Are you leading by default or by design?

Want your team to achieve dramatically different results in 2017? Then, you must intentionally do dramatically different things.

Note: The following is an excerpt (Chapter 19) from my book, MAXIMIZE Your Leadership Potential: Moving Beyond Management & Supervision.

HOW HIGH WILL YOU CLIMB?

DEVELOP YOURSELF WITH THE INTENTION OF DEVELOPING OTHERS

"Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead." ~ Mark Miller

I’ve shared many principles that will help you climb to the top of the leadership mountain. So far, I’ve been focused on getting you to the top by helping you become a highly effective leader of yourself and your team. But remember, getting to the top will make you a great leader, but it will not make you a high impact leader.

If you want to become a high impact leader, you must go back down and help others climb their way to the top effectively and efficiently. Great leaders treat their teams with respect, build great relationships, value them, and help them get great results, but they seldom intentionally do more than is required to develop their team.

Low impact leaders don’t develop their team members because they are insecure. They feel threatened by anyone and everyone for various reasons. Actually, their goal is to make sure everyone stays in their place, doesn’t threaten them, and learns to do their job. When they must fill a position, their biggest objective is to find someone that will stay in the position and not move upward or onward.

Great leaders are very secure. However, they also don’t develop their team members. These leaders are unwilling to pay the additional price of developing themselves beyond what is required to do their job. I’ve met many great leaders who are content with who they are and what they’re doing.

They are not growth oriented. They are goal oriented. And unfortunately, they have reached their goal. It may be a certain salary or a certain position. Whatever it is, they no longer want to grow. They are content to coast. But, what are they leaving on the table?

Some are team leaders. Some are supervisors. Some are managers. Some are directors. Some are vice-presidents. Some are presidents. Some are CEOs. Some are business owners. They are everywhere. The world needs them to step up, but they don’t have any desire to step up. They’re content.

Are you one of them? Are you going to settle for success? Success is about you. It’s about reaching the top of the mountain. But, there’s something beyond success. It’s what you can only find if you choose to go back down the mountain. I’m talking about significance. Significance is about helping others become successful. 

Position and title don’t have anything to do with what I’m asking you to consider. At this point, I want to know if you’re one of those special leaders. I want to know if you have the desire to grow beyond what is required of you and become a high impact leader.

You can become a great, successful leader by developing yourself at work. But to truly become an exceptional high impact leader, you must choose to work on developing yourself when you’re not at work. Very few leaders are willing to make this kind of sacrifice.

Until I left the corporate world, I was just another great leader making things happen. I didn’t know what I didn’t know about leadership or what I was leaving on the table.

I got great results. The teams I led got great results. They liked me, and I liked them. That’s great leadership. I did an exceptional job at doing what was expected at work. However, when I got off work, I didn’t do anything to develop myself. 

Why should I? I had it made. Nice cars. Nice home. Nice vacations. Nice wife. Nice life. That was my goal at the time, and I had reached that goal. Success!

For high impact leaders, success is truly the starting point. For all other leaders, success is the stopping point. Something happened the same year I left the corporate world. I was exposed to professional leadership content like you’re reading in this book. As a result, I started to look in the mirror. I started to become growth oriented instead of goal oriented.

I began to understand I could make a much bigger impact on the lives of others. I decided I wanted to become a high impact leader. I hope you do too.

For me, that meant giving up a lot of things that were wasting my time. I gave up toxic people. They were not toxic when I was successful. I actually called them friends at that time. As I began to grow, I realized they weren’t interested. I quickly began to see they were more interested in holding me back instead of encouraging me to grow.

I quickly learned the only time I had to grow myself into a high impact leader was between the time I got off work and the time I went back to work, between 5pm and 7am weekdays and on my weekends off. That’s right. I had to give up some of my personal time. But, that’s a lower level leader’s way of thinking. I saw it that way in the beginning too.

However, I quickly figured out I wasn’t actually giving up my personal time. I was simply utilizing it better. Instead of wasting my time on meaningless activities, I began investing my time in my own personal development. I started reading. I hated to read then, and I still do. But, I’ve discovered I like to learn more than I hate to read. So, I read leadership books every day. I also got into leadership audios, videos, and started investing my own money to attend leadership seminars.

My results since then have been amazing. My life is on a completely different level now. I’ve not only increased my earning potential to figures I could never have imagined in the past, but I’ve also helped many others do it. I hope you’re next!

Do you have what it takes to be a high impact leader?

"If you work hard on your job you can make a living, but if you work hard on yourself you can make a fortune." ~ Jim Rohn 

FREE downloads available:

Click here now for a FREE download of the entire leadership principle-packed Chapter 11, "Get Out of the Way and Lead" from the first book in my Demystifying Leadership Series: Defining Influence. In this nearly 20 page chapter, I share about:

·      Managing vs Leading

·      Scarcity vs Abundance

·      Formal Authority vs Moral Authority

·      The 5 Types of Leaders

·      Compare/Contrast 17 Manager vs Leader Perspectives

Click here to access the first 5 chapters of “Blue-Collar Leadership: Leading from the Front Lines.”

·      Ch. 1: I’m one of you.

·      Ch.2: I believe in you.

·      Ch.3: You’re in the perfect place.

·      Ch. 4: Common sense is never enough.

·      Ch.5: There is an “I” in Team.

Note: I encourage you to be a river, not a reservoir. Please share my blogs with others if you find value in them. I believe in abundance and write them to help others become more effective, successful, and significant.

Make an impact!

Mack Story

My passion is to help you live with abundance, achieve success, choose significance, and leave a legacy. In other words, I want to help you make a High Impact !