The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential (26 page)

If you want to make the most of People Development and raise up others to lead, then follow these guidelines:

Recruiting is the first and most important task in developing people and creating winning organizations. College football coach Bobby Bowden says, “If you get the best players and coach them soundly, you’re going to win.” In college sports, the most successful coaches are the ones who are the best recruiters. You can’t develop people without potential—no matter how hard you work at it. So the people you recruit must possess natural ability in the area where they are to be developed, exhibit the desire to grow, and be a good fit for the organization.

The key to success in recruiting is a clear picture of who you are looking for. Many years ago Charlie Grimm was the manager of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs. Speaker Linda Ellerbee tells the story of how one season the Cubs were having a hard time winning games because they didn’t have any good hitters. It’s said that Grimm received a phone call one day from an excited scout, who enthused, “Charlie, I’ve landed the greatest young pitcher in the land. He struck out every man who came to bat. Twenty-seven in a row. Nobody even got a foul until two were out in the ninth. The pitcher is right here with me. What shall I do?”

“Sign up the guy who got the foul,” answered Grimm. “We’re looking for hitters.”

This may sound overly simplistic, but it’s true nonetheless: it’s easier to find something when you know what you’re looking for. Say you’re looking for a tool on a messy workbench. If you know what it looks like, you can find it much more quickly and easily than if you
don’t. If you’re trying to find a can in your pantry, you can find it more quickly and easily if you know what color and size it is.

It’s the same for potential leaders. If you know what you’re looking for, your chance of finding them goes up astronomically. Recruiting a nonleader to be developed in leadership is like asking a horse to climb a tree. It just isn’t going to happen. If you want a potential tree climber, find a squirrel. If you want a potential leader, find someone with the traits of a good leader.

When I go looking for potential leaders, I use what I call the Four Cs:

Let’s begin with the easiest one: it doesn’t take long to figure out if you like people who are applying for a job or asking to be mentored. Is liking them important? Absolutely. If you don’t like the person, you will not be an effective mentor to them. It’s very difficult to spend time with people, be open with them, and invest in them if you don’t like them and want to be around them.

If you are seriously considering recruiting or promoting someone, ask members of your team to spend time with that individual, preferably in a social setting if possible. After they’ve been around the person, find out if your team likes and would enjoy working with him or her. If not, there may not be a good fit. The Friendship Principle, which I describe in my book
Winning with People
, always applies: “All things being equal, people will work with people they like; all things not being equal, they still will.” Chemistry matters.

Good character makes trust possible. Trust makes strong relationships possible. Strong relationships make mentoring possible. You won’t be able to develop someone whose character you do not trust.

Character is what closes the gap between knowing and doing. It aligns intentions and action. That consistency is appealing, and it is also essential to good, credible leadership. If I suspect that someone I’m considering recruiting doesn’t have strong character, I don’t go through with it.

Jim Rohn observed, “Good people are found, not changed.” He said that he came across a slogan from a company stating, “We don’t teach people to be nice. We simply hire nice people.” He thought that was a clever shortcut. It’s also good leadership. If you go into a mentoring relationship expecting to change a person’s character, you’re liable to be disappointed.

During the NBA playoffs, I heard commentator and former player Charles Barkley distinguish the difference between a star player and a support player. “The stars can
at any time
meet the requirements needed to help the team,” explained Barkley. “Support players can
sometimes
do that.” (Emphases mine.) What determines the difference between these two types of players? Capacity.

Fulfillment on Level 4 is bringing out the best in people. Frustration is trying to bring out what isn’t there. If you want to develop people and help them become good leaders, you must not ask for what they
wish
they could give, only for what they have the potential to give. I haven’t always found it easy to assess other people’s capacity. It was especially difficult for me when I began my leadership career. But with experience I began to see patterns in people.

As you look at potential leaders, try to assess their capacity in the following areas:

• Stress Management—their ability to withstand and overcome pressure, failure, deadlines, and obstacles
  
• Skill—their ability to get specific tasks done
  
• Thinking—their ability to be creative, develop strategy, solve problems, and adapt
  
• Leadership—their ability to gather followers and build a team
  
• Attitude—their ability to remain positive and tenacious amidst negative circumstances
  

As a leader, your goal should be to identify what their capacity is, recognize what
they
think their capacity is, and motivate, challenge, and equip them in such a way that they close the gap between the two.

Some people possess an X factor. They are winners. They contribute beyond their job responsibilities, and they lift the performance of everyone on their team. When you discover people with these characteristics, recruit them. They are a joy to develop, and whatever you put into them returns to you compounded.

One such person in my life is Mark Cole, whom I mentioned previously. He has been working with me for twelve years and has a track record of making everything he touches better. Everyone who works with him performs better as a result of his contact. It has been a joy to develop him because of his servant’s heart and superior skills. What a combination!

Once when I was having lunch with coach Lou Holtz, he told me with a grin, “I’ve had good players and I’ve had bad players. I’m a better coach with good players.” The same is true with leaders. If you want to be better, recruit better
players. If you want to develop better leaders, recruit people with potential according to the Four Cs.

Red Auerbach won nine NBA championships as coach of the Boston Celtics and sixteen championships overall as coach, general manager, and front office president. Few leaders in sports have come anywhere close to his accomplishments. Once, when asked about his team’s success, Auerbach said,

In other words, it’s not enough just to recruit good players. A leader must understand how those players best fit on the team and put them there. To do that, he must have a clear picture of each person’s strengths and weakness and understand how they fit the needs of the team.

Author Jim Collins has helped many of us to understand this principle. In his book
Good to Great
, he writes about the importance of getting the right people in the right seats on the bus. Successful people find their right seats. Successful leaders help their people find their right seats. Sometimes that requires moving people around to find where they make the greatest contribution. Sometimes it means trying and failing. As a leader, you have to take it all in stride. Positioning people correctly is a process, and you have to treat it that way. But if
you don’t do it, you will never help your people reach their potential, nor will you create a team of championship caliber, as Red Auerbach did.

I once read a story about a woman who took her young son to see Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. “Mahatma,” she requested, “please tell my little boy to stop eating sugar.”

“Come back in three days,” said Gandhi.

Three days passed and the woman returned with her son.

“Young boy, stop eating sweets. They are not good for you,” Gandhi said to the little boy.

Puzzled, the woman asked, “Why did you ask us to leave and come back in three days? I don’t understand.”

“I asked you to return with the boy in three days,” replied the leader, “because three days ago, I, too, was eating sweets. I could not ask him to stop eating sweets so long as I had not stopped eating sweets”
⁵

I’ve already written about how important it is to model what you want to see in others, so I won’t say a lot more about it here. However, as I think about developing others, here are the things I believe I must model with integrity in order to help people to develop on Level 4:

And allow me to mention one more thing: When discussing Level 3, where you focus on Production, I mentioned how important it is not
to neglect Level 2 relationships. Similarly, when focusing on Level 4 People Development, do not neglect the modeling that you worked to establish on Level 3.

Comedian Jack Benny was once appointed as honorary manager of the Hollywood All-Stars baseball team. As the team prepared to play an exhibition game against a professional team in Los Angeles, Jack handed a bat to his first batter and said, “Go up to the plate and hit a home run.”

The batter struck out, and with great theatrics, Jack Benny quit as manager. “How can I manage them,” he quipped, “if they won’t follow orders?”

It’s not enough to simply tell people what they need to do. That’s not developing their potential. Instead, a leader must
help
them to do their jobs and do them well. Peter Drucker pointed out, “The largest single source of failed promotion is the failure to think through and help others to think through what a new job requires.”

How does a leader equip people to do their work and succeed at it? The best method I’ve ever found is a five-step equipping process. Here’s how it works:

If you adopt this method, not only will you equip leaders, you will begin teaching them how to equip others, which sets them up to become Level 4 leaders themselves.

One of the recurring things I hear from leaders in America who work with people in their twenties is how talented they are—and how few life skills they possess. Some speculate that this generation’s struggle to navigate the basics of life is due to the breakdown of the family and the absence of strong fathers in the home. No matter what the cause may be, it is the responsibility of a leader on Level 4 to help people to learn how to do life well. If the only thing you’re helping a new leader learn is how to get ahead in the workplace, you’re not truly developing that person to succeed, because there’s a lot more to life than work and career.

The Greek philosopher Socrates said, “The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper.” That should be your goal in developing people.

The Center for Creative Leadership has observed that three key elements drive leadership development in others: assessment, challenge, and support. What do these things mean to you as a developing leader?

As a Level 4 leader, you should be continually on the lookout for holes in the life skills of someone you are leading and developing. Ask yourself: