Part 3 The Third R in Leadership
Relationships
That’s why relationships are so important. Whether it’s your top performers or your low performers that you have to replace, how you treat people will determine your results. 85% of our success is the results of our people skills and how we are in our relationships. The sad thing is that 85% of the training in most organizations focus on professional skills not people skills. We are training people to fail.
When you have a role as a leader people have to follow you. When you treat people with respect, follow the Golden Rule, replace those you have to with compassion and add value to your employees or team members, they will want to follow you. When they want to follow you, you will get the results you desire. When you get results people will want to follow you even more because people like to follow a winner.
Role: People will follow you because they have to.
Relationships: people will follow you because they want to because you care about them and they will help you get the results you desire.
Results: People will follow you even farther or is it further because you are creating a winning team!
John Maxwell says, “You can like people and not lead them, but you can’t lead them if you don’t like them!â€Â                              Â
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                         Reproduction
It is easy for most high achievers to get results no matter the team. Wherever they find themselves they will rise to the top. But they will never reach their true potential until they have a leader that does four things for them.
- Gives them a role (and authority and empowerment)
- Allows them to build relationships with their team.
- Reward them as they create results for the team and team members.
- Give them a platform to reproduce themselves.
Reproducing yourself requires you to not only get results for your organization but get results for your team members. To reproduce yourself, you need to start to develop your people. You need to help them grow.
At first they follow you because they have to because of your role. Then they want to follow you because you build a relationship with them and they realize you care about them as a person. As you produce results for the team they follow you because you are a winner. If that is as far as you go it will be a dismal shame.
When you start to pour into them all the time, energy and talent you poured into the organization they will follow you farther. They will begin to produce the results that you used to produce. The big difference is now you have a whole team producing for you not just you yourself.
Would you rather have a hundred present of your results or eighty present of your results times the members on your team? Wow the bigger the team that you develop the more results. You begin to reproduce expediential. No more addition. Three plus three is six. Three times three is nine. 33 is twenty-seven. When you develop your team members individually and when you help them grow into their full potential your results will grow expediential.
Rapport
Building relationships is really building rapport, building trust, building friendships, it is really building a listening ear and a caring heart. John Maxwell says “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. “ And “touch a heart before you ask for a hand.†He says “you can like someone and not lead them, but you can’t lead them if you don’t like them.†On rapport he says “walk slowly down the hall.†What does he mean by that? I think he means take time to meet with your team and know who they are. Ask yourself “what are their goals and what are their needs, what and are their desires, what are their talents and gifts, what is their purpose and what is their potential?â€
I believe as John Maxell says “leadership is influence nothing more and nothing less always has been and always will be.†I believe leadership starts with respecting people. Loving people and valuing people. I believe leadership begins when you begin to listen.
You listen to learn, help, build rapport and because you find people interesting. You seek to understand first and then to be understood. You put others ahead of yourself. Your biggest question is how can I help you?
People have seven needs as I see it. This is what makes us all so similar. It is how we meet those needs and the priority they have in our lives that make us different. I am not listing these needs in the order of their importance, like I said everyone places these in different priorities and meets them differently.
- Solid ground or consistency. Things that stay the same and never changes.
- Varity, the spice of life, change.
- Connections.
- The feeling of importance.
- The need to learn.
- The need to grow.
- The need to give.
When you begin to learn your team member’s needs and how they want to meet them and in what priority they place on them you can build rapport. I listed those needs from the least to importance to me.
If you know the needs of your team players and you know their level of importance, you will know how to connect with them. If you can connect with them you can influence them in a positive way to help themselves and the team.
These things I know for sure; we can help ourselves by helping others, we can grow ourselves by helping others to grow. Zig Ziglar said it best “you can have everything you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want.â€