Book summary “Developing the Leaders Around You”: summary

Introduction

You often hit a leadership ceiling when you rely entirely on your own personal effort and direct supervision. You might manage daily tasks effectively, but your organization stalls because you lack a reliable pipeline of capable leaders to share the weight.

Your future leadership capacity and organizational success depend entirely on your ability to develop the top twenty percent of people around you.

John C. Maxwell explains that you must shift from being an individual producer to becoming a leader of leaders. You accomplish this by mastering your priorities, building unwavering integrity, navigating organizational change, and solving core problems with the right attitude. You also learn how to select, equip, and nurture potential leaders to multiply your impact.

Consider these questions as you read:

• How do you identify and invest in your top producers?
• What steps help you guide people through major organizational changes?
• How do you build a winning team through intentional staff development?

1. Priorities and Integrity

To gain organizational leverage, leaders must invest their time in the top twenty percent of producers while anchoring all actions in absolute integrity.

The Pareto Principle

You face a constant battle against competing demands. The Pareto Principle dictates that 20 percent of priorities, time, or people yield 80 percent of production and results.

To apply the 20/80 principle, you must determine which people are your top 20 percent producers. You should then invest 80 percent of your people time and personal developmental dollars into them.

You can identify these influencers by listing everyone in your company or department. Ask whether each individual taking a negative action or withdrawing support would impact your ability to function. Put a check mark next to the name if you cannot function without them. Leave the name blank if they cannot make or break your ability to get important things done.

• Determine which people are the top 20 percent producers.
• Spend 80 percent of your "people time" with the top 20 percent.
• Spend 80 percent of your personal developmental dollars on the top 20 percent.
• Determine what 20 percent of the work gives 80 percent of the return and train an assistant to do the 80 percent less effective work.
• Ask the top 20 percent to do on-the-job training for the next 20 percent.

You must also categorize assignments based on urgency and importance. Tackle high importance and high urgency tasks first. Set deadlines for high importance and low urgency projects. Find efficient ways to handle low importance and high urgency work without personal involvement. Stack low importance and low urgency busywork for weekly half-hour segments.

The Most Important Ingredient: Integrity

Integrity is the supreme quality of leadership because it aligns words and deeds, directly building the trust and credibility required to lead.

Dwight Eisenhower emphasized that a leader must have followers, followers must have confidence, and confidence requires integrity above all else. In a Carnegie-Mellon survey, 45 percent of four hundred managers believed their top management lacked integrity. A third of managers distrusted their immediate bosses. Meanwhile, 71 percent of 1,300 senior executives put integrity at the top of sixteen traits responsible for business effectiveness.

You can evaluate your character by passing three rigorous tests. Take the Mirror Test by asking if you can live with yourself, look yourself in the eye, and remain conscience-free. Take the Mentor Test by asking if you are totally availing yourself of the teaching you receive from your guide. Take the Masses Test by evaluating how your decisions affect the people who follow you.

2. Creating Positive Change

Implementing organizational change requires addressing psychological resistance, managing timing, and securing the support of key influencers.

Everything rises and falls on leadership. Unchanged leaders result in unchanged organizations because people do what they see. Henry Ford loved his Model T so much that he refused to change a bolt on it and violently wrecked a new design presented by his ace production man William Knudsen, who subsequently left for General Motors.

The Leader as a Change Agent

Change must be evaluated through both a logical dimension of advantages and disadvantages and a psychological dimension of security and stress. While a change may make complete logical sense, it often leads to anxiety in the psychological dimension because people have comfortable niches. You must address these needs before and during transitions.

Make these evaluations before you proceed:

• Make a list of the logical advantages and disadvantages that should result from the change.
• Make another list indicating the psychological impact of the change.

Swiss watch companies controlled 80 percent of the global market in 1940 and employed 80,000 people, but they rejected the digital watch in the late 1950s because they were satisfied with the status quo, eventually dropping to 18,000 employees as digital watches took over. In 1993, approximately 1,600 people belonged to the International Flat Earth Research Society of America.

The Evolutionary Process of Change

Implementing change successfully requires guiding an organization through a structured eight-step evolutionary process from ignorance to innovation.

Follow these eight steps to move your team from resistance to innovation:

• Step 1: Ignorance. No unified direction or sense of priorities is felt among the followers.
• Step 2: Information. General information is given to the people.
• Step 3: Infusion. The penetration of new ideas into the status quo may cause confrontations with apathy, prejudice, and tradition.
• Step 4: Individual Change. The early adopters begin to see the benefits and embrace them.
• Step 5: Organizational Change. The momentum shifts from antichange to prochange.
• Step 6: Awkward Application. Some failures and some successes are experienced as the change is implemented.
• Step 7: Integration. Awkwardness decreases, acceptance increases, and secondary successes occur.
• Step 8: Innovation. Significant results create confidence and a willingness to take risks.

3. Problem Solving and Attitude

Effective leadership demands tackling root problems through structured processes while maintaining a positive, character-driven attitude.

Problem solving is the quickest way to gain leadership. People naturally dislike difficulties, which places leadership reins into the hands of anyone willing to face them. You must address root causes rather than symptoms and build big people who can handle big issues.

In 1910, the people of Enterprise, Alabama, erected a monument to the boll weevil. Its destruction of the local cotton crop forced them into diversified farming, making them much wealthier.

Poor work performance typically stems from four common reasons. Leadership is responsible for addressing all these barriers:

• Recognize that workers may not know what you are supposed to do.
• Address whether workers know how to do the task.
• Ensure workers know why you should perform the task.
• Identify and manage obstacles beyond the worker's control.

Solving problems effectively requires following a structured sequential process. You must act as a coach rather than a king to help others develop their own skills.

• Make a time commitment to people to develop them.
• Never solve a problem for a person; solve it with that person.
• Never allow others to think you always have the best answers.
• Ask questions to help people think through the entire process.
• Become a coach, not a king, bringing out the best in others.
• List their solutions on paper and integrate your ideas with theirs.
• Ask them to decide on the best solution and develop a game plan.
• Ask them to take ownership and responsibility for the game plan, setting up a time frame and accountability process.

Policies are flexible operational guidelines, whereas principles are permanent. You must model organizational principles consistently.

Attitude and Performance

Attitude is more important than facts, education, or past failures, and it dictates the overall climate and success of any organization.

Life is 10 percent what happens and 90 percent how you react to it. Robert Half International surveyed American companies and found that incompetence ranked at 30 percent for firings. The next five reasons combined were attitude and interpersonal problems.

Changing a negative attitude requires moving systematically from identifying surface feelings down to correcting foundational thoughts. You must stop waiting for motivation to strike and act yourself into feeling.

4. Principles for People Development

Successful people developers model desired behaviors, build trust through relational care, and invest their primary mentoring time in top producers.

John C. Maxwell distinguishes between Level 1 followers who work better with people, Level 2 managers who help people work better, and Level 3 true leaders who develop better people to work. Your inward assumptions dictate how you treat others, because what you assume is what you look for and find. Napoleon Bonaparte knew every officer in his army by name and inquired about their families and hometowns to build deep personal devotion.

Assumptions and Motivation

Encouragement acts as oxygen to the soul, whereas criticism destroys performance and morale. In a puzzle experiment, adults given fictitious positive feedback on a first set of 10 puzzles performed better on a second set, while those given false negative feedback performed worse. People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. Christopher Columbus spent 7 years asking King John of Portugal and another 7 years working on Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain before securing funding for his voyage.

You must avoid demotivating factors by offering significant contributions and recognition. You need to remember that it takes nine positive comments to balance one negative correction. When confronting performance issues, you should follow the Ten Commandments of Confrontation:

• Do it privately, not publicly
• Do it as soon as possible
• Speak to one issue at a time
• Once you've made a point, don't keep repeating it
• Deal only with actions the person can change
• Avoid sarcasm
• Avoid words like always and never
• Present criticisms as suggestions or questions if possible
• Don't apologize for the confrontational meeting
• Don't forget the compliments using the sandwich method

Modeling and Mentoring

You must ensure that relationships yield mutual benefits by evaluating the Equity Factor. You should love everyone but give yourself primarily to the top 20 percent of your organization. People are changed more through observation than through arguments. Benjamin Franklin demonstrated this by writing letters in plaster in a field that caused grass to grow brighter green, convincing his neighbors without argument.

Development moves through a progressive five-stage model:

• I do it by modeling
• I do it and you are with me by mentoring
• You do it and I am with you by monitoring
• You do it by moving forward
• You do it and someone is with you by multiplying

5. Vision and Personal Discipline

Leadership requires casting a compelling vision, maintaining rigorous self-discipline, and organizing personal life for maximum effectiveness.

The Indispensable Quality of Vision

Vision is the indispensable quality of leadership that provides energy, unites people, and pushes an organization through problems. Without a vision, energy ebbs, deadlines are missed, personal agendas surface, and people scatter. Great leaders possess two things: they know where they are going, and they are able to persuade others to follow them. According to Stanford Research, 89 percent of what we learn is visual, 10 percent is auditory, and 1 percent is through other senses. Robert Woodruff of Coca-Cola had a vision to ensure every man in uniform got a bottle of Coke for five cents during World War II, and later that every person in the world would taste it.

People fall into four distinct categories regarding how they interact with a vision:

• wanderers never see the vision;
• followers see it but never pursue it;
• achievers see and pursue it;
• leaders see it, pursue it, and help others see it.

Successful leaders must perceive reality, understand probability, and envision possibilities across three distinct levels. Leaders live on Level 3 of possibility, lead on Level 2 of probability, and listen on Level 1 of reality. When a vision is hindered, it is usually a people problem caused by ten specific types of individuals within an organization. Limited leaders, concrete thinkers, dogmatic talkers, continual losers, satisfied sitters, tradition lovers, census takers, problem perceivers, self-seekers, and failure forecasters all actively resist or undermine organizational vision. In 1899, U.S. Patent Office director Charles H. Duell stated that everything that can be invented has been invented.

The Price Tag of Leadership

The first victory a great leader must win is over themselves through self-discipline and personal growth.

Discipline is initially the choice of achieving what you really want by doing things you don't really want to do. Frederick the Great encountered an old man walking outside Berlin who proudly stated he reigned over a kingdom of himself. Developing self-discipline requires starting small with a systematic, step-by-step plan over a sixty-day period per area:

• List five areas in your life that lack discipline.
• Place them in order of your priority for conquering them.
• Take them on, one at a time.
• Secure resources, such as books and tapes, that will give you instruction and motivation to conquer each area.
• Ask a person who models the trait you want to possess to hold you accountable for it.
• Spend fifteen minutes each morning getting focused in order to get control of this weak area in your life.
• Do a five-minute checkup on yourself at midday.
• Take five minutes in the evening to evaluate your progress.
• Allow sixty days to work on one area before you go to the next.
• Celebrate with the one who holds you accountable as you show continued success.

Personal organization empowers you with a sure sense of purpose, clear priorities, and masterful execution. A survey of 1,300 senior executives revealed that 71 percent put integrity at the top of traits responsible for enhancing executive effectiveness. You should work 80 percent of the time where you are the strongest, 15 percent of the time where you are learning, and 5 percent of the time where you are weak. Successful leaders are character-driven rather than emotion-driven, allowing commitment and principles to dictate their actions.

6. Staff Development and Winning Teams

At age forty, John C. Maxwell reviewed his heavy workload, which included leading a 3,500-attendee congregation, overseeing thirteen pastors, running Injoy, Inc., and maintaining 400 annual speaking engagements. He realized he could not work any harder, so his future production depended on developing those around you.

Those closest to the leader determine the level of success for that leader.

You shift from addition to multiplication by working through other people.

The Leadership Line

Leaders must avoid seven deadly sins that hinder team performance and authority.

• Trying to be liked rather than respected
• Not asking team members for advice and help
• Thwarting personal talent by emphasizing rules rather than skills
• Not keeping criticism constructive
• Not developing a sense of responsibility in team members
• Treating everyone the same way
• Failing to keep people informed

T. Boone Pickens emphasized the importance of being accessible and available to stay informed and support team members without second-guessing.

Winning Teams

H. Ross Perot used the motto "Eagles don't flock. You have to find them one at a time" when building his computer company. In a firm of 100 employees, one inferior employee causes a 1 percent loss. In an organization of 2 employees, one inferior employee causes a 50 percent loss. Kurt Einstren estimated that hiring the wrong person costs a minimum of two years' salary.

You must follow rigorous steps when you recruit talent:

• Know what you need before you start looking for someone
• Take time to search the field
• Call many references
• Have several interviews
• Include your associates in some of the interviews and ask for their input
• Interview the candidates' spouses
• Check out the candidates' track records
• If possible, have a trial run to see if the job and the potential staff match
• Ask hard questions, such as, Why did you leave?, What can you contribute?, Are you willing to pay the price?
• Trust your instincts

Winning teams play to win rather than playing not to lose.

Maxwell observed that Big Ten college football teams often lost the Rose Bowl because they played conservatively to not lose. Pac Ten teams played wide open to win.

7. Building and Selecting Potential Leaders

Leaders must act as environmental thermostats, recruit from within using farm teams, and evaluate candidates using the Five A's.

Creating a Climate for Potential Leaders

A thermometer is passive, merely recording the temperature of its environment without changing it. An active thermostat determines what the environment will be and effects change.

Water boils at 212 degrees while at 211 degrees it is just hot water, where an increase of less than one-half of one percent creates full steam.

• Develop an appreciation for momentum early
• Know the key ingredients of momentum immediately
• Pour resources into momentum always

Organizations should recruit and promote leaders from within using a farm-team method rather than relying solely on expensive external free agents.

• Invest time and money in your potential leaders
• Commit to promoting from within
• Show your people that personal and professional growth within the organization are possible and actual

Identifying and Selecting Leaders

When organizations expand rapidly, lower-level managers hire people less skilled than themselves, causing the average leadership score of the company to drop drastically. David Ogilvy of Ogilvy and Mather gave new managers a Russian nesting doll containing a message inside the smallest doll warning that hiring people smaller than oneself creates a company of dwarfs.

• Make Hiring the Responsibility of a Highly Developed Leader
• Hire the Most Highly Developed Leaders You Can Get
• Commit to Modeling Leadership
• Commit to Developing Those Around You

Selecting the right players requires a strategic inventory known as the Five A's to assess needs, assets, abilities, attitudes, and accomplishments.

• Assessment of needs: What is needed?
• Assets on hand: Who are the people already in the organization who are available?
• Ability of candidates: Who is able?
• Attitude of candidates: Who is willing?
• Accomplishments of candidates: Who gets things done?

When hunting for leaders, you must evaluate specific core qualities including character, influence, positive attitude, people skills, and a proven track record. Boris Yeltsin stopped a coup and turned tank commanders to his side simply through his intense confidence and commanding presence.

• Check candidate character for honesty, self-discipline, teachability, and dependability
• Examine the level and quality of the candidate's influence
• Assess whether the candidate possesses a positive, no-limit mindset
• Evaluate the candidate's track record of past performance

Potential leaders can be systematically evaluated using a twenty-five-item characteristic assessment scale to determine their readiness for mentoring.

• Rate each potential leader across the 25 specific characteristics using a scale from 0 to 4
• Calculate total points to determine placement into the evaluation categories
• Match the mentoring approach to the leader's assigned score tier

8. Nurturing Potential Leaders

Providing early nurturing through belief, trust, support systems, and personalized journeys builds a strong foundation for future development.

Nurturing transforms lives and builds a strong emotional and professional foundation before training takes place. People are far more productive when leaders actively nurture them. When beginning to build potential leaders, you must use the BEST strategy to provide essential early nurturing:

• Believe in them.
• Encourage them.
• Share with them.
• Trust them.

Nurturing Strategies

Trust is the absolute glue of leadership and the single most important factor in building personal and professional relationships. Followers must believe in and trust their leaders before they will follow them. Charlie Brown repeatedly tries to placekick a football held by Lucy, who pulls it away every time. You can build trust by applying five specific relational behaviors:

• Time: Take time to listen and give feedback on performance.
• Respect: Give the potential leader respect and he will return it with trust.
• Unconditional Positive Regard: Show acceptance of the person.
• Sensitivity: Anticipate the feelings and needs of the potential leader.
• Touch: Give encouragement-a handshake, high five, or pat on the back.

Establishing Support Systems

To maintain high morale and enable success, you must provide your team with a comprehensive organizational support system. A support system covers five core areas. By applying the Pareto principle, you should allocate 80 percent of your support to the top 20 percent of producers. Provide emotional support to create a yes-you-can atmosphere. Provide skills training to increase capability and productivity. Invest money in people to yield high returns. Provide equipment and the right tools for the job. Provide personnel by supplying good people to get the job done.

10 Key Ideas

1. To gain organizational leverage, leaders must invest their time in the top twenty percent of producers while anchoring all actions in absolute integrity.
2. Implementing organizational change requires addressing psychological resistance, managing timing, and securing the support of key influencers.
3. Effective leadership demands tackling root problems through structured processes while maintaining a positive, character-driven attitude.
4. Successful people developers model desired behaviors, build trust through relational care, and invest their primary mentoring time in top producers.
5. Leadership requires casting a compelling vision, maintaining rigorous self-discipline, and organizing personal life for maximum effectiveness.
6. Those closest to the leader determine the level of success for that leader.
7. Leaders must act as environmental thermostats, recruit from within using farm teams, and evaluate candidates using the Five A's.
8. Providing early nurturing through belief, trust, support systems, and personalized journeys builds a strong foundation for future development.
9. You shift from addition to multiplication by working through other people.
10. Winning teams play to win rather than playing not to lose.