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The 4 Abilities Of A Leader… Do YOU Have These Abilities?

Last year, I I had the honor of spending some time with the world’s foremost authority on leadership, John C. Maxwell. He’s written such books as The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The Law of the Lid, and Today Matters. If you want to learn how to be one of the best leaders in the world, John C. Maxwell is your go-to person.

During our meeting last year, we worked on a project called The 15 Laws of Growth for Network Marketing. It was incredible. I mean, we had some of the top leaders from the network marketing space from around the world that showed up and contributed to it which was very nice! I took good notes at the time and really reflected on the different kinds of abilities that make up a leader.

I’ve distilled these down to four abilities. If you have these four abilities, there’s a good chance that you’re a high-quality leader. If not, then you’re just not.

The four abilities of a leader.

Responsibility.

Typically, as a whole, our teams in network marketing are going to do what we do. Here are a couple of things that we want to assume responsibility for in order to have a thriving business.

  • Staying plugged in. You absolutely have to stay plugged in. Plugging into team and company calls and meetings and making sure our people get the information. Even if corporate sends it out, we want to make sure that they get the information. We want to make sure that they never use the excuse, “Oh, I didn’t know,” or, “Oh, my sponsor didn’t tell me.” I hear that all the time.

So you want to make sure that they stay plugged in. One of the best ways to do that is by making sure that YOU stay plugged in.

  • Continuing growth. Growth in both education and skills, as well as personal self-development. We want our people to strengthen their mind and sharpen their skills. We have to do the same. Why wouldn’t we? What’s the excuse? Because it takes a little bit of time or you have to get on Austin’s Facebook Live and get the training or whatever the case may be. It really doesn’t take as much time as paying the price of failure because that takes a lifetime.

By taking 15 to 30 minutes or so each day for continuing growth, we multiply the effectiveness of our position in this business. So make sure that you continually grow and invest in yourself, both time and money, to further your education and your skills.

Visibility.

With visibility, leaders shouldn’t be hard to get in contact with. One of the biggest challenges that I’ve heard from people in my stint in this beautiful profession is they say that they can’t get in contact with their sponsor.

They’ll text or call their sponsor. They’ll inbox and email them and they can’t get in contact with them. Well, leaders shouldn’t be hard to get in contact with. As a leader or a potential leader, if we’re not available then we need to make sure that we have systems or backup in some way so our people have someone to communicate with for support.

I have a Post-it Note on my desk that actually has a quote on it. It says “Make it hard to spot the general by working like a soldier.”

It’s a situation where if you’d want to look at and keep it at the forefront of your thoughts daily, if you’re wanting to get your mind in the right space as a solid leader, you’ll want to make sure that you have those systems in place and have things that make it easy for people to stay.

Basically, what you’re trying to avoid in your position as a leader is unintentionally making people feel like they’re alone with no one to turn to. Afterall, you got them in the business, and received the fast start commission…but that doesn’t mean you lose interest afterwards.

Another quote that I think most of you guys are probably familiar with is, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Being visible is one of the best ways we can show people.

It’s frustrating to get into a business and not be able to reach your sponsor, especially while you’re still learning the ropes and need the support. A simple returned text can make all the difference.

I personally receive hundreds of text messages a day and I make it a point to make sure I stay on top of them.

So, visibility is VERY important.

Availability.

As a leader, you want to make sure to be the volunteer when it’s humanly possible not just when it’s convenient. Here’s a thought.

I always want to make sure to stay conscious of whenever I’m doing my dealings in this profession. If they keep on asking you to host a call and you’re always busy, they’ll eventually quit asking you.

I’ll give you an example. There are people that are involved in companies that I’ve been involved in and they’ve asked some of these leaders to do calls and webinars with people corporate-wide.

These same leaders kept making excuses about why they couldn’t get on or host a call. Because of this, those seeking their guidance  eventually stopped asking them all together and began coming to myself and other leaders.

Life happens yes, but as part of being a leader, you need to find a way to be more available and stop letting those who need you, down.

Accountability.

Accountability is very important. They say leadership starts at the top and the person you really need to be accountable to is yourself and, of course, your team. The cool thing is, as leaders, we never have a shortage of people telling us where we’re messing up. But we really need to hold ourselves accountable as well.

Here’s a key when it comes to good accountability. Find a push pal. Find someone, an accountability partner that you can agree to communicate with regularly that’ll help you and hold you accountable. I have a few, actually.

Write this down. Inspect what you expect.

We have to find ways to hold our people accountable without micromanaging. Here’s an example, When new people sign up with me, I have them go to a team training site that I built and complete steps one through three.

Step one is four questions that they fill out on a separate sheet of paper that helps give them the right focus and the right direction so they treat their business like a business and they take the focus off of the results and instead, put it on the numbers/activities. I’ll go and give you those four questions before I wrap this up.

Here are those four questions:

  • Question one. What two things did you want to get out of this? What two things attracted you to this opportunity above and beyond every else?
    • The reason that’s important is because network marketing is simply storytelling, and those two things are things they feel passionately about, they’re completely sold out on.
    • So what I want to do is help them with using those two things in their story because selling is a transfer of emotion.
  • Question two. What do you want out of this opportunity besides money?
    • It might be related to money. But I’ll give you an example. There was a gentleman in our organization that wants to retire his mom and dad and be a full-time network marketer. We determined that he needs about $9,000 a month to do that.
    • So we laid out a clear plan on how he can get to that and he is well on his way. He’ll probably do it sooner than we expected. It’s just because we laid out a very clear plan and it’s something that he really wants.
  • Questions three and four: How many hours per week do you have to devote to getting to what you said you wanted in step two? And how many people can you get in front of the information per hour with an appointment to follow up?
    • The reason those are important is because then you can break it down to math.
    • If you know how many people you can get in front of the information per hour, how many hours you have, then you can start to play the numbers and find your batting average. But that’s a training I’ll get into that some other time.

In closing, these four abilities are good guidelines to gauge whether or not someone is an effective leader. Of course, there’s more that goes into it. But if you’ve got these four abilities then you’re more than on your way.

If you’re on par with responsibility, visibility, availability, and accountability, then you’re well on your way to becoming a solid leader.

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