Dear friends,
“There is a powerful driving force
inside every human being that once unleashed can make any vision, dream, or
desire a reality.” - Anthony Robbins
Success
and leadership are closely connected; success is contagious breeding confidence
among the people and paving the way for undertaking leadership roles and
responsibilities. It encourages
successful people to transform as leaders and develop others also as leaders.
John Maxwell outlines 5 Levels of
Leadership where success in one position leads to successive higher
positions in leadership thereby contributing to individual and group
development. It appears similar to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs where after accomplishing a particular set of needs,
people search for accomplishment of next higher needs. According to Maxwell,
there are 5 levels of leadership such as position, permission, production,
people development and pinnacle. In the first level of position, people follow you as you are designated and successful.
In the second level of permission,
people follow you as they are convinced about your credentials, success and
leadership. In the third level of production, people follow you as you
have done something for the organization.
In the fourth level of people
development, people follow you as you have developed others as leaders. Finally,
in the fifth level of pinnacle, which
is the tipping point, people follow you as you symbolize and represent true
leadership. We will now discuss about success before outlining about leadership
and John Maxwell’s blueprint for achieving leadership success.
We
Have Everything within Us
Everyone
craves for success. However, success
comes at a cost. Success comes when you sweat hard in trenches. Success comes when you struggle when the rest
of the world sleeps. Success comes when
you sacrifice. Success comes when you
don’t give up. Success comes when you
lead from the front.
Why do some people succeed while some
fail in their lives? It is very simple. People fail because they make mistakes
and don’t rectify them. In contrast,
some people succeed because they know the right tools and techniques and
secrets and strategies to succeed. Successful people work harder, smarter and
wiser with passion, perseverance and persistence.
Some people don’t realize their hidden
potential. When they realize their
hidden potential, it is too late. Some
people don’t try at all to succeed as they get complacent with what they have and
where they are. Some people try and fail, and don’t try again. The truth in
life is that there are no failures, but only lessons. Remember we all have huge potential within
us. Wilma Rudolph rightly said, “Never
underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are
all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of
us.”
Everything is there in our minds. We must
break our mental barriers and limitations. At times, people are beset with
their preconceived mindset which might have developed due to their past
failures or setbacks. At times, the pre-conceived mindset may become a
bottleneck for further endeavors.
What
is Success?
Success means different
things to different people. For some people, success means making money. For some people, success means achieving the
impossible. For some people, success means breaking the records and getting
recognized by others. For some people, success means acquiring and applying
knowledge. And for some people, success
means living with peace and harmony. In
fact, success means bridging the gap between aspirations and accomplishments.
Success can be defined as
setting goals, working smart, persisting with efforts, managing external forces
and factors, and aligning yourself towards goals and, finally, accomplishing
your goals. It involves realizing and unlocking your potential. Success is all also about giving what others
want rather than giving what you have. At times, people may not appreciate what
you have but they do appreciate when you can give what they want as people have
different expectations. Knowing their
expectations and delivering as per their aspirations will take you towards
success.
John C. Maxwell mentions in his book Attitude that most people have a vague
picture of what it means to be a successful person; it looks something like
this:
The wealth of Bill Gates,
The physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger,
(or Tyra Banks)
The intelligence of Albert Einstein,
The athletic ability of Michael
Jordan,
The business prowess of Donald Trump,
The social grace and poise of Jackie
Kennedy,
The imagination of Walt Disney, and
The heart of Mother Teresa.
However, Maxwell says that comparing
with others is not success. You are
unique and God created you with a purpose.
Try to be yourself. Acquire
success by banking on your skills and abilities. He reveals the success story of Erma Bombeck
who shot to fame from newspaper copy girl to Time Magazine cover girl in his
book Attitude; he states:
For slightly more than thirty years,
Erma Bombeck wrote her humor column.
During that time she published fifteen books, was recognized as one of
the twenty-five most influential women in America, appeared frequently on the
television show Good Morning America, was featured on the cover of Time
magazine, received innumerable honors (such as the American Cancer Society’s
Medal of Honor), and was awarded fifteen honorary degrees.
But during that span of time, Erma
Bombeck also experienced incredible troubles and trials, including breast
cancer, a mastectomy, and kidney failure.
And she wasn’t shy about sharing her perspective on her life
experiences.
Sun
Tzu and Success
“If you trust in yourself, and believe
in your dreams, and follow your star... you will still be beaten by people who
spent their time working hard, and learning things and weren’t so lazy.” -
Terry Prattchet
Every human being wants to be liked
and appreciated by others, and the same has been said by William James, “The deepest human need is the need to be
appreciated.” And it drives people to
strive for success throughout their lives. It fires their enthusiasm. It forces them to follow uncharted
paths. It compels them to go to any
extent. However, very few people
realize their goals and achieve success while the majority fail and fall aside
in their race towards success.
When you blend your inherent talents
with various permutations and combinations, you create more new talents. When you combine these talents with the
skills that you acquire through reading, training, observation, learning and
practice, you can achieve your leadership success.
Achieving
Success
When you pursue your passions, you can
achieve success. When you spot your
talents and develop, you can achieve success.
When you emphasize more on your talents than on skills, you achieve your
success. When you don’t follow the crowd
and do things differently, you achieve your success. Hence, achieving success is easier said than
done. However, knowing what it takes you
towards success makes the journey interesting and easier.
People often acquire several skills
and abilities ignoring their inherent talents thus struggling for success
throughout their lives. What is needed
is to spot what you are strong at and exploit the same. In the process, you can acquire skills and
abilities that must revolve around your talents so that you can reach the
destination of success easily. Unfortunately, people do things the other way
round; they try to acquire skills and abilities and ignore their precious
God-gifted talents.
Success
and Potential
When you want success, you need to
unlock your potential. Both potential
and success go together. Higher the
attempt to unlock the potential, higher the rate of success! We all have huge potential. However, we fail to identify, explore and
exploit. As a result, our potential lies
hidden and dormant. As author Henry Drummond says, “Unless a man undertakes
more than the possible can do, he will never do all he can do.” Hence, it is essential to stretch and grow
and unlock your potential in order to achieve success. You can take a leaf from the examples of
leaders who continuously learned and unlocked, and achieved amazing success.
Tips
to Unlock Your Hidden Potential
Winston Churchill said, “Continuous
effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”
Unlocking your hidden potential helps you boost your self-confidence and
self-esteem culminating into your leadership success. Here are the tips to unlock your hidden potential:
- Believe
in yourself.
- When
others can do, why not you?
- Apply
focused and sustained efforts and energies as that would unlock your
hidden potential automatically.
- Work
hard, smart and wise to tap your hidden potential.
- Don’t compare
yourself with others as it equals to insulting yourself. However, you can
compare your achievements with yourself to check your progress and growth
regularly.
- Blend
your inborn talents with cultivated skills and abilities to tap your
potential.
- Share
your knowledge with others as knowledge grows when shared.
Michael J. Gelb reveals the research
findings that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the
moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually
limitless, which makes every human a potential genius. Therefore, we need to break our mental
barriers and limitations to strive towards success. There are no dull people in
this world. All are active people. But few people keep their mental faculties
lying dormant. At times, people are overconcerned about their weaknesses more than
strengths. Hence, it is vital to see the door that is opened rather than the
door that is closed.
What
is Leadership?
"Leadership is not magnetic
personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making
friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a
person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a
higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations."
- Peter F. Drucker
Anything about leadership inspires
all. There are a number of articles on leadership across the world. It is very
interesting to note that people love to read about leadership. Leadership is
neither a task, nor a title but a way of life! Leadership is not a badge of
honor, but a job with responsibility.
Leadership is not a popularity contest but involves coping with challenges and changes. It is the process where you get other people
to follow you and to do voluntarily what you want them to do.
You can handle machines easily. But you cannot handle men easily as it
involves emotions and egos. Here comes the role of leaders who get things going
as per their visions and convictions. Leaders have the uncanny ability to take their
followers to uncharted paths. They are
passionate about their people and goals.
Leadership is the ability and
capability to lead from the front despite stiff opposition and obstacles.
Leadership is the action where people have to be brought under one platform
towards a common cause or goal.
Leadership is all about setting the
goals, influencing the people, forming teams based on competencies and
qualifications and strengths and weaknesses.
In this process, a leader motivates the people by allaying their
apprehensions, if any, and aligns their energies and efforts towards achieving organization
goals.
In case of success the leader says, “We achieved success because of the team
behind me” and in case of failure, the leader says, “It is me who is responsible for the failure”. Precisely, a leader
spreads the fame in case of success and takes the blame in case of failure.
John C. Maxwell’s Leadership Success
John C. Maxwell has been ranked as the
number one leadership guru in the world. Let us find out how he has made it to
the top. Maxwell has been passionate
about personal growth for most of his life.
He wouldn’t have achieved any of his dreams had he not been dedicated to
continual improvement. He reveals, “If
you want to influence others, you must always lead yourself first. If you
can’t, you have no credibility.” He
unfolds his leadership success in his book Developing
the Leaders Around You as follows:
Every
good piece of information a person finds needs to be processed and filed. He
has used this system for more than thirty-five years. As he finds good articles or quotes, he clips
and files them. This has two
advantages. First, whenever he needs
materials for a talk or seminar, he has thirty-five years of collected
resources to draw upon. Secondly, each
time he reduces an article down to its one most relevant sentence or paragraph,
he has processed through all the information, digested it, summarized it, and
learned it.
Each
time you learn something new, it’s good to ask yourself, “Where, when, and how
can I use this?” He prefers to do more than simply make a mental connection
with the things he learns.
- Select one thing
each week that he has learned.
- Put it on a 3 x
5 card. (He keeps it in front of him for a week.)
- Shares it with
his wife.
- Shares it with
someone else within twenty-four hours.
- Teaches it to
someone else. (He puts it in a lesson.)
He
further suggests that a daily discipline pays dividends. Here is the weekly plan that he recommends at
his conferences:
Monday:
One hour with God
Tuesday:
One hour listening to a leadership tape.
Wednesday:
Another hour with the same tape (including time filing notes on highlights and
reflecting on what has been learned)
Thursday:
One hour reading a leadership book.
Friday:
Another hour with the same book (including time filing notes on highlights and
reflecting on what has been learned)
The
11 Important Keys to Your Leadership Success
There are 11 secrets to your
leadership success. They are more than
secrets; in fact, they are 11 keys to your leadership success. These keys are 11 E’s that are the surefire
ingredients for effective leadership.
They help you unlock your hidden leadership potential and make you an
effective leader. They are Example, Energy,
Enthusiasm, Endurance, Emotional Intelligence, Eloquence, Empowerment, Effectiveness,
Execution, Excellence and Ethics. We will discuss these 11 E’s succinctly, which
are the keys to your leadership success
Example
“Example is the school of mankind, and
they will learn at no other.” - Edmund
Burke
Leadership success starts with the
first key - Example. When we look at leaders
like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa, what made them stand
out from others is setting an example for others. These leaders practiced what they preached
throughout their lives. They have left deep imprints on mankind.
Energy
The second key to your leadership
success is Energy. Every leader must demonstrate
high energy levels. Energy does not mean physical energy alone. It includes mental,
emotional and spiritual energy. When we look at leaders like Genghis Khan,
Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama, we find them radiating a lot of
energy. Only when the leaders are
energetic they will be able to energize and influence others.
Enthusiasm
The third key to your leadership
success is Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is
all about interest towards one’s own area of activity. It sounds like passion, but it is different
from passion. Enthusiasm is contagious. Bo Bennett rightly said, “Enthusiasm is
excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.”
Endurance
“Good timber does not grow with ease;
the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees” - J. Willard Marriott
The fourth key, Endurance is the ability to survive shocks and setbacks. It is a
state of being unruffled and undeterred when problems crop up due to external
forces and factors. Leaders should not
give up just because of a few setbacks.
They need to demonstrate endurance at all times to motivate their
followers. Alexander the Great
demonstrated amazing endurance by conquering the world at the age of 32. Samuel Adams, one of the founding fathers of
America, and Sir Earnest Shackleton, the explorer, are great examples of
endurance.
Emotional
Intelligence
The fifth key to your leadership
success is Emotional Intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand your moods,
emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others. Emotional intelligence involves listening to
others, picking up the hidden data of communication, acknowledging others’
perceptions and managing people’s egos and emotions. It is the ability and the intelligence to
manage the behavior of divergent individuals in a group. Research reveals that 80 percent of your leadership success depends
on emotional intelligence.
Eloquence
Eloquence is the sixth key to your leadership
success. Eloquence involves making the speech comprehensible to all
audiences. Eloquence is about being
persuasive, fluent and elegant in your speaking. Eloquence is articulating your ideas,
insights and thoughts with others at ease.
It is one of the surefire ingredients of effective leadership. When you look at leaders like Woodrow Wilson,
Abraham Lincoln, Swami Vivekananda, Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt, Adolph
Hitler, Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy, it is very clear that they were
all great orators who have left deep imprints even after their death through
their eloquence.
Empowerment
The
seventh key to your leadership success is Empowerment. Empowerment means giving powers to your
people and encouraging them to act independently so that they can learn by
trial and error and build their confidence levels. It builds confidence and
develops competence in them. Over a period of time followers can also excel as
leaders. When you empower others it
indicates that you have confidence in them. It shows that you have trust in
others. As trust begets trust, empowering others elevates you as a leader.
Effectiveness
”Effective leadership is not about
making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not
attributes.” - Peter Drucker
Effectiveness is the eighth key to your leadership
success. Effectiveness is all about being qualitative in applying your efforts
and energies. It is rightly said that
managers are efficient and leaders are effective. It means being thorough in planning and
execution thus minimizing mistakes. It
is a kind of qualitative and smart work.
In brief, effectiveness is all about doing right things rather doing
things right.
Execution
“I’d rather have a first-rate
execution and second-rate strategy any time than a brilliant idea and mediocre
management” – Jamie Dimon
The ninth key to your leadership
success is Execution. Execution is a systematic method of exposing,
understanding and appreciating the ground realities and acting
accordingly. It is a kind of mission to
roll out. It helps translate vision into
reality. It is the link between strategy and reality. It closes the gap between the vision and
outcomes. Every leader must possess this
ingredient to enhance his/her effectiveness.
Excellence
Excellence is the tenth key to your leadership
success. Leaders must excel in their areas in order to command respect from
their followers. Excellence should not
be confused with perfection. Excellence
means being the best. Leaders like to be
at their best and they constantly strive for delivering the best results.
Ethics
“The
mind of the superior man is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean
man is conversant with gain.” - Confucius
Last, but not the least, and the
eleventh key to your leadership success is Ethics.
When leaders possess all the ten E’s and fall short of this eleventh E, they
get into an abyss. The recent global
financial turmoil is due to dearth of ethics at the corporate world. Hence, ethics are the backbone of leadership
success and effectiveness as it builds trust and confidence in others.
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