05 Jan Five Levels of Leadership
Five Levels Because Leadership Is A Big Responsibility
Christopher Hart here from Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting, and we’re coming to you live from beautiful Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Today we’re going to talk about the five levels of leadership, and five levels of leadership is nothing more than a model that I use to master leadership in my own life, in my own journey; and I also use it as a modeling process for others to utilize in their leadership journeys, whether it’s in their business, it’s in their life, relationships, whatever part of their life that they’re looking to implement leadership in.
So yesterday we shared with you… we defined what leadership is, we talked about leadership is influence. John Maxwell says leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. And so along those lines we looked at what exactly is influence, and we discussed that influence by definition is the power to affect one’s character or actions, and we dug into that a little bit and we looked at when we talk about affecting one’s character and actions it comes in two respects, one in our own actions and how our actions can become the model for other people to follow. The second is our words, and it’s not so much the individual words that we use as it is collectively in conversations, and the conversations that we have with those that we lead. If we find ourselves in a leadership situation, business, life, relationships, et cetera, what are the conversations that we’re having with people and what are those conversations framed around? And what they’re framed around is helping people get what they want when they want it.
So initially your conversations need to be about understanding what people want, and then the journey of helping them get what they want, your conversations are framed around what their goals are and when they want to achieve them, their timeline, et cetera, et cetera. So we looked at that piece yesterday and we’re going to dig into that more in future videos. So that I believe just allows the setting of the framework and the foundation for your leadership journey just to understand that piece first.
And so today we’re going to look at the five levels of leadership. Like I said yesterday there’s all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors that leadership shows up in, everybody’s got their model, and what I’m going to share with you today is my model. So let’s take a look at that when we look at the five levels of leadership. So if you have a pen and paper you might want to write this down, if you don’t just listen up and you can always watch the video a second time. But I believe this is something that you’re going to want to capture, resort back to, because it is going to be the framework of your journey if you see any value in this.
Here are the Levels.
So the first level of leadership is to be a great follower. We believe that in order for you to be a great leader you have to be a great follower first, follower of something great… something or someone great. And reason being is because you can’t expect people to be something that you can’t, that’s first and foremost. If you can’t be a great follower you can’t expect your people to be great followers. But more so than that what we look at is by being a great follower of something or someone great that establishes the model by which you’re going to resort back to in times of unknown, times of stress, just in-the-pinch leadership decision-making process.
You know you always hear people say like, ‘What would Jesus do?” That right there is the framework for being a great follower because you’re resorting back to what you view as a great leader and what would they do in those particular moments. So Level One leadership, the absolute very foundation, I think there’s nothing that comes before it, is to be a great follower, you have to follow something or someone great for two reasons, one, you can’t expect your people to do that which you’re not able or willing to do; and two, it’s going to be the framework by which you resort back to it and make your decision making processes. Because here’s the thing about leadership, it’s not X plus Y… it’s not formulaic it’s not X plus Y equals Z, do this and that and you get this, it’s a journey. It’s a journey of failures, it’s a journey of successes, and it’s a massive learning curve journey, and if you have that something or someone great to resort to, to model off of, I believe that’s going to drastically reduce your failures and allow you to just make better decisions along the way.
So Level Two, what’s Level Two? Level Two is to lead thy self. I think one of the biggest failures that many leaders have in their leadership journey is they don’t have their own stuff/type per se, they go into leadership, they have their own issues and they want to stand up and tell people what to do or attempt to influence them, and people look at them and they go “Why should I follow you? Like you’re not even disciplined in your own respect.”
And so that kind of ties back to what we talked about in the last video about our actions, like our actions are very important in the journey of leadership because for instance like real estate agents out there, if you’re not willing to get up and lead generate in your business why should your people? And I’m not saying that you always have to be out there lead generating for listings or buyers or whatever industry that you’re in, but let’s just say you’re growing an organization, you know you need to be lead generating for talent every day, and if you’re not doing that why should your people? So Level Two leadership is all about lead thy self, you have to be able to influence your own character, you have to be able to influence your own actions because once again if you can’t do that how are you going to impart that on other people? How are you going to expect that of other people? How are you going to influence other people’s actions? How are you going to influence their character if you can even do it to yourself? And I’ll tell you there’s a number of different ways that this shows up, and you know a lot of times when I dig into this it tends to step on people’s toes, and I look at that as a good thing. They may look at that as a not-so-good thing, but I won’t get into that in this video. If you want to talk about that offline I’ll be glad to do so, but there’s a number of different ways that we as leaders can show up better.
And I believe this journey of leadership has to do with wanting to become the best version of yourself. If there’s an area of your life that you’re neglecting then that’s the area that you need to learn to lead thy self. Don’t think showing up and being a leader in business and then having areas of your life, your own health, your own fitness, your own relationships, if those are all a mess you can’t just be a leader in your business, leadership is holistic, it’s about all parts, all sums. So if you’re going to show up and say “Hey I’ve got this great team and you know my relationships are a mess,” and that tends to happen a lot in real estate, especially in the sales world. So if you’re going to show up in business and tell people what to do or look to influence them and those areas of your life are severely lacking then that’s where you need to focus. You need focus your leadership journey on lead thy self. We’re going to dig into this more along the way but this is just to give you a broad overview of how you start to navigate this journey of leadership.
Level Three is lead another. And this doesn’t necessarily show up in “Oh I have a business and I have one person that I lead.” This is kind of lead another in the realm of leading someone one on one. You may have a business where you lead 15, 20…I don’t know, 50 people, a hundred people, but it’s how do you lead them in a one-on-one experience shows up in your relationships. If you have a spouse, a partner, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever you have in your life that is an area in which Level Three leadership shows up, lead another. How do you influence that person? How do you help them become a better person through their actions? Becoming a better person in their character, helping them achieve their goals? Relationships is very important, and how do you support and influence that person, not telling them what to do but how do your actions, how does your character, how does your conversations with that individual help them become a better person and move them forward and closer to their goals? So Level Three leadership it’s about in that one-on-one experience, lead another.
Level Four leadership is lead others. How do we influence the character and actions of others in a mass? It could be two, it could be 200, it could be 2,000, it can be 10,000. There’s a lot of people out there that I speak to and they want to be motivational speakers, they want to be educators, they want to get up in front of a room and they want to influence the character and actions of others. And that’s what you’re looking at, if you have an organization, say you have a real estate team, maybe you have five or six people how do you collectively influence the actions and the characters of all those people and what does that look like? Hey if you go to a conference for a weekend, maybe you’re gone for three, four, five, seven days, what are those people doing while you’re gone? If you come back and they did nothing then I think that identifies the fact that you need to work on how do you leave the masses.
If you’re in your organization and you can’t do what you’re supposed to be doing and focusing on day in and day out because you have to quote/unquote “babysit,” you have to micromanage your people as a whole, then you need to focus on the Level Four leadership, which is lead others. And there’s some foundational elements that really help leaders out with that, how do we build a mission and a vision for our leadership? Not just our organization but for our leadership, because that’s what the masses are going to buy into. They’re going to buy into your leadership vision, they’re going to buy into your leadership mission, they’re going to buy into what you value, they’re going to buy into what you believe. And through your actions and your conversations people should show up in your organization and do what they know they need to do because it’s something that they want to do, not because it’s something that you tell them they have to do. And that’s where I see a lot of leaders struggle is that when they leave to go out of town or their focus is somewhere other than direct influence on them day in and day out, their people stop doing what they’re supposed to be doing; and that’s all reflective of that Level Four leadership of lead others.
And so Level Five, what I call …which is the pinnacle if you’re going to look at levels moving upward to, if you want to use like a pyramid per se, the pinnacle is how do you lead leaders? So for instance how do you create subordinate leaders who are going to go out there and lead other people in your organization, in your business, in your life, et cetera? So if you want to look at it as your organization, every organization needs to grow… if you have any vision of growing a organization greater than just being small little mom-and-pop shop, you need subordinate leaders; and so all these elements that we’re focusing on of be a great follower, if you’re going to lead people and you’re going to import this model on them to be a great follower, who are they following? Are they following you? And if they’re not following you who are they following? So that’s why that part of this journey of being a great leader is important cause if you’re going to look to be a pinnacle leader one day of leading other people then you want them, their level one leadership to be following you.
If you’re looking at it in relationships, if you have children guess what? You need to lead them so one day they’ll lead other people because here’s the reality of life, you’re either leaving people or you’re following someone else; you’re either leading or you’re being led; and I would hope that as parents you endeavor for your children to lead other people; and if not that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s neither right nor wrong, it just is what it is. But if you have any aspirations of your children to be leaders well that’s how pinnacle leadership Level Five shows up in your life and in your relationships is how do you teach your people to lead through those four levels of being a great follower, how to lead thy self, how to be the best version of themselves, how to lead other people so that when they’re absent of their environment those people are still forging forward and doing what they’re supposed to be doing because they understand and recognize what they’re doing is helping them achieve the goals that they want to achieve and in turn you as the leader succeed as well and achieve through them, and we call that success with people.
And so what we look at in this Level Five leadership is how do we use this process and model to grow people below us that are going to grow people below them that are eventually going to push us up and create massive organizations or create massive lives, again whether it’s a business, whether it’s your own life, church organization, all the fundamental processes of leadership in the five levels of leadership there are applicable to every area of your life.
So this broad overview we’re going to endeavor into this and really dig into this in future videos, and what you’ll note …notice, excuse me, is that we’ll touch back on this as we start looking at some other topics. So interested in hearing what you’re ahas or what anything of value that you learned of how you can apply it to your life. Just go ahead and put it in the comment section below. If I can help you with anything please feel free to reach out to me. You can private message me or you can e-mail me at Chris@transforminglivescoaching.com. Otherwise I hope you guys have a great day, lead strong, just know God loves you, so do I, and have a blessed rest of your day. Take care.
About the author:
Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com
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