SECTION IV LEAD-ACROSS PRINCIPLE 1

Lead-Across Principle #1

UNDERSTAND, PRACTICE, AND
COMPLETE THE LEADERSHIP LOOP

Many people who have difficulty leading across have trouble because their approach is too shortsighted. They try to gain influence too quickly. Leading is not a one-time event; it’s an ongoing process that takes time—especially with peers.
If you want to gain influence and credibility with people working alongside you, then don’t try to take shortcuts or cheat the process. Instead, learn to understand, practice, and complete the leadership loop with them.
THE LEADERSHIP LOOP
Take a look at the following graphic, which will give you an idea of what the leadership loop looks like:


You can see that it’s a cycle that starts with caring and ends with succeeding. Here’s how each of these steps in the loop works.
1. CARING—TAKE AN INTEREST IN PEOPLE
This may sound too simple, but it really all starts here. You have to show people that you care about them by taking an interest in them. Many leaders are so action oriented and agenda driven that they don’t make people a high enough priority. If that describes you, then you need to turn that around.
I don’t mean to sound crass, but it helps if you like people. If you’re not a people person, that may be the first step you need to take. Look for value in every person. Put yourself in others’ shoes. Find reasons to like them. You won’t take an interest in people if deep down you care nothing about them. And if you care nothing about them, that flaw will always be a hindrance to your ability to lead people.
If this is an area of challenge for you, then you may want to take a look at 25 Ways to Win with People: How to Make Others Feel Like a Million Bucks, which I coauthored with Les Parrott; or read the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. However you go about developing people skills, just remember that people always move toward someone who increases them and away from anyone who decreases them.
People always move toward someone who increases them and away from anyone who decreases them.

2. LEARNING—GET TO KNOW PEOPLE
Showing people that you care about them is always a good thing. But if you don’t also make an effort to get to know them as individuals, you run the risk of being like the Peanuts character, Charlie Brown, who said, “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.”
Take the time to talk to your peers in the organization. Ask to hear their stories. Try to discover their best skills. Learn to appreciate their differences. Ask for their opinions on work-related issues. And as much as you can, try to put yourself in their shoes.
There are also structured ways to learn about your coworkers. I often speak for Maximum Impact, a company I founded that is now owned and led by Todd Duncan. One of the exercises the organization offers to clients involves Value Cards. Participants are asked to thumb through a stack of forty-plus cards, each printed with a value, such as integrity, commitment, wealth, faith, creativity, and family. They are asked to choose their top six values, the ones they consider nonnegotiable. Then they are asked to eliminate two cards, and then another two. It prompts people to weigh what matters and make some tough choices.
Recently Rick Packer, a corporate trainer, shared an e-mail with me that he had received from John Farrell of PrintingHouse Press. In it he raved about the Value Card experience and how he used it to get to know the people in his organization better. John said:

A few weeks after I got back [from the workshop], I sat with each of my twenty-five employees—two at a time—so they could take part in the Maximum Impact Value Cards exercise. I told them I thought it would be a great experience, and that they may find out something more about each other than they knew before. I wasn’t disappointed. Each one of the twenty-five enjoyed it so much that they were all eager for me to publicly post the values of each one of their coworkers. So by unanimous vote, I had my graphic designer create and print a 30 x 24-inch poster displaying our top three values. Today it has been officially posted in our office for all to see.

John went on to say that the camaraderie that already existed among his people had gotten even better. He also included a miniature version of the poster his artist created.


Not only does he now know his people better, but they are also in a better position to know, appreciate, and influence each other.
3. APPRECIATING—RESPECT PEOPLE
We tend to appreciate people who can do things we admire. That’s only natural. But if we only appreciate people like ourselves, we’re missing so much. We should strive to see others’ unique experiences and skills as a resource and try to learn from them.
Dennis Bakke, chief executive of AES and author of Joy at Work, has an interesting take on this. He intentionally makes positive assumptions about people and strives to live them out in his desire to respect people. Bakke states his philosophy by describing the people at AES. He says they:

• are creative, thoughtful, trustworthy adults, capable of making important decisions;
• are accountable and responsible for their decisions and actions;
• are fallible (make mistakes, sometimes on purpose);
• are unique; and
• want to use our talents and skills to make a positive contribution to the organization and the world.1

If you treat your peers (and your employees) with this kind of respect, appreciating them for who they are, then they will be more likely to respect and listen to you in return.
4. CONTRIBUTING—ADD VALUE TO PEOPLE
Few things increase the credibility of leaders more than adding value to the people around them. That is especially true when they are neither obligated to do it nor likely to receive any kind of direct benefit from it. When you go out of your way to add value to your peers, they understand that you really want them to win with no hidden agenda of your own.
Here are some suggestions for how to get started:
Few things increase the credibility of leaders more than adding value to the people around them.

Don’t keep your best stuff to yourself. Our natural tendency is to protect what’s ours, whether it’s our turf, our ideas, or our resources. But if you share what you have when it can help others, you really send a positive message to the people who work with you.
Fill in their gaps. I love that in the movie Rocky, Sylvester Stallone’s character says of his fiancée Adrian: “I got gaps, she’s got gaps, together we don’t got gaps.” That could be said of our coworkers and us. Instead of exploiting other people’s gaps to get ahead of them, why not fill in each other’s gaps and both get ahead?
Invest in their growth. I suggested in Challenge #2 (The Frustration Challenge: Following an Ineffective Leader) that you share resources with your leader. Why not do the same with your peers? As the saying goes, when you light another’s candle, you lose nothing of your own. You just produce more light.
Take them along. Many times when we get an opportunity to do something exciting or special, we soak up the experience and enjoy it, but we keep it to ourselves; 360-Degree Leaders always think in terms of who they can take along with them at those times. If you want to influence your peers, share the good things you’re doing with them.
At first it may feel a little awkward to add value to people on your own level. If you work in a hostile or highly competitive environment, your peers may at first look at you with suspicion. But persevere. If you give with no strings attached and try to help others win, they will, in time, come to trust your motives.
5. VERBALIZING—AFFIRM PEOPLE
Take a moment to think about the teachers you’ve had in your life. Who were your favorites? Why did you like those teachers more than the dozens of others? If you’re like most people, you revered them because they affirmed you and made you feel good about yourself.
Few things build a person up like affirmation. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (Simon and Schuster, 1991), the word affirm comes from ad firmare, which means “to make firm.” So when you affirm people, you make firm within them the things you see about them. Do that often enough, and the belief that solidifies within them will become stronger than the doubts they have about themselves.
If you want to influence your peers, become their best cheerleader. Praise their strengths. Acknowledge their accomplishments. Say positive things about them to your boss and peers. Sincerely compliment them at every opportunity, and someday you may have the opportunity to influence them.
6. LEADING—INFLUENCE PEOPLE
After taking the previous five steps—caring, learning, appreciating, contributing, and verbalizing—now you are finally ready to start leading your peers. The things you’ve done up to now have served to build your relationship with them, give you credibility, and display that your motives are good. With that kind of history, you will have earned the opportunity to influence them.
Some leaders are able to go through all the steps quickly, while others need quite a bit of time to complete them. The greater the natural leadership gifting you have, the more quickly you will be able to do it. But influencing others is not the end of the road. If your sole motivation is merely to get people to listen to you or do what you want, then you’ve really missed the boat. If you desire to become a 360-Degree Leader, then you need to take the next step. You need to help them win!
7. SUCCEEDING—WIN WITH PEOPLE
I know that you have the desire to lead others, or you would not have come this far in the book. But I don’t know if you’ve given much thought to why you want to lead. I believe that good leaders balance two very important motivations. The first is to fulfill their vision. All leaders have inside of them a dream, a vision they want to see come to fruition. For some it’s modest; for others it’s huge. The second motivation is to see others succeed. Great leaders don’t use people so that they can win. They lead people so that they all can win together. If that is truly your motivation, you can become the kind of person others want to follow—whether they are beside, above, or below you in the organizational hierarchy.
Great leaders don’t use people so that they can win. They lead people so that they all can win together.

The wonderful thing about helping others succeed is that it earns you more opportunities to help an even greater number of people. Haven’t you seen that in every area of life? A winning coach or business leader has a much easier time recruiting potential players than someone without a winning track record. Once leaders prove that they can help make people’s dreams come true, others seek them out so that they, too, can be helped to win.
And that’s what starts the cycle over again. If you help others succeed, additional people will come into your life whom you will have an opportunity to help succeed. Every time that happens, you must choose to go through the process again, beginning with caring and ending with succeeding. You can’t take shortcuts. True, if you help others win consistently for a long time, they will allow you to go through the process more quickly with them, but you still have to take each step.
When Lou Holtz was coaching Notre Dame’s football team, he was quoted as saying, “Do what’s right! Do the best you can and treat others the way you want to be treated, because they will ask three questions: (1) Can I trust you? (2) Do you believe in this? Are you committed to this—have a passion for this? (3) Do you care about me as a person?” If the people around you can answer yes to all of those questions, then you have a very good chance of making an impact on their lives.