How to Be a “With Me” Leader

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Bringing People Alongside You is Crucial

Years ago, Stanley Ott wrote a book called The Joy of Discipling. If you are faith-oriented, I recommend it. Not a long book but definitely a powerful one.

In the book, Ott describes the premise of discipling (teaching or guiding) others is through a “With Me” approach. Bringing them along with you but also walking along with them; for the journey is not for one person but for both of you. Along the way, both of your grow.

As a leader, your objective is not to be out front; it’s to be beside. It’s not to say, “I have all the answers“; it’s to say “Let’s find the answers together.” It’s the challenge to bring them along with you on your journey, yet at the same time exploring their journey as well.

That’s critical because if the relationship only benefits you, the other person is gonna lose interest. A leader helps others get where they are going while also showing the way to where that person is going. It means you have to care for them, want to know their life story. It means wanting to know where they have been and, even more so, wanting to know where they want to go. And at all times, being a leader requires having someone with you. Otherwise, all you are doing is taking a lonely walk.

[snaptweet]”If you think you are a leader and there is no one behind (or beside) you, then you are just taking a walk!” -John Maxwell[/snaptweet]

So the objective is to always have someone with you, even as you learn. Discovery as a team or group is so much more productive and rewarding.

Who are you bringing beside you? Are you helping them on their journey, or just dragging them along on yours?

The Leadership of Always Seeing Possibilities

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Thinking Possibilities

As leaders, one of the most important things we do is think. We think about our followers, about mentoring and growing other leaders, about the future of our business or our team.

Our thinking becomes dangerous when we start thinking in terms of limitations. When we think in absolutes. When we think with what’s called a “Lack Mentality”.

It’s been proven time and time again; limited thinking leads to limited results.

When we think in possibilities however then answers and solutions come to us.
Ken Blanchard once said,

If you want to go places you have never gone before, you have to think in ways you have never thought before.

Possibility thinking leads to the creative. It opens up new avenues and new solutions and allows you to be a more effective leader for your team.

Solutions Through Possibilities

If you ever saw the movie, Mr. Holland’s Opus, starring Richard Dreyfus as music teacher Glenn Holland you would see an excellent example of this. Mr. Holland is trying to write music and dreams of creating a world renown piece. To pay the bills, he takes on a job as a high school music teacher and faces challenge after challenge with the students and even his own child, who is born deaf.

Where others saw absolutes and insurmountable circumstances, Mr. Holland instead looked for possibilities. His passion for music and his desire to share that passion with others led him to think of unique ways to make things happen and achieve success. He finds creative ways to reach students and inspire them and even devises a way for his deaf son and other hearing impaired people to enjoy music through lights.

The end result was the lasting impact that Mr. Holland had on the people he influenced. He led them places they didn’t think they could go.

How We Can

As a leader, the responsibility we have as well is to lead people where they don’t necessarily think they can go. To do that, we have to be willing and prepared to explore possibilities and seek creative solutions in pursuit of our vision.

[snaptweet]When our vision and our passion join, we see hope. But when we think HOW WE CAN instead of “CAN WE”, then we create possibilities to bring our vision to reality.[/snaptweet]

Here’s some things to help open you up to possibilities:

Be a positive thinker – Many think positive thinking is just sticking your head in the sand, but actually a positive thinker looks for possibilities. They look for how they can get the best out of every situation.
Remember WHY and HOW – Question things a lot. Ask questions like “how can we be more effective? How can we serve our customers more efficiently? How can we improve our profitability?”
Avoid the Impossible Thinkers – The consultants and experts that tell you it can’t be done, that its impossible to reach your goals or objectives. There are always possibilities and we want to look for those instead of what we can’t do.
Think “AND” instead of “OR” – We limit our thinking by creating exclusionary choices. We can do this or have that. Why not look at how can we do this AND have that? How can we improve customer service AND increase profitability? Thinking that way helps us come up with creative solutions that are more effective for our organization.

What possibilities will you open yourself up to today?

Do We Understand Leaders?

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Expectations on Leaders

I attended an author’s briefing today for a new book called The Work of Leaders. It was written by a team of four authors and one of them, Julie Straw, presented the briefing. Lots of great information but one thing she presented near the beginning got my attention and got me thinking and so I wanted to share it with you.

In the briefing, Julie shared some insight into a lot of the research they did in support of the book. What caught my attention was a survey they did on employees asking about the shortcomings on their leaders. They distilled it down and came up with three primary issues that people have with their leaders. They are, in order,

they want them to be more active about finding new opportunities for the team
they want them to focus more on improving process and making things easier for people
they want them to spend more time motivating and encouraging their followers

What struck me about this was the comments themselves. Certainly number three is a quality that leaders should embrace. In fact, a leader should spend the vast majority of their time encouraging people, equipping people, and motivating them to become better than they are. But the other two items, #1 and #2, are not really leadership issues; they are management issues.

Managers or Leaders

One of the things this tells us is that many people put management and leadership in the same bundle. When people say that the leader should be more active about finding new opportunities for the team and focus more on improving process, they are really saying that these are behaviors they would like to see in their managers that obviously they aren’t seeing.

Remember the simple formula:

managers are about process, leaders are about people.

So seeking new opportunities and improving process, making life easier for employees; those are the job of the manager. Equipping, empowering, encouraging, motivating, and growing are the roles of the leader.

That said, to be a truly effective manager you must also be an effective leader. In fact, perhaps what the results of the survey really tell us is that people would like to see their managers both be more proactive in their management roles but also would like to see them be better leaders than they are.

Leaders are Grown

I mentioned earlier that leaders have a responsibility to grow their followers; it’s an enormous responsibility. But for a leader to grow others, they must first grow themselves. You cannot give what you don’t have to give. I think leaders are recognizing this more and more. One of the other survey results cited in the book The Work of Leaders is what people think they need the most in order to be better equipped for the jobs. What was number one?

Leadership Training

The challenge is that we can’t just throw a band aid on it. Offering one training course, or sending someone to a conference, or giving them a book to read will not make them anymore of an effective leader than sitting in a boat makes you a good sailor.

Leaders Sail the Waters Daily

While sitting in the boat you are surrounded by the tools you need to sail, but you must first gain knowledge about sailing. You must spend time developing and applying the skills to sail; knowing how to gauge the wind, navigate the water, determine the course, and bring all elements in line with moving in the desired direction on the water. You must know how to trim the sails, handle the helm, coordinate the crew, and change direction to as the sea and wind changes to keep yourself on course. You must be mentored by a more experienced sailor. You must learn from your mistakes on the water. And you must do all of this day in and day out to become the sailor you were meant to be.

If you are not engaged on a DAILY basis in developing your leadership skills, the growth necessary to become an excellent leader will simply not occur or will be haphazard and slow at best. Leadership growth occurs best when it is

Daily – you must do something every day to develop your skills
Intentional – you must have a plan for the skills you need to develop and how you will develop them
Scheduled – you must set aside time on your calendar for it; otherwise any excuse will help you avoid it
Guided – Someone needs to help you see and navigate the process; like a coach or mentor
Progressive – build on a skill one by one; don’t attempt to master anything in a day

Spend as much (if not more time) on developing yourself and your people. When you do, you will be surprised to find how many of the other process-oriented problems will take care of themselves.

Not sure how to start, why not call me for a complimentary consultation.

Action Plan

Identify three skills you need to develop further. Remember to work from a position of strength and not weakness; in other words, identify your three strongest skills and seek to make them better.
Pick the one you want to start on. Locate resources to help you develop that skill and secure them.
Set aside time on your calendar DAILY to work on it. It should be the same time every day. Guard it ruthlessly; let nothing short of a client need or spurting blood interrupt it.
Keep me posted on how your are doing. I want to hear your success stories.