The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential (2 page)

People who make it only to Level 1 may be bosses, but they are never leaders. They have subordinates, not team members. They rely on rules, regulations, policies, and organization charts to control their people. Their people will only follow them within the stated boundaries of their authority. And their people will usually do only what is required of them. When positional leaders ask for extra effort or time, they rarely get it.

Positional leaders usually have difficulty working with volunteers, younger people, and the highly educated. Why? Because positional leaders have no influence, and these types of people tend to be more independent.

Position is the only level that does not require ability and effort to achieve. Anyone can be appointed to a position.

Level 2 is based entirely on
relationships
. On the Permission level, people follow because they want to. When you like people and treat them like individuals who have value, you begin to develop influence with them. You develop trust. The environment becomes much more positive—whether at home, on the job, at play, or while volunteering.

The agenda for leaders on Level 2 isn’t preserving their position. It’s getting to know their people and figuring out how to get along with them. Leaders find out who their people are. Followers find out who their leaders are. People build solid, lasting relationships.

You can like people without leading them, but you cannot lead people well without liking them. That’s what Level 2 is about.

One of the dangers of getting to the Permission level is that a leader may be tempted to stop there. But good leaders don’t just create a pleasant working environment. They get things done! That’s why they must move up to Level 3, which is based on
results
. On the Production level leaders gain influence and credibility, and people begin to follow them because of what they have done for the organization.

Many positive things begin happening when leaders get to Level 3. Work gets done, morale improves, profits go up, turnover goes down, and goals are achieved. It is also on Level 3 that momentum kicks in.

Leading and influencing others becomes fun on this level. Success and productivity have been known to solve a lot of problems. As legendary former NFL quarterback Joe Namath said, “When you’re winning, nothing hurts.”

On Level 3, leaders can become change agents. They can tackle tough problems and face thorny issues. They can make the difficult decisions that will make a difference. They can take their people to another level of effectiveness.

Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others. That is what leaders do on Level 4. They use their position, relationships, and productivity to invest in their followers and develop them until those followers become leaders in their own right. The result is
reproduction
; Level 4 leaders reproduce themselves.

Production may win games, but People Development wins championships. Two things always happen on Level 4. First, teamwork goes to a very high level. Why? Because the high investment in people deepens relationships, helps people to know one another better, and strengthens loyalty. Second, performance increases. Why? Because there are more leaders on the team, and they help to improve everybody’s performance.

Level 4 leaders change the lives of the people they lead. Accordingly, their people follow them because of what their leaders have done for them personally. And their relationships are often lifelong.

The highest and most difficult level of leadership is the Pinnacle. While most people can learn to climb to Levels 1 through 4, Level 5 requires not only effort, skill, and intentionality, but also a high level of talent. Only naturally gifted leaders ever make it to this highest
level. What do leaders do on Level 5? They develop people to become Level 4 leaders.

If people are respectful, pleasant, and productive, they can establish a degree of influence with others and gain followers with relative ease. Developing followers to lead on their own is difficult. Most leaders don’t do it because it takes so much more work than simply leading followers. However, developing leaders to the point where they are able and willing to develop other leaders is the most difficult leadership task of all. But here are the payoffs: Level 5 leaders develop Level 5 organizations. They create opportunities that other leaders don’t. They create legacy in what they do. People follow them because of who they are and what they represent. In other words, their leadership gains a positive
reputation
. As a result, Level 5 leaders often transcend their position, their organization, and sometimes their industry.

N
ow that you are acquainted with the levels, I want to share some insights that will help you to understand how the levels relate to one another.

Now that you’ve seen the levels and learned the basics about them, you may assume that a leader climbs them, leaving one to arrive at the next, similar to the way one moves up a staircase. But the truth is that you never leave a level behind after you’ve achieved it. Instead, you simply build upon it. If you think about it for a moment, you’ll agree that it makes sense. If you start out with a leadership position and you build relationships with the people you oversee, do you resign your position to do so? No. You don’t leave your position to advance, but if you win Level 2 correctly, you never need to rely on your position again.

Once you’ve built relationships with people and move to a higher level of productivity, do you abandon or neglect those relationships? You had better not! If you do, you’ll find yourself back down at Level 1 again.

Leaders don’t trade one level for another. They add a new level to the previous one. It is a building process.

Leadership is dynamic, and it changes from relationship to relationship. The same is true for the 5 Levels of Leadership. I may be on a different one of the 5 Levels with each of five different people at my job. Someone the first day on the job will acknowledge only my position, while someone in whom I’ve invested and whom I’ve raised up to lead will likely put me on Level 4. If I’ve been a good father at home, I may be on Level 4 with my children. If I’ve been an absentee dad, I may be on Level 1. With my next-door neighbor, perhaps I’m on Level 2.

Have you ever cast vision with your team and had a variety of responses to the same piece of communication? To what do you attribute that? Different backgrounds of the listeners? Different intelligence levels? Different levels of training or experience? Different personalities? I believe all of those factors can come into play, but often the most impacting factor is the level of leadership you’re on with each person. People will respond to you based on the level of leadership you’re on with them. And that is subject to change.

Achieving a level of leadership is not like earning a degree. Nor is it like setting a record as an athlete. You don’t achieve it and leave it. It’s more like having to run a race every day to prove your ability. The lone exception is the Pinnacle. Leaders who rise to Level 5 are sometimes given credit for being on that level by reputation instead of just personal interaction. But it’s important to note that at any level, a leader doesn’t always automatically stay at that level. You must earn your level of leadership with each person, and that level can go up or down at any time.

Here’s some good news. As you work to climb up the levels of leadership, you’ll find that it gets easier to lead people. Each advance allows you to be more effective in leading others because your influence increases as you go to a higher level. As your influence increases, more people follow you more readily. Limited influence, limited leadership. Greater influence, greater effectiveness. That’s common sense. However, there’s also some bad news: it’s not easy to climb the levels of leadership! If it were easy, everyone would be a Level 5 leader.

Which is harder? Being given a leadership position (Level 1) or getting people’s permission to lead them (Level 2)? That’s pretty obvious. It takes time, effort, and commitment to develop positive relationships with people. How about moving from Level 2 to Level 3? I believe it is harder to become consistently productive than it is to make friends. It’s even harder and requires much more time to go to Level 4, where you develop people to become good leaders. And it can take a lifetime to become a Level 5 leader who develops leaders who in turn develop other leaders.

Years ago I remember seeing a
Ziggy
cartoon by Tom Wilson in which the hero of the strip was on the road to success, and up ahead he could see a sign that said, “Prepare to stop for tolls.” That would be good advice for anyone wanting to rise up the 5 Levels of Leadership. There is no easy way to get to the top. And each time you go up, you pay. You have to be more committed, you have to give more, you have to use more energy, each time you want to go up a level. And so do your people. Nobody achieves anything great by giving the minimum. No teams win championships without making sacrifices and giving their best.

As I’ve said, it takes time to climb up the levels of leadership. I’ve had people ask me, “How long will it take me to become a Level 5 leader?”

“A lot longer than you think” is my answer. Building always takes a lot longer than destroying. A lot of things have to be right to climb to a higher level, but sometimes it takes only one thing going wrong to cause someone to fall. For example, think about how long it takes to build a great relationship with a person. But if you do something to lose trust with that person, the relationship can become permanently broken in the blink of an eye.

While it’s unsettling to think about how quickly one can fall from a level of leadership, I hope you can take solace in this: once you’ve climbed up to higher levels, the ones below you function as a safety net. So the more you’ve advanced up the levels, the more secure your leadership is. For example, if you make some bad decisions on Level 3 that ruin your productivity or that of the team, the relationships you’ve developed may save you from being fired. The only level without a safety net is the lowest one: Position. You don’t get too many chances to make mistakes on that level. That’s another good reason to work your way up the levels of leadership.

You may give more to climb to higher levels of leadership, but you get more, too. As a leader, your return on investment increases with each level. On Level 2, you earn trust and the right to lead. On Level 3, you add to the productivity of the organization. On Level 4, you multiply
that productivity because every time you add another leader to an organization, you add all the horsepower of that leader’s team. On Level 5, the growth and productivity become exponential as you add leaders to the organization who not only lead others but also create generations of leadership development that keep on producing.

The better the leaders are in an organization, the better everyone in the organization becomes. When productivity is high, chemistry is good, morale is high, and momentum is strong, then the payoffs increase.

Each time a leader moves up to a higher level of leadership, greater skill is required. For that reason, each step of growth requires further development on the part of the leader. But here’s the good news. Each level of leadership achieved functions as a platform from which the leader can grow into the next.

Here’s how this works. To grow to a new level, leaders take risks. At the lower levels, the risks are smaller and more easily won. For example, to make the climb from Level 1 to Level 2, leaders risk initiating relationships. When leaders get to higher levels, the risks get bigger. For example, on Level 3, leaders may rally the team to try to accomplish a lofty goal only to fail; that could cost the leader credibility, stop momentum, and demotivate team members. But here’s the good news: every risk at a higher level is a natural extension of the skills that leaders have by then developed. Outsiders might look at a leader and say, “Wow, he really stepped out and took a big risk.” But those observers may not see the growth that has occurred in the leader. By the time the next risk must be undertaken, the leader has grown into it.

Growing as a leader requires a combination of intentional growth and leadership experience. If people rely only on
experience without intentionally learning and preparing for the next level, they won’t progress as leaders. On the other hand, if they only prepare mentally yet obtain no experience through risk and reward, and trial and error, then they still won’t progress. It takes both—plus some amount of talent. But you have no control over how much talent you possess. You control only what you do with it.

You see this dynamic when athletes try to move up from the college ranks to the pros. They all have a degree of talent. What helps those who succeed are intentional growth
and
experience. The athletes who rely only on their college experience often don’t make it. And the ones who prepare mentally and physically but never get actual game experience often have the same negative outcome. It takes both to be successful.