Developing the Leaders Around You

How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential

John C. Maxwell

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 1995
• eBook ISBN: 9781418534684
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Education
• Index: Business

Why do some people achieve great personal success, yet never succeed in building a business or making an impact in their organization? John C. Maxwell knows the answer. According to Maxwell, the greatest leadership principle that he has ever learned in over thirty-five years of leadership is that those closest to the leader will determine the success level of that leader. It's not enough for a leader to have vision, energy, drive, and conviction. If you want to see your dream come to fruition, you must learn how to develop the leaders around you. Whether you're the leader of a non-profit organization, small business, or Fortune 500 company, Developing the Leaders Around You can help you to take others to the limits of their potential and your organization to a whole new level.Learn how to• Create an environment for potential leaders• Identify and nurture future leaders• Equip and develop leaders• Form a dream team of leaders

ONE

THE LEADER’S KEY QUESTION:
AM I RAISING UP
POTENTIAL LEADERS?

One night, after working quite late, I grabbed a copy of Sports Illustrated, hoping its pages would lull me to sleep. It had the opposite effect. On the back cover was an advertisement that caught my eye and got my emotional juices flowing. It featured a picture of John Wooden, the coach who led the UCLA Bruins for many years. The caption beneath his picture read, “The guy who puts the ball through the hoop has ten hands.”

John Wooden was a great basketball coach. Called “the Wizard of Westwood,” he brought ten national basketball championships to UCLA in a span of twelve years. Two back-to-back championships are almost unheard of in the world of competitive sports, but he led the Bruins to seven titles in a row. It took a consistent level of superior play, good coaching, and hard practice. But the key to the Bruins’s success was Coach Wooden’s unyielding dedication to his concept of teamwork.

He knew that if you oversee people and you wish to develop leaders, you are responsible to: (1) appreciate them for who they are; (2) believe that they will do their very best; (3) praise their accomplishments; and (4) accept your personal responsibility to them as their leader.

Coach Bear Bryant expressed this same sentiment when he said:

I’m just a plow hand from Arkansas, but I have learned how to hold a team together—how to lift some men up, how to calm others down, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat together as a team. There’s always just three things I say: “If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, they did it.” That’s all it takes to get people to win.

Bear Bryant won people and games. Until a few years ago, he held the title of the winningest coach in the history of college football with 323 victories.

Great leaders—the truly successful ones who are in the top 1 percent—all have one thing in common. They know that acquiring and keeping good people is a leader’s most important task. An organization cannot increase its productivity—but people can! The asset that truly appreciates within any organization is people. Systems become dated. Buildings deteriorate. Machinery wears. But people can grow, develop, and become more effective if they have a leader who understands their potential value.

The bottom line—and the essential message of this book—is that you can’t do it alone. If you really want to be a successful leader, you must develop other leaders around you. You must establish a team. You must find a way to get your vision seen, implemented, and contributed to by others. The leader sees the big picture, but he needs other leaders to help make his mental picture a reality.

Acquiring and
keeping good people
is a leader’s most
important task.

Most leaders have followers around them. They believe the key to leadership is gaining more followers. Few leaders surround themselves with other leaders, but the ones who do bring great value to their organizations. And not only is their burden lightened, but their vision is also carried on and enlarged.

WHY LEADERS NEED TO REPRODUCE LEADERS

The key to surrounding yourself with other leaders is to find the best people you can, then develop them into the best leaders they can be. Great leaders produce other leaders. Let me tell you why:

THOSE CLOSEST TO THE LEADER WILL DETERMINE THE SUCCESS LEVEL OF THAT LEADER

The greatest leadership principle that I have learned in more than thirty years of leadership is that those closest to the leader will determine the success level of that leader. A negative reading of this statement is also true: Those closest to the leader will determine the level of failure for that leader. In other words, the people close to me “make me or break me.” The determination of a positive or negative outcome in my leadership depends upon my ability as a leader to develop those closest to me. It also depends upon my ability to recognize the value that others bring to my organization. My goal is not to draw a following that results in a crowd. My goal is to develop leaders who become a movement.

Stop for a moment and think of the five or six people closest to you in your organization. Are you developing them? Do you have a game plan for them? Are they growing? Have they been able to lift your load?

Within my organizations leadership development is continually emphasized. In their first training session, I give new leaders this principle: As a potential leader you are either an asset or a liability to the organization. I illustrate this truth by saying, “When there’s a problem, a ‘fire’ in the organization, you as a leader are often the first to arrive at the scene. You have in your hands two buckets. One contains water and the other contains gasoline. The ‘spark’ before you will either become a greater problem because you pour the gasoline on it, or it will be extinguished because you use the bucket of water.”

Every person within your organization also carries two buckets. The question a leader needs to ask is, “Am I training them to use the gasoline or the water?”

AN ORGANIZATION’S GROWTH POTENTIAL IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO ITS PERSONNEL POTENTIAL

When conducting leadership conferences, I often make the statement, “Grow a leader—grow the organization.” A company cannot grow without until its leaders grow within.

Grow a leader—
grow the
organization.

I am often amazed at the amount of money, energy, and marketing focus organizations spend on areas that will not produce growth. Why advertise that the customer is number one when the personnel have not been trained in customer service? When customers arrive, they will know the difference between an employee who has been trained to give service and one who hasn’t. Slick brochures and catchy slogans will never overcome incompetent leadership.

In 1981 I became Senior Pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, California. This congregation averaged 1,000 in attendance from 1969 to 1981, and it was on an obvious plateau. When I assumed leadership responsibilities, the first question I asked was, “Why has the growth stopped?” I needed to find an answer, so I called my first staff meeting and gave a lecture titled The Leadership Line. My thesis was, “Leaders determine the level of an organization.” I drew a line across a marker board and wrote the number “1,000.” I shared with the staff that for thirteen years the average attendance at Skyline was 1,000. I knew the staff could lead 1,000 people effectively. What I did not know was whether they could lead 2,000 people. So I drew a dotted line and wrote the number 2,000, and I placed a question mark between the two lines. I then drew an arrow from the bottom 1,000 to the top 2,000 line and wrote the word “change.”It would be my responsibility to train them and help them make the necessary changes to reach our new goal. When the leaders changed positively, I knew the growth would become automatic. Now, I had to help them change themselves, or I knew I would literally have to change them by hiring others to take their place.

From 1981 to 1995 I gave this lecture at Skyline on three occasions. The last time, the number 4,000 was placed on the top line. As I discovered, the numbers changed, but the lecture didn’t. The strength of any organization is a direct result of the strength of its leaders. Weak leaders equal weak organizations. Strong leaders equal strong organizations. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Everything rises and
falls on leadership.

POTENTIAL LEADERS HELP CARRY THE LOAD

Businessman Rolland Young said, “I am a self-made man, but I think if I had it to do over again, I would call in someone else!” Usually leaders fail to develop other leaders either because they lack training or because they possess wrong attitudes about allowing and encouraging others to come alongside them. Often, leaders wrongly believe that they must compete with the people close to them instead of working with them. Great leaders have a different mind-set. In Profiles in Courage, President John F. Kennedy wrote, “The best way to go along is to get along with others.” This kind of positive interaction can happen only if the leader has an attitude of interdependency with others and is committed to win-win relationships.

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Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ONE: 1. THE LEADER’S KEY QUESTION: AM I RAISING UP POTENTIAL LEADERS ?
• TWO: 2. THE LEADER’S TOUGHEST CHALLENGE: CREATING A CLIMATE FOR POTENTIAL LEADERS
• THREE: 3. THE LEADER’S PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY: IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL LEADERS
• FOUR: 4. THE LEADER’S CRUCIAL TASK: NURTURING POTENTIAL LEADERS
• FIVE: 5. THE LEADER’S DAILY REQUIREMENT: EQUIPPING POTENTIAL LEADERS
• SIX: 6. THE LEADER’S LIFELONG COMMITMENT: DEVELOPING POTENTIAL LEADERS
• SEVEN: 7. THE LEADER’S HIGHEST RETURN: FORMING A DREAM TEAM OF LEADERS
• EIGHT: 8. THE LEADER’S GREATEST JOY: COACHING A DREAM TEAM OF LEADERS
• NINE: 9. THE LEADER’S FINEST HOUR: REALIZING VALUE TO AND FROM LEADERS
• TEN: 10. THE LEADER’S LASTING CONTRIBUTION: REPRODUCING GENERATIONS OF LEADERS
• NOTES