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    You are here Home » leadership

    The Three Keys to Being a Great Leader

    Last updated on Feb 12, 2019 by Dan McCarthy · This post may contain affiliate links

    Guest post by Raymond Houser:
    Being
    a great leader means getting people to do things that they didn't think
    possible. It's as simple as that.
    Many
    people confuse leadership style with true leadership. You don't have to be an
    extroverted, rah-rah motivator to be a great leader. If that’s your style, fine.
    But some of the greatest leaders have been quiet, introspective persons.
    Great
    leaders share several characteristics. First and foremost, they motivate people
    to do their best. They are also humble: they’re the first to accept the blame
    when things go wrong, and the first to give credit when things go right.  Great leaders don't talk so much about
    winning, but about getting the best from the individuals themselves. 
    John
    Wooden, one of the greatest college basketball coaches in history, never talked
    about beating the other team. Instead, he inspired his players to exceed their
    own capabilities. Vince Lombardi was known as a strict disciplinarian, but the
    reason behind the success of the great Green Bay Packers teams was Lombardi’s
    ability to get each player to believe in his own abilities and to exceed them.
    Think
    about what got you into a leadership position: drive, persistence, vision,
    goals. If you want to become a better leader, you need to show each of your
    team members that you care about them as individuals, not just as employees,
    and the best way to do that is by getting them to articulate their own goals
    and aspirations. Remember, they’re not there to help you achieve your goals, they’re
    there to achieve their own goals.
    This leadership philosophy was
    summed up by Zig Ziglar, a great motivational leader who I was fortunate enough
    to have as my Sunday School teacher when I was growing up in Dallas: “You can
    get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get
    what they want.”
    Fred Smith, another leader who was
    Ziglar’s mentor, talked about the leader as servant: “Leadership is not a title
    that grants you license to force others to knuckle under; it’s a skill you
    perform, a service you render for the whole group.”
    This
    gets to the question of rewards. Many companies make the mistake of rewarding
    their top performers with things like a week’s vacation in Hawaii or a new car.
    But this assumes that everyone is capable of performing at the same level as
    the top 2%, which clearly is not the case.
    Performance
    is a combination of aptitude and attitude. Not everyone has the aptitude to be
    a star performer, but everyone is capable of motivating themselves to get to
    the next level. Shouldn't your reward system recognize efforts by the 98% who
    are trying to better themselves, and not just the 2% who are already at the
    top?
    My
    early career was as a sales manager for Southwestern Company, which involved
    recruiting college students to sell educational books door-to-door. (The
    door-to-door sales model is still in use today, even in the age of Amazon, by
    the way.) In the door-to-door book selling business, the biggest obstacle to
    success is the fear of rejection, of literally having doors slammed in your
    face.
    I
    told my team members that nobody enjoys having doors slammed in their face. But
    the thing to remember is they’re not rejecting you as a person, they’re
    rejecting you as a salesperson.  Maybe they’re too busy, aren’t interested in
    what you’re selling, a lot of reasons. They’re not denigrating you as a human
    being. In other words, it’s your role, not your identity, that’s being
    rejected.
    This
    confusion between role and identity is often carried over from childhood
    experiences. When a parent criticizes a child with phrases like: ‘How could you
    be so stupid?’ or “Why can’t you be more like your brother?’ the child will
    naturally carry these feelings into adulthood, with the result that criticisms
    will be taken personally even when they’re meant to be constructive.
    I
    developed something called the ‘ninety no’ contest. Any student who got ninety
    noes during their first two weeks received a prize. This turned a negative into
    a positive: the more doors that were slammed in your face, the closer you were
    to making a sale. It was simply a question of substituting the emotional fear
    of rejection with the rational law of averages. I used this approach
    successfully at Southwestern and subsequently with my own book business, which
    I eventually sold to Thomas Nelson, the largest producer of Bibles in the
    United States.
    To
    summarize, here are the three keys to becoming a great leader:
    ·        
    Put
    the needs of your employees ahead of those of your own.
    ·        
    Help people to achieve their own goals, not
    yours or the company’s.
    ·        
    Reward attitude, while recognizing aptitude.

    Raymond
    Houser
    is the author of
    THE
    WINNING ADVANTAGE:  Tap Into Your Richest Resources.
    He started
    earning money by selling pecans when he was six years-old.  By the time he
    was 12, he had a paper route in addition to working in grocery stores and a
    bowling alley. When his dream of becoming a major league baseball catcher
    ended, he knew he had to focus on other goals. And that is what he did,
    challenging himself to overcome shyness and knock on doors until he became the
    highest-grossing divisional book salesman of his time for the Southwestern
    Company. After that he started, developed, and eventually sold, his own book
    company.
    His
    career had its ups and downs, including a bankruptcy. Yet, despite setbacks, he
    never gave up. Starting a new career in his 40s, he was hired at Merrill Lynch
    where he became a successful money manager who earned accolades—and substantial
    income for himself and his clients—through trust in himself and innovation. In
    time, he started, developed, and eventually sold, another company. Today he is
    a sought-after speaker who offers his experience and perspective on managing a
    career and, most of all, a life.
    He
    divides his time between Dallas and San Diego.
    For
    more information please visit, www.thewinningadvantagebook.com.
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