high level of mastery in their area of strength and those who have no knowledge whatsoever and think everything’s easy because they’ve never done anything. Then there’s a middle group, which is the largest. These people need your help gaining confidence in themselves.
I help people have confidence by seeing the potential in them, expecting the best out of them, and expressing my belief in them. As people start trying to grow and tackle new challenges, they usually become insecure. Trying to conquer new territory can be scary. That’s why you need to lend them your belief. Tell them, “I understand that you’re on a journey. This is foreign to you. You may be a bit nervous. That’s OK. I believe in you. It’s going to be all right. You may not get this on the first try, but you’re going to get it. You’re a winner and you’re going to win. Keep at it.”
When you express belief in people, it goes right to their souls. It gives them hope. It stirs their sense of purpose. It helps them be someone they’ve never been before and do things they’ve never done before. Knowing that you believe in them causes them to rise up. Is there anything better in the world than having somebody unconditionally love you and believe in you?
Give Them a Place to Practice
Once you’ve discovered that people want to grow, you’ve helped them identify their strengths, and you’ve increased their confidence, you need to provide a place for them to practice what they’re learning. Training is good. Mentoring is fantastic. Development is incredible. But if you don’t give emerging leaders a place to practice, their knowledge will never become practical experience.
Leadership is so complex that you can’t learn it just from a book. You can get ideas. You can open doors mentally. You can understand skill sets, but you won’t acquire them and grow if you don’t put them into action. People need to make mistakes and learn from them. They need to find out what works for them. They need to work with real people who have strengths and weaknesses, problems and quirks.
Coach Them to Improvement
As people try practicing new skills, you need to allow them to fail safely. People always learn more from their failures than they do from their successes. Walk alongside them to give them security and to help them through the most difficult problems. Share with them where they made mistakes and how they can overcome them. Tell them what to work on. And encourage them to keep trying.
When you first begin to coach them, you may be fairly hands-on. You may stay close to them. As they gain experience, give them more space. It’s like helping a child ride a bike. At first you start them out with training wheels. When they start to get a feel for how the mechanics of the bike work, you take the training wheels off, but you stay with them every minute to prop them up. When they gain confidence, you let them go. That first time they balance the bike and pedal, they’re excited. They’ve actually done it! But of course it’s only a matter of time before they fall. You’re watching them, so you help them get up. You explain what happened. You help them understand how to avoid the same problem, and then watch them ride some more. Eventually, they’ll be off riding on their own and won’t need you to help them stay upright any longer.
Keep Increasing Their Responsibilities
At this point many leaders make a mistake. As soon as the emerging leader gains a degree of self-sufficiency, they leave that leader alone, grateful that they can finally carry their own weight. It’s a relief to have someone who can share the load. But don’t stop there. If you have developed a leader who can be successful independently, you will have done more than most other leaders do. And it might feel like you’re done. But for the best developers of people, that’s not enough. If you continue to work with new leaders and keep increasing their level of responsibility, they will continue to grow and improve.
Your goal should always be to work yourself out of a job. Keep giving your leaders more and more weight to carry. Keep showing them the ropes. Allow them to benefit from your experience until they are capable of doing your job. That takes security on your part. But if you do that, when it comes time for you to move up to greater responsibility or move on to a new challenge, you will have people who can step in and take your place. That should always be your goal as a leader.
4. How Can You Help People to Achieve Their Maximum Potential When They Are in Their Comfort Zone and Don’t Care to Leave It?
Many people don’t have a greater vision for their lives. And it’s easy for people, even those who want to grow, to get into a rut and stay in their comfort zone. As a leader you should try to encourage them to move forward and reach for their potential. You’re not responsible for their response. Every individual has to take responsibility for that. But you can model growth, encourage them, and try to be a catalyst for positive change. Here’s how:
Show Them a Vision for Their Better Future
If people cannot see a better future for themselves, you need to show it to them. Start by asking them questions: If you could be anything you wanted, what would you be? If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do? If you knew you could not fail, what would you try? See what stirs inside them. Many people have dreams deep inside that need only a bit of encouragement to coax out.
If people cannot see a better future for themselves, you need to show it to them.
Treat Them Not as They Are, But as They Could Be
I learned this lesson from my dad when I was a child. He treated everyone with kindness and respect, even the people who treated him poorly. And when he had conversations with people within earshot of my brother, my sister, or me, he would speak so highly of us. He talked about us in a way that was so empowering for a child that we literally got a lot of our expectations from those conversations. We wanted to rise to the high level of his treatment of us. I know he did that on purpose, and it was very empowering and confidence building.
If you were to treat the people around you as they could be instead of as they are, how do you think they would respond? If they’ve been in a rut a long time, they might not rise up right away. You might have to keep speaking positively about them and treating them as people who desire to reach their potential, but I believe that in time most would rise up. And if they don’t, what have you lost? Nothing. Give it a try. Speak positively about a better future for them, and they just might try to live up to it.
Set Them Up for a Win
Many times people aren’t willing to leave their comfort zone because they are convinced that they cannot win. You can change that by setting them up for success. If you put them in a position where an easy win is almost guaranteed, they can have that winning experience inspire them to move forward.
Here’s an example of how you can make this work. If you have someone on your team who you know has the potential to be a fantastic salesman, but who won’t get out of his comfort zone, put him in a position to make an easy sale. If you’ve been working with a client to make a sale and you know that all the barriers have been removed, all the objections have been overcome, and the client is ready to say yes, don’t close the sale. Instead say that you have to leave, but ask if you can set up an appointment for the next day. And mention that you’re going to bring a colleague with you.
The next day, take that salesman who needs a win to give him confidence. Tell him that you want him to talk to the customer briefly and then ask for the sale. Then watch as the salesman closes the deal. That’s the kind of thing that can get someone over the hump and give him or her confidence.
Good developers of leaders don’t do everything to benefit themselves. They do what great trainers, coaches, and mentors do. They put the needs of the team ahead of their own. They set people up for success so that they gain confidence and experience. Those qualities are important if you want to see people achieve their potential.
5. How Do You Determine How Much Time to Give Someone You’re Developing?
Everybody in your organization needs time and assistance, but that doesn’t mean you can help everybody personally. You should be kind and supportive of everyone, but you must pick and choose whom you will develop. If you focus on the top 20 percent of your team, the people with the highest skills and greatest potential to grow, you can ask them to help support and develop the remaining 80 percent.
You may have lots of people worth investing in. If so, don’t try to develop more than the top 20 percent. If you spread yourself too thin, people won’t get your best. On the other hand, if you judge that you have only one person with potential, invest in him or her.
Once you’ve identified whom you want to develop, ask them how much time they think they need in order to be successful. I think we don’t ask these kinds of questions enough. Most of the time, good people will be strategic in their response. Not everyone will be, but good people usually are, because they don’t want to just hang out. They want to get things done. They want to achieve something.
If the amount of time they request is appropriate—based on their potential and the amount of time you have—give it to them, but make it convenient to you. Ask them to fit into your schedule and travel to you. And when you do get together, make the most of that time. Make it count.
6. When Do You Release or “Give Up” on People You Are Leading, After You’ve Done What You Can to Help Them Grow?
Many leaders find it difficult to know when to stop investing in someone they once believed in. Some leaders give up too soon. Others hang on to someone way too long, hoping that person will get back on track.
I believe it’s OK to release people if one of these things happens:
You’ve Given Them the Chance to Change But They Haven’t
When you’ve given people a clear pathway to change, meaning that you’ve made it clear to them how they need to change, you’ve explained why they need to change, and you’ve given them all the resources that make it possible for them to change, yet they still do not change, you need to stop investing in them.
When I started my career, I did quite a bit of counseling with people. I found it very frustrating. When people had a problem, I often could see a clear solution, and all I wanted to do was lay out a course of action for them to take and then wait for them to follow it. But what usually happened was that they came in to talk about the problem, but then didn’t actually do anything about it. The next time I saw them, they would tell me about the same problem again. I discovered that many people cared more about being heard and understood than about changing and growing, and there was little I could do about it.
That’s not the case for a leader. Not only can I offer a course of action for someone to take in order to grow, I’m expected to do that for anyone I develop or mentor. When I do, the person can choose to follow my advice or not. And if he or she decides not to follow my direction, I can choose not to give him or her any more of my time. Why should I continue to invest in someone who doesn’t want to follow my direction and grow? Why should you?
They Have Broken Trust
When people you’re investing in break trust with you, it’s time to stop giving them your time and energy. It’s been said that if you can’t trust everything a person says, you can’t trust anything they say. If someone isn’t trustworthy anymore, they’ve violated the relationship. There’s no good way to move forward.
You Realize You Would Not Hire Them Again Today
Sometimes, when you work with people for a while, you realize that they didn’t have the potential you thought you saw in them when you hired them. Maybe you believed in them more than they believe in themselves and they never rise to your expectations. Maybe they were in an unusually good season when you met them. Or maybe you were mistaken about the talent and skills you thought you saw.
No matter which of these things might be true, the gist is that you now know them better, and you may have come to realize that if you were hiring someone today to fill their role, you would not pick them. If that’s true, it’s time to stop investing in them, because you’ve discovered it’s a dead end. You can’t make people into something they’re not. It’s time to move on and give your time and energy to someone else who can help the team.
7. I Have Empowered Others to Lead and Come Back Only to Find Them Without Progress and Back to Doing Things the Old Way. What Should I Do Differently?
When I first started hosting conferences to teach leadership and help people learn to lead, I felt a lot of pressure to try to make people succeed, but I knew it wasn’t working for everyone. I watched some people soar. But I could see that others were wasting their time because they didn’t make any changes and they led others no better than they had before the conference.
That weighed on me tremendously. I kept thinking, I’ve got to change these people. Back then I naïvely thought it was within my power to change people. In some cases I wanted success for them more than they wanted it for themselves.
With time and experience, I of course realized that I can’t change anybody else. People have to change themselves through their choices. The only thing I can do is create a positive environment that encourages growth and change.
I can’t change anybody else. People have to change themselves through their choices.
If there are people in your organization or on your team who aren’t learning, growing, and changing, and you’ve not yet created an environment that promotes growth, try doing the following:
Treat High Achievers as Partners Rather Than Employees
One of the most positive things you can do for your high achievers is close the gap between them and you. One of the ways to do that is to treat your top talent as partners. Your working relationship should look more like a strategic alliance than like a traditional employment arrangement.
What does that mean? It means that as the leader, you’re not withholding information from your team to maintain an advantage. You’re asking for advice. You’re listening as much as or more than you’re talking. You include your team in the formation of the vision. You share decision making. You work together with them in everything, rather than handing down assignments.
If you do this consistently, you will see exponential growth in your best people, because they will learn how you think. You will also find that people start carrying the weight of responsibility and volunteer to take on challenges rather than having them assigned to them.
Stay Ahead of Your Strongest Players
You cannot set the tone for the environment if you don’t stay ahead of your strongest team members. This doesn’t mean that you have to know everything or that you have to lead the pack in every category. I have many people on my team who know more than I do in certain areas. But when it comes to leadership, I work to remain the strongest on the team.
This desire to stay ahead of my best people drives me to keep growing and learning. As leaders creating a positive environment for growth, we must continue to grow, read, research, and interact with other organizations and leaders to remain on the cutting edge. If we do that, we will be able model creative thinking, emotional security, and servant leadership for others.
Reward Achievers Financially
I’ve found that the best people in my organization have already made the transition from seeking success to striving for significance. They are working for fulfillment, not finances. However, I have always made it a point to reward my top talent financially as a statement of my appreciation. I never want finances to be a distraction or a thorn in my people’s side. If they’re paid well, they can focus on the things that really matter.
Invest in Achievers Relationally
When people reach a certain level of achievement, the thing they most value is time with someone who’s ahead of them and can help them forward through life. They desire a good relationship.
Mentor your best people. Give them time one-on-one. Give them access to you and build a developmental relationship. Your most talented people have a strong desire to learn and grow. Feed that desire. And encourage them to engage in this same process with people who are behind them and coming up.
Stretch High Achievers Continually
A sure sign that someone is a high achiever is that they want to be challenged. That’s always true of top talent. If you have exceptional people on your team, you need to be continually thinking of ways to challenge them. You need to find new horizons for them to shoot for. Don’t allow them to get bored, because if they do, they’ll get restless and start looking for other opportunities.
As a leader, I’m responsible for creating an environment where my people can learn and grow and be successful. I can cheer them on, give them resources, and train them. I am responsible for giving the best of myself—but not their response. I’ve had people in whom I’ve made a significant investment keep coming back to me and saying, “You didn’t help me enough. You need to help me more. I need more of your time.” They weren’t taking responsibility for their own success.
It’s a mystery to me why one person will thrive in such an environment and another won’t. Two people will read one of my books or hear me speak. One will go out and change his or her life forever. The other will walk away disappointed. The same book, same conference, and same speaker can lead to totally different responses.
Give people your best, but don’t carry the weight of their choices. Don’t carry the weight of the results. Help whom you can, and allow the others to find another environment or another leader who can help them.
8. How Can We Overcome Disappointment When We Invest a Lot of Time, Money, Work, and Heart into Our Upcoming Leaders and They Leave?
To be honest, you don’t get over it. The best you can do is try to gain wisdom from it. Loss is the beginning of wisdom. The pain and hurt of having great people leave you makes you give greater attention to the process, especially if you have invested heavily in the people who leave. Try to wish them well, and don’t allow yourself to get bitter.
You may be tempted to stop investing in people as a result. Don’t give up the process. I’ll tell you why: the only thing worse than developing people and losing them is not developing them and keeping them. If you stop developing people, your organization or team has started to decline. And it will continue to decline while other organizations pass you by. The best thing you can do is learn from your experiences and do your best to hold on to your strongest people going forward.
We are living and leading in a world of free agents. People leave for a variety of reasons. You may or may not be able to keep all your best people. They may leave for reasons that have nothing to do with you. But do your best to keep them. Don’t give them reasons to leave. Make your purpose larger than you. Give them every opportunity to work for significance, not just success. Pay them as well as you can. Help them grow. And create a great environment that makes it very difficult for people to leave. That’s all you can do.
9. What’s the Most Important Thing a Leader Must Learn in Order to Be a Leader of Leaders?
There’s only one way to lead leaders. Become a better leader yourself. Good leaders do not follow poor ones. People naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. That’s the Law of Respect from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.
When leaders get together, they naturally size each other up. They test one another. They challenge one another. Some people do it with humor, others by trying to get people off their game. Sometimes it’s playful. Other times it’s not. But if you put a bunch of leaders in a room, they’ll be able to tell you which of them is the strongest. Put non-leaders in the room, and they won’t even be in the game.
So if you want to be a leader of leaders, you will need to earn the right. You will need to achieve success first. The higher the capacity of the leaders you desire to lead, the bigger the success you need to have in your history. You’ll need to keep raising your leadership capacity. You’ll need to make growth a major goal and dedicate yourself to it. And you’ll also have to keep your ego in check. If you have a compulsive need to be the alpha dog, the other top dogs won’t want to work with you.
10. How Do You Move People into Your Inner Circle?
Most of the people who are in my inner circle have arrived there because they’ve proven themselves or because I saw where they could add value. Most of the time, people determine their own longevity. Many former inner circle members stayed with me for a season and then decided to move on to other things. A handful of them have remained with me for over twenty years. Change is fine. The main question you must ask yourself is whether the inner circle is better today than it was yesterday.
Before I think about moving someone into my inner circle, I consider the following:
1. Time
I don’t put someone into my inner circle without having history with that person. It’s just too risky. You need to know someone’s character before you allow them to handle important parts of your world. It also takes time to develop the relationship. I tend to make quick judgments about people. I’m also very trusting. So I have to fight the urge to bring someone in too quickly.
2. Trust
For your inner circle to be effective, you must totally trust the people in it. You can’t be asking about their motives. If you do, you’ll always keep up your guard, and they won’t be able to help you the way they need to.
3. Experience
To be in my inner circle, people need to have experience—not just professional experience, but life experience. I believe people need seasoning to make good decisions. For that reason I don’t want anyone too young. There’s no one currently in my inner circle younger than his or her late thirties.
4. Success
For someone to be in my inner circle, they need to have achieved some success. They need to have proven themselves. They must possess the proven ability to add value to me and the organization. Being asked into the inner circle isn’t their chance to “make it.” They need to already have some wins in their résumé to be considered for the inner circle. You get in because you’re good, not because you have the potential to be good.
5. Compatibility
Life is too short to work every day with people you don’t like. There isn’t anyone in my inner circle I’m not compatible with. The group has a variety of personality types and a variety of skills and gifting. But we’re all on the same page and all get along great. Every day of my life I tell the people in my inner circle that I love them, and I really mean it.
Life is too short to work every day with people you don’t like.
6. Capacity
A person can bring every one of those other things to the table, but if they don’t have capacity, they cannot be in my inner circle. I move fast, I get a lot done, and I expect the people on my team to do the same. Neither I nor the rest of the team has time to wait around for someone who’s lagging behind. We need for people to keep up, not to be trying to help them catch up. We can work together only if we’re all together.
When I turned forty, I realized that my success would depend on the leaders closest to me on my team. That’s when I started to invest heavily in individual leaders in my organization and identify who would be able to best help me and the organization. In the decade and a half since then, I’ve always tried to give my best to my inner circle.
Every leader’s inner circle is a blessing or a curse. Every person on your team carries two buckets: one contains gasoline and the other water. When there’s a fire, they use one bucket or the other on it. The higher you are in an organization, the later you are on the scene. Who gets the hot issues first? Your inner circle. If they like throwing gasoline instead of water on a fire, you’re toast. That will blow up the organization. Every person in my inner circle cares about me and the organization. Every one of them uses the water bucket when fire breaks out.
My inner circle has changed a lot since I was forty. I’ve changed organizations more than once. People have come and gone. Many leaders believe and hope that their inner circle will always remain the same. I mentored one leader whose core group was five leaders. “We’re going to stay together forever,” he told me. I knew he’d be lucky to still have one by the end of his leadership tenure.
Now that I’m in my late sixties, I value my inner circle even more than I have before. We lead together. We laugh together. We cry together. We try to make a difference together. I can’t imagine life without them.
If you have not yet developed an inner circle, I strongly encourage you to do so. Some members will eventually leave you. Some will probably hurt you. All of them will help you. And you will never regret bringing them together. When you’re my age, you will look back at your time with them as one of your greatest joys.