The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential (14 page)

Recently while on a trip to South Africa, I stopped in a bookstore in Johannesburg and picked up the book
Leading like Madiba: Leadership Lessons from Nelson Mandela
, by Martin Kalungu-Banda. I read it on my flight from South Africa to Kenya. It was filled with personal accounts of people who had witnessed their leader, Nelson Mandela,
placing high value on people and lifting them up. One of my favorite stories was about a successful businessman named Peter, who had been invited by the president to come to his home and have breakfast.

On the day of their appointment, Peter dressed in his best and asked one of the company drivers, Dumi, to take him to Mr. Mandela’s home. To Peter’s amazement, his host was waiting for him in the parking area. Peter recalled,

Peter never forgot what Mandela did. And neither did Dumi. Peter went on to say, “When leaders learn to see the personalities that lie behind these seemingly humble titles [drivers, guards, and servants], the people in those jobs do not just feel appreciated, they discover and walk into new horizons of their lives. They become great performers at what they do. They find personal fulfillment.” That is the impact great leaders can have on people. But you don’t have to be a great leader to care about people. You just have to make the decision to do it!

Nothing lifts a person like being respected and valued by others. As a leader on Level 2, your goals should be to become aware of the uniqueness of people and learn to appreciate their differences. You need to let them know that they matter, that you see them as individual human beings, not just workers. This attitude makes a positive impact on people, and it strengthens your leadership.

At the beginning of my ministerial career, my father gave me a great piece of advice. He said, “Son, the vast majority of people who walk through the doors of the church feel undervalued, insecure, and lost. It’s your job to change that.” I never forgot that. And during my twenty-six-year career as a pastor, I always strove to follow that advice. I also try to bring it into my business relationships. I even do it at home. Every day I let my wife, Margaret, know how much I value her. When our children were growing up, we tried to provide an environment where we valued them and provided unconditional love. And as grandparents, Margaret and I enjoy seeing our grandchildren thrive as their parents and we show them every day how important they are to us.

There is a common thread in all great businesses, governments, educational centers, and religious institutions. That thread is everyone’s valuing and respecting people. As a leader who moves up to Level 2, you can help to set an example of that for your organization.

Leaders who move up from Level 1 to Level 2 stop trying to impress others to maintain their position and start developing trust to maintain their relationships. That can be tough, because too often leaders place a higher value on impressing others than on having integrity with them. A story in a book by my friend Bill Hybels is a classic illustration of what can happen when leaders want others to be impressed. Bill writes,

Trust is the foundation of Permission. If you have integrity with people, you develop trust. The more trust you develop, the stronger the relationship becomes. The better the relationship, the greater the potential for a leader to gain permission to lead. It’s a building process that takes time, energy, and intentionality.

Retired admiral James Stockdale said, “When the crunch comes, people cling to those they know they can trust—those who are not detached, but involved.” That is the power of Permission. In times of difficulty, relationships are a shelter. In times of opportunity, they are a launching pad. Trust is required for people to feel safe enough to create, share, question, attempt, and risk. Without it, leadership is weak and teamwork is impossible.

I
f you’re a relational person, as I am, you may be saying to yourself,
What downside can there possibly be to developing relationships, building trust, and gaining people’s permission to lead them? Isn’t it all good?
My answer has to be no. While it is true that the positives far outweigh the negatives, there are still downsides to Level 2. Here are the ones I have observed:

In a hard-charging, high-performance, leadership-intensive environment, leading by Permission may appear “soft” to some people. Caring for people and being relational can be seen as weak, especially by leaders who possess a natural bias toward action (rather than affection). For that reason, some people dismiss it. What a mistake—and what a handicap to their leadership potential.

It’s been my observation that most people start their leadership focused on either the “hard” aspects of leadership, meaning the productivity side, or on the “soft” aspects, meaning the relational side. Those who start on the hard side and refuse to learn softer skills often
get stuck on Level 1. They desire to go to Level 3 Production, but they can’t achieve it without learning and earning Level 2 first.

In contrast, those who start on the soft side gladly and easily work their way up to Level 2 Permission, but if they don’t do more than just win relationships, they get stuck and never move up to Level 3 Production, either. It takes both Permission and Production to become a good leader.

I started my leadership career on the soft side. Here is the good news: I quickly built relationships with people. Here’s the bad news: I never wanted to make hard decisions. I found it easy to love people, but when loving people created tension for leading them, I usually stopped leading. One of the reasons has to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a loving home, and as a result I mistakenly thought I could just love people to the top. But I also fell into the trap of wanting to make only decisions that were approved and accepted by all. I got stuck on Level 2 because my “softness” became a lid on my leadership.

It took an internal crisis to finally help me see what I was doing wrong. It occurred in my first pastorate, which was in a little country church in southern Indiana. Each year the congregation voted on whether to keep the pastor. As a young leader that first year in the church, my thoughts and actions had been dominated by making everyone happy. I had done everything in my power to do that, and I thought I had succeeded.

Then the vote came. For as long as I live, I will never forget the results: 31 yeses, 1 no, and 1 abstention. I was devastated! When your goal is to please
everyone
, and
anyone
is displeased, it is seen as a failure. I couldn’t believe that someone didn’t like me. And it was almost just as bad that someone else didn’t even care one way or the other.

That night after everyone else had gone home, I called my father.

“Dad,” I said, “I don’t know what I should do. Should I stay or should I go?” I was shocked to hear him laughing on the other end of the line.

“Son, trust me, you need to stay,” he responded. “It’s the best vote you will ever have.”

I stayed. But I still wasn’t leading right. For the next few months I constantly asked myself two questions: Who voted against me? And what did I do wrong? My immaturity made me think that good leaders always had buy-in from everyone, they didn’t have to deal with conflict, and they could avoid the reality of making hard decisions. (And, by the way, he was right. In my career, it was the best vote I ever had.)

I was stuck in this wrong kind of thinking for several months. But then I realized what my real problem was: I was a people pleaser. My goal had been to make everyone happy. That was the wrong goal. As a leader, my goal should have been to help people, not to make them happy.

That realization changed my leadership. For the first time I was freed up. I was no longer held captive by every person’s opinion, which was a very unhealthy place to be. I could focus on doing what I believed was best for the organization and the people. Making everyone happy isn’t responsible. Nor is it even possible. This realization made me more courageous and more realistic at the same time.

I needed to add the hard side of leadership to my natural bent toward the relational soft side. Others have to learn the soft side and add it to the hard, productive side. The point is you need both. If you’re relational without being productive, you and your team won’t achieve any progress. If you’re productive without being relational, you may make a small degree of progress in the beginning, but you’ll fall short in the long run because you’ll either alienate your people or burn them out. You can’t become successful in leadership until you learn both.

High achievers want to get things done and get them done
now
! They usually don’t want to slow down for anything or anyone. Leading by permission requires them to do exactly that. Building relationships takes time. It can be very slow work.

If at one end of the spectrum you have achievers ignoring relationships, at the other end you have highly relational people who allow the relationships to become an end unto themselves. That’s not healthy, either. In fact, the most common reason for leaders not moving up to Level 3 is that they become so relational that they lose sight of the primary goal of leadership: helping others work together, move forward, and achieve. When relationships become an end unto themselves, then high-achieving followers who focus on bottom-line results become restless. When that happens, they often try to do one of two things: take over or leave. You must win both levels as a leader to be successful.

If you’re a high achiever who has neglected relationships in your leadership, you may be saying to yourself,
I haven’t needed to develop relationships to be a good leader. I don’t think a leader really needs Level 2
. Here is my answer to that: as long as you’re winning, people are willing to follow—even if you are hard on them or positional in your leadership. However, when you drive people to achieve without slowing down to build relationships, a part of them will want to see you lose. There’s a saying that if you step on people’s fingers on the way up, they may trip you on the way down. At the very least, if you fail, they’ll celebrate your fall and then move on.

People whose leadership style is nonrelational are usually seen as no-nonsense leaders. Positional leaders often use their positions to distance themselves from subordinates. High achievers sometimes intimidate their followers. But when leaders are relational, their followers naturally get closer to them. That sometimes means that they mistake kindness for weakness. They believe that encouragement means they don’t have to respect boundaries. They assume that empowerment means they have the freedom to do whatever they want. As a result, they take advantage of their leaders.

I have to admit this has happened to me. When I have encouraged people, some have built on it. Others have taken advantage of it. Developing close relationships with people who work with me has resulted in some lifelong friendships that I cherish deeply. But it has also resulted in some lifelong disappointments.

As you build relationships with people on Level 2, I believe you will find that there are four kinds of people:

• Takers:
  Those who leverage the relationship to better themselves, but not you or anyone else. They borrow your influence but keep the return.
  
• Developers:
  Those who leverage the relationship in a positive way, bettering themselves and you.
  
• Acquaintances:
  Those who live off of their relationship with you but never do anything with it. They hang around waiting for something good to come to them, content to live off of others’ successes and never taking responsibility to grow themselves.
  
• Friends:
  Those who enjoy their relationship with you, returning your good will and never taking unfair advantage of it.
  

Being relational is a risk, just as it is when you open yourself up to falling in love. Sure, you can stay guarded and never get hurt. But you will also never have the chance to have deep, rewarding relationships that will enrich your life and the lives of others. I hope you will choose to build relationships. I made that choice early in my leadership life, and though I have been hurt and I’ve occasionally had others take advantage of me, I don’t regret it. Most people respect the relationship, treat it the right way, and add great value to me.