dsadasdasdsadsasadsad dasdasdsad asdsadsadas asdasdasdas asdsadsad asdasdas
“He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk” – John C. Maxwell Hence even if you have the ability to manage people and lead them to victory, but if no one wants to follow you in the first place, you’d be on your own and cannot be called a leader. Simply put, Maxwell defines leadership as influence. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. Now to become the ultimate leader, we have to first understand that there are 5 levels. We also need to understand where we stand at the moment and what it takes to get to the next level. Refer below for Maxwell’s 5 levels of leadership
, where at each level people follow you for different reasons: Five Levels Of Developing The Leader Within You Of course, we should keep in mind that there are trade-offs the higher we go. The higher the level, the more commitment, the easier we are to read but also the greater our growth. Maxwell does recommend us to stay at Level 4 and says that he himself is a Level 4 Leader. Level 4 Leaders develop other leaders which will ensure the long-term growth of your organization and its people. Whereas Level 5 is reserved for leaders who have spent years growing people and organizations. Only a few make it. Those that do are bigger than life. While he doesn’t give us examples of Level 5 Leaders, I think Level 5 Leaders would include people in history like Martin Luther King and more recent leaders such as Steve Jobs. Big Idea #2: Priorities A leader needs to prioritize. This sounds like common sense but stay with me. A lot of people have thrown around the words ‘efficiency’ and effectiveness’ and
most people think that you need both. However the higher you go as a leader, the more you have to prioritize effectiveness, not efficiency. Whether we like it or not, there’s always a trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness. Chances are if there’s an option that is both effective and efficient, the option will be 50% effective and 50% efficient. Choosing both is still ineffective. For example, if an effective leader knew that coaching this one manager would be a huge investment to the company, she would take her time to coach. Even if there was a faster way (e.g. ask someone who’s already done it before to do it), she’d still prioritize coaching because it’s an effective investment for the future. This is basically what the Pareto Principle is all about. It’s also called the 80/20 Rule which states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. For example, I’m thinking about all my achievements in my entire life so far. 80% of what I’ve achieved so far came from only 20% of what I did in the past. For me, that 20% was getting and quitting my corporate career (which I shared in my Start Here post) and also building a great relationship with my brother in law, who would later introduce me to online marketing. I apply this principle on a project basis as well as a daily basis. What is the 20% that I should focus on to give me 80% of the results? This ensures I don’t worry about little things like cleaning my desk or worrying about how I look while filming. Maxwell also introduces us to the Eisenhower Matrix. This is similar to Stephen R. Covey’s Priority Table in his book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. However, while Covey’s table represents our priorities in terms of our life goal, Maxwell uses the Eisenhower Matrix just in terms of our job/ career goals as a leader. Hence the priorities are a little different. We are to prioritize Quadrant 1 – 4 activities in order. Refer to an example of Maxwell’s Eisenhower table below: