Leaders - The unicorns of our industry.
The Holy Grail for every distributor out hustling in the field. Their energy, enthusiasm and drive is infectious. A wave of momentum build behind them that can change a team in the blink of an eye. They can change a whole company’s trajectory (and balance sheet) with their initiative and activity.
Which is why ‘Where do I find more leaders?’ would probably be the most frequently asked question I hear.
But for such a commonly asked question – why do so many people still struggle?
There’s a saying in scientific research circles: It’s not the answer that wins you the Nobel Prize, it’s the question. And the biggest reason so many people struggle finding an answer to the question above, is because it’s the wrong question to be asking.
When you’re asking the wrong question, it’s incredibly hard to get the right answer. If we want a different answer, we need to ask a different question.
And so I want to take you through 5 of the biggest reasons I see people struggle to find and mentor leaders in their team – and the alternate question you should be asking instead. Because, paraphrasing Tony Robbins, if you ask better questions, you’ll get better answers.
1) You haven’t enrolled enough people – yet.
Let’s address the elephant in the room straight away: most people are struggling to find leaders because they simply haven’t spoken to enough people – yet. The law of averages hasn’t had a chance to play out – yet.
No matter the product, service or industry – this is a business based on people. And whenever you have enough people in a group, basic laws of human nature will start to play out.
Leaders are the very pointy end of the arrow; they are literally the 1-2% at the very front. Which means, it is likely to take 100 enrolments to find 1-2 incredible leaders. Trying to find the 1%ers when you’ve only enrolled a handful of people, you’re hoping for a miracle.
We need to let the law of averages play out – and you may need to go through 98 other enrolments first before you find your 2 rockstars. You will have the talkers and the dabblers, the interested people and committed people, and then you will have leaders. The handful of true game-changers at the very end of the funnel.
And as much as we’d love to skip the tyre kickers and time wasters, the reality is we must go through the process of finding our 100 first, because that’s our apprenticeship. That’s our skill development phase that will set us up for success later.
Leaders can be acquired in three different ways: by accident, by acquisition or by design. Sometimes, a dabbler will accidently trip over a leader – and everything can change. But hoping for an accident isn’t a strategy we can rely on.
And in a new team launched by a seasoned veteran, or a new company launched with strong, experienced leadership – they have the skills to acquire leadership very quickly. But for the rest of us mere mortals, we have to commit to the process of learning what to do, so that we can design a better system for leadership attraction and development.
And that’s why we need to stop asking ‘Where do I find leaders?’ and start asking ‘How do I find my 100?’. What are the skills I need to learn, the processes I need to follow – the leaders / mentors I need to reach out to and learn from to help?
We have to know the way and go the way in order to show the way. Which rolls us straight into the next challenge.
2) You don’t know what to do with the people you have found.
Finding great people is one thing, knowing what to do next is a whole new challenge. Because as exciting and energetic as leaders are, they can also be meddlesome and impatient. They require a solid, structured process to turn their potential into results quickly.
What do you show them? Everything you learned by committing to the process above.
Leaders present with a number of paradoxes and unique challenges; in this case – they won’t follow a system. Because they’re not followers, they’re leaders. They’re the proverbial square peg in a round hole.
And that means you can’t just give them a video to watch or a script to follow. They’re not used to following, they’re used to coming up with their own ideas and strategies. You need to sit down with them 1:1 and work on the skills they need to realize their vision.
Skills that you will only know if you have walked to path yourself.
If you’re lucky enough to find someone before you’re ready – reach out to your upline / mentor ASAP and ask for their help in the mentorship process. But the very worst thing you can do is expect the system / videos to show them the way – because they need to be coached and mentored differently.
Start asking the alternate question ‘What can I do today to prepare for the future leaders I will find?’
3) You don’t have a system to identify your leaders.
Everyone knows how important it is to have systems in your business. It’s what will move you from having a Network Marketing Job to a Network Marketing Business. More and better systems = more leverage you can create = more money you can earn in equal or less time.
But if you really want to create freedom, there’s an incredibly important system that many people forget: a leadership identification system.
As discussed earlier, the greatest challenge of a leader is that they won’t follow. Which means they want to create their own systems instead of following yours. That’s what they do. They break the rules and reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. When it works – everyone benefits as they demonstrate a whole new level of possibility that people can follow.
It’s a lot like parenting: as much as we want our children to follow in our footsteps, the true goal is giving them the foundation and space to live their own lives. They need to be allowed to have their own independence, they’re not designed to live at home forever.
I’ve spent years reading about leadership; learning as much as I could on the subject with the goal of growing my own skills and being able to help more people. The biggest thing I’ve found is that leadership is nothing to do with rank, title or achievement, and everything to do with the character traits of the person.
Their work ethic, authenticity, tenacity, resilience, stability, reliability etc. are the things that lead to the incredible results they achieve. Once I understood that my strategy around leadership completely changed.
Instead of looking for people who were interested in business, I looked for people with authenticity and grit – and taught them how to build a team. I found that much, much easier – and far more effective.
With this new mindset, start asking yourself each day: How do I identify great people – so that I can help them achieve great things?
Take this mindset into each day, with a system of identification, and the skills and experienced you’ve gained by going the way yourself – and you’ll be unstoppable.
4) You Don’t Know How to Communicate with Them.
After leaving school, I spent a lot of my 20s travelling – determined to see the world while I was young and free. It’s that wanderlust deeply imbedded in my DNA that sent me on the mission to find my financial freedom vehicle.
One of the most important things I noticed when travelling was the power of communication. In my young years, armed with nothing but brash arrogance, I would travel into countries with no knowledge of their language or customs. And I could see all the fancy touristy places, but I was only ever scratching the surface. I spent a lot of money to see a handful of things.
As I matured, I started to spend more time learning about a country, and its language, before jumping on the plane. And the difference was night and day. Being able to communicate with local people meant I was able to see the places you don’t see on the brochures, experience the community and culture that truly changes you. I could spend less money and experience far more – akin to freedom for a traveller.
And it’s the same in your team.
Your customers and business builders need direct, systemized communication. Your leaders will speak a totally different language. They talk about goals, business plans and strategies.
Running an effective team means you need to grow the skills to communicate to both leaders and followers. Tell a leader to follow the script – they’re gone. Tell a follower to just go out and get messy and make mistakes – they’re scared into inaction.
How do you learn how to speak like a leader? Do whatever you can to surround yourself with great leaders. Listen to great Podcasts and listen to the words they use. Read great books and pay attention to how they explain things. Get into leadership rooms and immerse yourself in how they communicate.
In this industry especially – do whatever it takes (legally and compliantly) to get on your company’s big leadership retreats. You’ll sit next to them on planes, eat meals with them, share experiences together.
Look at how to win an award at your company’s next convention; not for the award itself, but because you want to be backstage lining up for an award, networking with great leaders who are lining up too. Who you become, what you learned and who you got to meet thanks to the work you did, far more impactful than the award itself.
Get up each day and ask yourself ‘How do I get myself into leadership rooms?’ and get to work on that. Environment is everything. Surround yourself with people and soak up the learnings like a sponge.
5) They Don’t Believe in You.
This is simultaneously the easiest to identify and the hardest to fix. As mentioned before, leaders don’t follow. They are leaders – they want to lock arms and get to work with other leaders. Game recognizes game.
Which means if you’re not showing up every day, growing yourself and improving your own leadership skills – they won’t see you as someone they can link arms with.
If you don’t know the skills – they will figure that out very quickly and leave.
If you’re looking for short-cuts – they will figure that out very quickly and leave.
If you can’t show them the way – they will figure that out very quickly and leave.
If you’re inconsistent or unreliable – they will figure that out very quickly and leave…
To find leaders, we have to become leaders; because leaders won’t follow a follower.
Ask yourself each day ‘How would the person I want to become show up today?’ and then focus on that.
Even better, get rid of the ‘How do I find leaders?’ question and ask ‘How can a leader find me?’. More often than not, great people find you because of who you’re becoming.
Go back through the 4 steps above and make that commitment every day to grow yourself. Personal development and skills growth – become the person you want to attract. Everything will become a lot simpler after that.
One Response
This is certainly a moment of epiphany for individuals who truly want to go to the top and stay there.