22 Jan Does The Man Make The Leader?
If You Lead, Will They Follow?
Christopher Hart here from Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting where we look to increase our impact and influence that we have on those that we lead in order to build strong leaders in any environments whether we’re running businesses, organization, churches, volunteer, as well as ourselves, and even our family.
So to preface how we’re going to handle this, for those that don’t know, I do teach and coach to a six level leadership model and the first level is, Be a Great Follower; and I’ve talked about in the past why this is important. If you haven’t watched our previous videos go back into my video link here in Facebook or you can even go to my YouTube channel, we’ll post that here in the comments here in a little bit. But there’s some previous videos that talk about the six levels of leadership so if you want to learn more about that check out those videos. But Level One, Be a Great Follower.
Some of the main concepts of being a great follower has to do with one, you need a model to follow because the model is going to define who you become as a leader; and secondarily what it also does for you is it allows you the opportunity to check down on the concepts of like what would Jesus do? Or what would Steve Jobs? What would the people that you’re following, what would they do in times of unknown and leadership? Because leadership is a moving target, it’s not formulaic where if you do X and do Y you get Z, it doesn’t work that way. But ultimately what I think Level One leadership does for us is it helps us understand who we become as a leader based off of by who you’re following.
The Real Question Is …
And so when we ask the question does the man make the leader or does the leader make the man…first off when I talk man I’m talking more… it’s not gender-specific it’s humanistic, so man and wo-men as far as gender, so let’s just clump it all together into quote/unquote “man” based off like a biblical King James Version context. So what we look at is we understand it’s more of a duality than an either-or, and in duality there’s a number of dualities that I’ve identified in life, and dualities are when two things equally affect one another, like you have cause and effect, for every cause there’s an effect; fire and smoke, if you see smoke there’s fire, if there’s fire you’ll most likely see smoke. So those are dualities. This leadership duality, which is man and leader, I think both equally affect one another. The man will make the leader and the leader will make the man. So let’s dig into this a little bit.
Who or what you follow is going to determine who you become, it’s going to shape your beliefs, it’s going to shape your values, it’s going to shape how you see the world just from a humanistic perspective that will translate into how you lead people, because leading people is about what? It’s about influence. John Maxwell says leadership is influence, nothing more nothing less. Well what is influence? Influence is the power to affect someone’s character or actions. So if we understand that who we follow, what we follow is going to shape who we become, who we become is going to translate who we are as a leader, it’s going to shape our character, it’s going to shape our actions that tend to become the model by which people follow.
So why is this important? This is important because there’s going to come times in your leadership journey that you’re going to be faced with some very difficult scenarios that are going to require you to make decisions, and we’ve talked before in the past that life is choice, your choices determine your decisions and then your decisions will define your destiny. So if we understand that, we understand that in leadership we’re going to be faced with some difficult decisions, we have to analyze our choices. And the gap between choice and decision I believe is shaped by the man, who you are, your values, your beliefs, your frames of reference by which you view the world, the glasses by which you see the world and how you analyze the stimuli in your environments. And the thing about leadership is leadership has a tendency to require us to make in-the-moment quick decisions, and those decisions are going to be shaped by who you are; and who you are gets shaped by what you follow, your programming in essence.
Who Influences The Leader?
And so the question then becomes as a leader where is your programming coming from? What’s shaping your programming? Who’s shaping your programming? Who are you following as a leader? Who’s your leader?
Like one of my mentors is Tony Robbins and if you look at Tony, Tony’s kind of frame of reference program in leadership, influence, et cetera, was shaped by Jim Rohn. And then you look at Jim, Jim… you know there’s a gentleman by the name of Earl, I forget his last name so forgive me on that, if anybody knows hey please post it in the comments… but Jim talked about his mentor Earl. So in essence Earl affected Jim, shaped his programming by which Jim went out and massively influenced and impact the world such that he impacted and influenced Tony Robbins because Tony tells a story about how he’s taking copious notes when he went to go see Jim talk one day; and then Jim looked at him said “Wow!” And he pulled him aside on a break and said, “Hey I have never seen someone your age take so many notes.” Tony was a young man at the time. And then that shaped the journey of Tony and Jim; and Tony started working for Jim and Jim became Tony’s mentor. And then look what Tony Robbins has done, Tony has influenced and impacted millions of people across the world, me being one of them. So much of what I see and do and decide on is based off, and not just Tony, like Jesus is another one of those people for me. So the question becomes who are you following and what’s being followed after you?
So I’d love to hear your comments; I’d love to hear what’s have influenced you, who are you following; and maybe you can help influence and help impact other people just by who you’re following and some of the main philosophies that you are taking away from them. So feel free to let us know who it is you’re following, what’s impacted you and how you can impact and influence the world moving forward. So just remember one thing, who you become determines who you are, and who you are is going to create the frame of reference by how you impact and influence those that you’re leading in your environments, and then that’s going to shape who you are as a leader and your leadership journey will in turn shape who you become.
So have a great rest of your day, remember to lead strong. God loves you, so do I. Have an awesome rest of your day. I’d love to hear your comments, what you’re taking away from these posts. Enjoy.
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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