How Leadership Works

Contrary to what many believe, leadership is not complicated.

You don’t need a special degree to learn how to be a great leader.

You don’t need some special genetic cocktail to become a great leader.

You don’t even need years of experience to be a great leader.

After reading this, you’re going to understand exactly HOW leadership works.

Not only that, I’m actually going to give you a simple six-step system that will guarantee leadership results.

All you have to do is work the system, and I guarantee you’ll become a better leader!

But before we understand how leadership works, we do need to be clear about what leadership is.

Because people too often confuse leaders with executives, managers, or bosses.

There’s a difference.

I love how Jim Collins clarifies leadership…

He says, “Leadership only exists if people follow when they would have the freedom not to follow. Otherwise, it’s just power. And power is not leadership.”

I remember I asked my dad growing up if he thought I was a leader.

And he said, “Well, look over your shoulder… Is anyone following you?”

Of course, what I’ve learned since then is that while some people do have the gift of leadership, everyone has to choose whether or not to use and develop that gift.

I was reading an article recently published by a well-respected scientific journalist.

The article was on the evolution of leadership.

It discussed how several variables influence natural leadership potential.

These include physical factors (e.g., appearance and height), demographic qualities (e.g., age, gender, and race), skills and abilities (e.g., intelligence and knowledge), personality characteristics, motives, needs, and values.

As I was reading it, I was thinking.

So many natural leaders have no idea how leadership works.

They’re simply operating on their natural leadership potential, but that’s it.

And I can’t help but think that if you just look under the hood for a minute, you would finally realize how leadership works, how simple it really is, and finally be able to maximize your leadership potential.

If you can master the system I’m going to give you today, you’ll master leadership.

Is it hard to master? Well, yeah!

If it were easy, everyone would do it!

But knowing how the system works makes it a lot easier than it would be flying blind.

It’s the difference between driving to a destination you’ve never been to on raw intuition and driving there with a step-by-step map.

I think I’ll take the map.

That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

 

Let's dive in!

Leadership can be broken down into a system of six pillars.

This system shows us how leadership works.

We’re going to go through it step-by-step.

The first pillar is the foundation of all leadership.

You ready for it?

Trust.

Leadership is built on trust.

PILLAR 1: BUILD TRUST

This is pillar number one.

If you don’t have any trust, then you don’t have any leadership influence.

Every aspiring leader has to start by building trust.

There are eight ways leaders can build trust.

Let’s go through them quickly.

#1 SELF-LEADERSHIP

Self-leadership is the ability to exercise strong self-discipline, leading to personal formation.

If you can’t lead yourself, how could you expect to lead others?

For instance, if you have an incredible physique. People will likely trust your advice on health and fitness.

If you went to graduate school for marketing, people might trust your marketing advice.

If you’re incredibly wealthy, people might be willing to trust your financial advice.

You can earn trust by having strong self-leadership in one or more fields.

For instance, this is how Michael Jordan led.

His team trusted him because he had incredible discipline.

They knew he was the guy who could make the shot.

That’s what he disciplined himself to do through rigorous training.

He led from a place of self-leadership, and his team trusted him.

Here’s the second way to build trust as a leader.

#2 GET DESIRED RESULTS

If you can help someone achieve a desired result, you build trust.

I think of politicians with this.

They’ll claim that they can fix a particular problem, in the hopes that voters will trust them enough to give them their vote.

Voters put their trust in a particular leader to deliver on a desired result.

Now, whether the leader can deliver on this promise may determine if they keep that trust.

Which brings us to the next point.

#3 DELIVER ON PROMISES

This is pretty straightforward.

If you make empty promises, you lose trust.

If you deliver on promises, you gain trust.

Don’t make a promise unless you can actually deliver on it.

Let your yes be yes, and your no be no.

#4 BE HONEST & TRANSPARENT

First, don’t be secretive.

Nothing spreads distrust like a secretive person or culture.

Share your thoughts and intentions openly, even when they’re difficult.

If there’s a problem looming, talk about it.

Don’t hide things.

Share openly.

This builds trust.

#5 BE CONSISTENT

Never stop showing up.

Stay faithful day after day, week after week, year after year.

Follow through on commitments.

Keep your word.

Stay focused.

Act predictably.

Be reliable.

This kind of consistency builds trust.

#6 OWN YOUR MISTAKES

Don’t make excuses or cast blame; take responsibility for your mistakes.

Apologize when you mess up.

Explain what you learned from your mistake and how you'll do things differently next time.

Too many leaders think that this undermines trust.

They think they need to act like they have it all together.

You’ve got to stop that.

That’s not true, and it’s not helping you build trust.

You’re obviously human, and you make mistakes, and the people around you know that you do.

So… Own them.

People will respect you for it and will trust you more.

#7 HAVE INTEGRITY

Never, ever, ever, compromise your integrity.

In some cases, you could lose trust forever.

I did an entire episode on this, I’ll link to it below.

Integrity is everything.

You can’t build trust and keep trust as a leader without it.

When it comes to integrity, a lot of people think of leaders like Abraham Lincoln.

Good Ole' Honest Abe.

I also think of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Graham, or Mother Teresa.

Integrity builds trust that lasts even after you’re gone.

That’s powerful.

Here’s the final way you can build trust as a leader.

#8 SERVE

In fact, this may be one of the most effective ways to build trust.

Serve others.

Go out of your way to serve.

Even when it’s inconvenient.

Especially when it’s inconvenient.

Bring someone a meal.

Help someone move.

Buy someone a coffee or bring them a treat.

Say something nice or compliment them.

People trust you when they know you care about them.

People know you care about them when they feel served by you.

So, those are eight ways to build trust.

In many ways, this pillar is the most important.

Building trust is the foundation of leadership.

Okay, here’s pillar number two.

PILLAR 2: ESTABLISH A PURPOSE

Now that you’ve built trust, you’re in a position where you will be knowingly or unknowingly leveraging that trust to move people towards a specific outcome.

This is what some people refer to as influence.

The question is… What are you influencing people towards?

What is the destination?

This is the purpose of your leadership.

This is the stage where leaders develop things like mission, vision, values, and goals.

This is the purpose that you will lead people towards.

Now… Hopefully, you have a strong purpose.

If it’s just about making money or growing bigger.

I’m sorry, but that’s shallow, and it’s not specific enough.

A purpose has to go deep and be crystal clear.

Here are a few good examples of company purposes that I’m sure you’re familiar with:

Google’s mission statement is to “Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Amazon states that they are “Guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We strive to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.”

One of the largest non-profit organizations in the world, United Way, “Seeks to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good.”

The Salvation Army, which is a global faith-based organization, has a mission to “preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and meet human needs in His name without discrimination.”

The U.S. Army’s mission is guided by a simple motto that has existed since the Revolutionary War… “This We'll Defend”

These examples are clear, specific, and meaningful.

That’s why they work.

So, what is YOUR purpose?

What are YOU leading people towards?

You’ve got to establish a clear purpose, or you’re going to be a leader chasing your tail.

Develop a vision, internalize a mission, and embrace values.

That’s what a leader does.

This brings us to the next pillar.

PILLAR 3: MOTIVATE PEOPLE TOWARD THE PURPOSE

Now that you’ve built trust and established the purpose, it’s time to motivate people toward the purpose.

It’s the leader’s job to get people to take action.

Movement creates momentum.

A leader needs to spark the movement.

There are several ways to do this, but the best one is to lead with passion.

Is the passion you have for the purpose infectious?

People listen to passionate people.

Lead with passion, and people WILL follow.

But it’s not just passion.

A leader also has to be able to communicate.

Communication needs to be clear, direct, and yes… Passionate!

There should be no question about what the purpose is.

Lastly, the leader needs not only to point people toward the purpose but also to keep them FOCUSED on it.

You may have heard the classic leadership mantra…

VISION LEAKS.

It’s true.

People lose their focus.

A leader keeps the people on course.

As your friendly neighborhood leadership guru, Simon Sinek would say, a leader reminds people of the “Why.”

The “Why” of course is the purpose.

And yes, if you, as the leader, do not fully understand the “Why.”

There’s no chance the people you lead will understand it.

So, it starts with you, the leader.

Next comes pillar number four.

PILLAR 4: NAVIGATE PROBLEMS

Problems come in all shapes and sizes.

It could be economic downturns.

It could be market disruptions.

It could be relational conflict.

It could be a global pandemic.

You never know what problems will arise or when they’ll strike!

But they will.

Like a captain at sea.

Storms are inevitable, and you need to be prepared.

Do you have what it takes to navigate the choppy waters of leadership?

It’s the leader's job to navigate the problems.

This takes research.

It takes strategic planning.

It takes relational and interpersonal skills.

It takes courage and patience.

It takes a thick skin to absorb the hits and the hurts.

This is where a lot of leaders throw in the towel.

It’s also where the great leaders are formed.

Through fire.

Whatever the purpose is you’re leading to, you will experience problems along the way.

It’s your job to navigate them.

Here’s the next pillar in the system.

PILLAR 5: EMPOWER AND PROTECT

Along your leadership journey, you’ll find yourself bumping up against various walls.

These could be plateaus, bottlenecks, outdated ways of doing things, or a number of other obstacles.

With each wall you hit, you’ll realize that your leadership job boils down to empowering and protecting.

There are three main ways this plays out: Delegation, Organizational Structure, and Culture Setting.

Let’s briefly talk about each one, starting with delegation.

Delegation has become a buzzword in leadership circles.

But for how much it’s talked about, we all still struggle with it.

Here’s the truth about delegation.

This is the stage where leaders have to shift from trying to earn trust to extending it to others.

In other words, delegation is sharing leadership.

It requires the leader to let go of something they used to hold on to.

I don't care who you are; that’s hard.

Many leaders get to this point in the system and stop.

It’s a wall they can’t get past.

It could be pride, it could be fear, it could be a need for control, it could be a lot of things… But for whatever reason, some leaders can’t handle sharing leadership or extending trust through delegation.

What’s sad is that if you don’t learn how to delegate, whatever you’re leading will stop growing at this stage of the system.

You’ve got to learn how to delegate.

And not just once, as the entity you lead grows, you will have to learn how to delegate more and more and more…

It’s practically a never-ending growing pain.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like an entire episode on how delegation works.

But for now, consider the book “Who Not How” by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

I’ll link it below.

It’s a helpful read.

You can find more suggestions in my leadership resource list, too. That’s also linked below.

In addition to delegation, this pillar involves organizational structure.

If your business or organization is growing, then you’ll likely need to rethink your organizational structure, darn near close to annually.

If you don’t meet growth with fresh systems and structure, you’ll start to see symptoms like bottlenecks, poor communication, and frustration among team members.

Growth is fantastic, but it will inevitably require you to rethink systems and structure constantly.

And then there is the culture that you set as the leader.

This is another leadership buzzword.

Culture-setting is where the leader establishes the environment.

The shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes that define how people work and interact within an organization.

You see, all three of these, delegation, organizational structure, and culture-setting, are concerned with empowering and protecting the collective group toward the purpose.

This pillar is where some of the most powerful leadership principles are realized.

This is also the point in the leadership system that many aspiring leaders never realize.

If you can get to this level, then you’ve done a phenomenal job.

Now, here comes the final pillar of the leadership system.

Everything so far has been building up to this final pillar.

PILLAR 6: THE OUTCOMES

All of the previous pillars determine the outcomes of your leadership.

If you did a good job building trust, establishing a purpose, motivating others towards the purpose, navigating problems, and empowering and protecting, then the outcomes will likely be a success.

If you dropped the ball on any of the previous pillars, the outcomes might be a failure.

Here’s the interesting thing.

This is important.

The outcomes will feed back into the system.

If you have a success, guess what?

You’ve built more trust.

And that extra trust feeds back into pillar one, and the leadership system gets stronger.

On the other hand, if the outcome was a failure, it more often leads to a loss of trust and feeds back into the system, weakening it.

This leadership system is cyclical.

The more you grow within each of these pillars, the more effective your leadership becomes.

Do you see how powerful this is?

This six-step system not only walks you through how leadership works but also gives you a clear indication of which leadership areas you need to grow in.

So, let’s do an audit.

Which of these pillars makes sense to you?

I’m sure you’re naturally gifted at one or more of the skills needed within the various pillars.

On the other hand, which pillars do you feel like you need to grow in?

What areas do you think are currently holding you back?

If you’d like to go deeper on any one pillar, I encourage you to take advantage of my free leadership resource list below, my gift to you.

Keep fighting the good fight!

I’ll see you again real soon!