Ep #9: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with Will Bess Part 1

Welcome to Practicing with the Masters for dentists with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. Allison believes that there are four pillars for a successful, fulfilling dental practice: clear leadership, sound business principles, well-developed communication skills, and clinical excellence. Allison enjoys helping dentists and teams excel in all of these areas. Each episode she brings you an inspiring conversation with another leading expert. If you desire to learn and grow and in the process take your practice to the next level, then this is the show for you. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Allison Watts.

Allison:       Welcome to Practicing with the Masters podcast. I’m your host, Allison Watts, and I’m dedicated to bringing you masters in the field of dentistry, leadership, and practice management to help you have a more fulfilling and successful practice and life.

Welcome everybody, I’m so excited for this to start. This is a new thing we’re doing and I’m thrilled to have Will Bess here. He’s a certified speaker, trainer, and coach with John Maxwell. He’s a long-time student of John’s and shares his heart for leadership and his passion for developing leaders at every level. That’s why he works to inspire, challenge, and equip leaders to live out leadership principles every day.

Will is a veteran of the United States Army. He has eighteen years of experience as a state and federal probation officer and has a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice Administration. He’s a graduate of the Federal Judicial Center Leadership Development Program in Washington D.C., which was an intensive three-year selective program with a focus on leadership. He is also an adjunct instructor at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

It’s Will’s desire to add value to individuals and organizations by coaching and teaching the Maxwell principles of leadership which are tried and true and continue to stand the test of time. He’ll never inspire or challenge us without providing the knowledge and the tools for us to live it out. Inspiring, challenging, and providing the tools to become the best leader we can be is why the Maxwell Team exists. It’s what they do, it’s how they support our success, they equip us to take these leadership teachings and apply them to our life, to our teams, to our organizations.

I know Will from Toastmasters where he shows up every week as a leader and he speaks beautifully. Finally one day, I was just like, “Where did you learn all this great stuff? How did you get to be like this?” [Laughs] He told me that this Maxwell stuff is one of the biggest things that had influenced his life and I’m actually a new registrant. I haven’t even started my training yet but I am going to be taking the Maxwell training as well.

So I want to welcome you, Will. You can just take it away and I’ll jump in and ask questions as well. And the callers can jump in and ask questions.

Will:            Absolutely, thank you very much, Allison. Good morning to you and good morning to everybody on the call. I hope you’re all having a happy Good Friday and hope you have a blessed and wonderful Easter weekend. I’m so glad and honored to be here with you this morning.

Allison and I have known each other for a while and I was pleasantly surprised and honored when she asked me to go in with her to cohost this call. I hope this next seven weeks you will find that it adds value to your life and will help you grow and get to the place that you want to be in your life.

I am a student of John Maxwell. I was taught by him and his team. He is my mentor. He is a wonderful man. He’s written over sixty books. I think the most wonderful thing about Maxwell is that you don’t have to read all of his books. If you read some of them you’ll see the kind of man that he is but when you’re around him you’ll see that he actually lives the things that he has written. So that’s a great thing.

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, we kind of chose this book, I love this book. I’ve read it multiple times. I’ve taught several classes using this book. A lot of organizations actually use this book as kind of the leadership bible if you will for that organization because it’s just really that effective and that good.

There are 21 laws in this book that John says, “The more of these laws that you master, the better leader that you will become.” Now, you’re not going to master all 21. I mean, if you do master all 21, then you probably should be teaching this course and take John’s job as well because he wrote the book and he said that he’s weak in four or five of the laws himself. But the good thing is, you can get on the process of trying to master 21 laws. I don’t know if you’ll ever succeed but you can try to master them.

So we’re going to jump right in. John says none of these laws are really in any particular order or more important than the other. I tend to … I’m not going to say I disagree with the man because this is his book, but as I read the book, I like the Law of the Lid, I’m glad it comes first. I personally think that it’s the law that triggers all of the other laws.

The Law of the Lid essentially says that your leadership ability determines your overall level of effectiveness. I mean, it’s a simple statement but basically what it’s saying is that your leadership ability is the lid. We all know what a lid does. A lid covers. It contains. It keeps in.

So your ability to lead is the thing that contains or keeps in your level of effectiveness. If you have an organization, if you have anybody under your authority in your organization, and your leadership lid is say at a seven, then everybody below you will be a six or below. Because if you’re the leader of that organization, they’re not going to surpass your leadership. So not only does your leadership lid play a part in your life, it plays a part in their life because the lower your lid is, the lower their lid is going to be.

What happens many times is if you have individuals below you who wish to have a higher lid, when your lid contains them, then many times those individuals will just simply leave because they’re frustrated. So it’s important to raise your lid and the lid around those around you.

In the book, John talks about two brothers, Dick and Maurice. Dick and Maurice were from New Hampshire and they decide that, this was around 1930, they decide they want to go to California and go to Hollywood. Now I’m sure that was a culture shock for them. I’ve been to California and I think it’s a culture shock to go to California no matter where you’re from. So I can imagine being from New Hampshire that is a little culture shock.

But at any rate, they packed up and the brothers moved out west. They opened up a little theater and they ran it for about four years. But it wasn’t very profitable and they were really even struggling to pay the rent of $100 a month. So they gave that venture up and decided to go into the restaurant business. It was around the time then in California, probably all over the United States, that people were becoming more dependent on their cars. So they opened up a drive in restaurant in Pasadena, California because it was the perfect town for it.

The brothers had some skills. They had some skills at being restaurant owners. They were very good at customer service. They were very good at kitchen organization and things of those nature. So they thrived. They thrived pretty quickly. So around 1940 they relocated to San Bernardino about 50 miles, I guess, away from Los Angeles.

These guys were making some money. They built a larger facility, the expanded the menu, they started adding hot dogs and hamburgers and chopped beef sandwiches and things like that. Pretty soon those guys were making about $200,000 a year, probably netting about $100,000 and splitting that two ways. So in the 1940s, that was nice money. That was some serious money and those guys were kind of the elite of their community but they kept at it.

Then finally a few years later they did away with the car hops and they made it a walkup restaurant. So in a few more years, they were making about $350,000 a year. Of course, you know, that’s good money now so back in 1940, that was outstanding money. So those guys were, Dick and Maurice, were big ballers. They were shot callers. They were doing well. They were smoking hot. They were doing their thing. But then they hit a wall. That’s kind of when their story hits the returns.

They attempted to market their restaurant and Dick and Maurice’s last name was McDonald. You’ve probably heard of it. So they tried to market the McDonald’s concept, they expanded out to a couple of stores but they really lacked the leadership capabilities to make it work for them. They were great single restaurant owners but that really was the extent of their leadership ability.

So here comes a man named Ray Kroc. Ray Kroc had a small business, he sold milkshake machines. He knew the McDonalds because they were good customers of his. So Ray, he did what leaders do. They see farther and they see faster. So he saw what the McDonalds brothers had and so he said, “Hey fellas, let me in on this.” So they replied, “Yeah, come on.” So he went in in partnership with them.

He formed the McDonalds Systems, that’s what it was called at first, before he renamed it the McDonalds Corporation. He bought the rights to the franchise and in 1961, he bought them out for 2.7 million dollars. Now 2.7 million dollars is a lot of money in 2013, so you know it was an extraordinary amount of money in 1961. But I have to tell you, I don’t know in the history of entrepreneurship that anyone making 2.7 million dollars got screwed as bad and Dick and Maurice. Because when Kroc took over the corporation, he did what leaders do.

First of all, he didn’t take a salary for the first six, seven years. He hired key people to run the organization. People who knew what he didn’t know and could make it go. A long story short, we know now that McDonalds is in over 120,000 countries. So although the McDonald brothers did okay for themselves, they didn’t have the leadership ability to make it go, and Ray Kroc did.

That’s all what the Law of the Lid is. It doesn’t really matter how great you are at a particular skill. I mean, that’s important. Don’t get me wrong, that is important to be great at your task. But your effectiveness will always be limited if you don’t have the ability to lead others. Because you know, all of us is always better than one of us. All of us is always smarter than one of us. So your ability to lead others and influence others will always increase your effectiveness.

Without the ability to lead, that lid will cap. It will cap your overall effectiveness. That’s just what the Law of the Lid says. In organizations when people want to change the direction of the organization, what do they do? They change the leader. They change the leader. It doesn’t matter how bad a sports team is, the owner doesn’t go in and get rid of all of the players and keep the coach. He or she keeps the players and gets rid of the coach because they understand that the leader is the one whose lid is covering that entire organization.

They might not know it in those terms, “Oh that’s the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership term.” But that’s exactly what’s going on. If you’re a Cowboy fan, you know, God bless you, but you probably kind of wish that they would get rid of the coach, the owner, and the players. But you know, that’s just a story for another time.

But if you look at any organization and you see that it is flourishing, chances are you look at the leadership and that’s why it’s flourishing. Consequently, if you see an organization that is not doing well, if you look at the leadership, you’ll probably understand why it’s not doing well.

Now I hope you guys have something to write with and something to write on because I’m going to give you one of the ways that you can effectively measure what your current leadership lid is and then I’m going to give you some ways that you can raise that leadership lid.

John wrote a book called the 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader. It’s a good read. If you get an opportunity, you should pick it up and read it. It’s not a long book for you people who don’t like to read, it’s a short read, but it’s a really quality book. So I’m going to give you the list of those qualities right now. Then I’m going to tell you what to do with them once I give them to you.

The first one is character.
The second one is charisma.
The third one is commitment.
The fourth one is communication.
The next one is competence.
Next one is courage.
Next one is discernment.
The next one is focus.
The next one is generosity.
The next one is initiative.
The next one is listening.
The next one is passion.
Then you have positive attitude.
The next one is problem solving.
Next one is responsibility.
Then you have security.
You have self-discipline.

Then you have servanthood. I believe that’s a John word. I think he may have made that up kind of like how Don King makes up his own words, but servanthood.

Teachability. Also, I’m not quite sure that’s a word, but I think we can all figure out what that means. Teachability.

Finally, we have a vision.

So just to run through them again, there’s character, charisma, commitment, communication, competence, courage, discernment, focus, generosity, initiative, listening, passion, positive attitude, problem solving, responsibility, security, self-discipline, servanthood, teachability, and vision. Is that 20 or 21? Let me count those.

Allison:       I have 20.

Will:            Is that 20?

Allison:       Yes, I got 20, John. John? Will [laughs].

Will:            [Laughs]

Allison:       You remind me so much of John that I almost thought you were him [laughs].

Will:            Yeah, he and I look just alike. So it’s easy to make that mistake, Allison. Because he and I look very, very, very similar. But at any rate, I don’t know why I said 21 but there are 20. So what you’re going to do is take those qualities that I gave you. You’re going to look at all of those and you’re going to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being very poor, 10 being excellent.

So if you look at your charisma and you say, “I’m a very charismatic person. People love me. I’m very charming. I’m like the Pied Piper. So I give myself a 10 on that.” Then you may look at your courage and say, “You know what, I am the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.  I have no courage. So I’m a 1.”

You go through each one of these and you look at yourself honestly, okay? Because you know, we can fool some of the people some of the time and we can fool all of the people some of the time, but we cannot ever fool ourselves none of the time. So be honest. It does not work if you’re not honest. We know ourselves better than anyone else knows us, so look at all of those character traits, all of those qualities of a leader. Look at your own self and rank how you think you are in that area.

So then you’re going to get that total number. It’s a possibility of 200 if you give yourself a 10 on every one. You’re going to divide it by 20 and that’s going to be your leadership lid. Now I’ll tell you this, if you rate yourself a 1 on everything, or a 10 on everything, you probably got a whole other set of issues that the 21 Irrefutable Laws really are not equipped to help you with. So stay on the line after the call and we’ll talk and I probably can refer you somewhere. Because I would hope that no one is 1 in all of these and I doubt very seriously that anyone is a 10.

So after you do that, then you want to do something else. You want to find a few people close to you, a few people in your circle. A few people who will be honest with you, okay? That may not be your employee who is due their performance evaluation and you ask them to look at all of those qualities and to score how they see you. That might not be the person because you might not get the honest feedback that you’re looking for. Or you may have that employee who will have that relationship with you and would be honest. But that’s the key, you have to find someone close to you. Close enough to give you honest feedback and critique.

So they’ll look at this list just as you did and knowing you like they know you, they will rate you from 1 to 10 on each of those. Then you do the same thing. You divide the score and you’ll see what their lid, through their perception of you, how they see you. You’ll see what their lid is. Then that way you can look at both of those lists. You can see how you see yourself and you can see how other people see yourself.

That will give you kind of an honest look from firsthand, “Okay, this is where I am and this is probably where I need to go.” So that’s an assignment for you. Over the next week I think you should do that. So you have yourself an honest assessment of where you are at this point when it comes to your leadership lid.

Now I’m going to give you some things to do that you can help raise your lid. First thing, reflect on your experiences. Experience is important but I believe experience is one of the most overrated things there is. I’m a sports guy. I love sports. I really love college sports and every year, like in the big three, baseball, basketball, and football, every year all these experts rank the teams for the upcoming years based on three criteria.

The first criteria is basically how good they did the previous year. You know, what the team performance was the previous year. The second criteria is recruiting. They recruit players out of high school, so that’s evaluated but not that high because you don’t really expect incoming freshmen to make great impacts all the time, especially in football.

But the third thing that they use, the third criteria that they use, is the most important for them. That’s the experience. They look at the team and they see what players are coming back again next year. What players are returning? How many starters? How many guys who maybe didn’t start but they played a lot so they gained valuable experience? When they look at that factor, they determine this is how good we think this team is going to be.

Most of us do that and most people think like that because we think that if someone has experience then that should make them better when they do it again. We think if somebody’s done it before, they’ll be better the next time. But that is not necessarily the case. The only time experience can come to your advantage is when you reflect on it, when you evaluate it, when you look at the thing that you’ve done, you take out the negative and say, “Okay, I can’t do that again. I’m going to have to change that.” But more importantly, you grab the positives out of that as learning experiences and you apply it. That’s when experience becomes valuable.

I don’t know how many of you guys are sports fan, but there are many times when teams are highly ranked because they have a lot of returning experience coming back and they have a very, very poor year. USC, in college football, this prior year, University of South Carolina they were ranked number one to start the year and they finished the year with seven wins and six losses. Because the experts, and I use that word lightly, they saw that they had so many players coming back, so many players who had performed the year in an excellent manner, they just assumed that those people would get better and they would have a better year. But that is not what happened.

So that’s one of the things that you have to do to raise your lid. You have to reflect on your experiences. Just because you have done something a long time does not mean that you have done it well. John, in one of his books called Leadership Goals, he talks about experience and he says that 25 years of experience is not 25 experience if it is not evaluated. All it is basically is one year experience, 25 times. We probably have known people who basically they don’t get any better. They just go year after year after year in the same place. So reflect on your experience.

The next one is invest in training. You’re on this call, you’re listening to this recording, then you’re already on the right path because that’s what you’re doing right now. Continued growth really is the key to our success. So invest in training.

The third one is getting a mentor or getting a coach. Don Shula, the legendary coach of the Miami Dolphins, once said that “A coach is someone who tells you what you may not want to hear in order for you to see what you may not want to see, in order for you to be the person you’ve always wanted to be.” That’s what a coach does. A coach is on the outside looking in.

You can’t see everything when you’re inside the portrait, the frame that is your life. So sometimes you need somebody on the outside to see what you can’t see and help direct you. The most famous athletes in the world, all of them have personal coaches because they understand what that means.

One picture that I absolutely love is Michael Phelps had just won an Olympic gold. I don’t know if it was this past Olympics or the one previous to that, but he had just won an Olympic gold and he had just set a world record. Michael Phelps climbed out of the pool and you can see his coach making a swimming motion right then and there and Michael is staring at him intensely because although Michael had just broken a world record, he had just won another gold, his coach was still showing him ways to improve.

Michael was looking at him not like, “Coach, are you serious? Man, are you serious? I just broke a world record.” No, Michael was looking at him like, “Yeah, give it to me because I want to get better. I want to get better.” That’s what a coach is for. A mentor, somebody who has evaluating experience and can share things with you. Because wisdom really is not making the mistake yourself, but learning from someone else’s mistake.

Finding mastermind groups, basically getting together with like-minded people, kind of like we are here together on this telephone call but come purposely growing together and learning together. That’s very important. You can grow together quickly with other people than you can by yourself.

Do something beyond yourself. That’s the next one. You know, reaping and sowing. We know that we give what we get. As the late, great Zig Ziglar once stated, “We get what we want by helping others get what they want.” So that’s one way to raise your lid and increase your level of influence is by giving unto others and helping them get the things that they want.

Then make a stop doing list. Make a stop doing list. Instead of saying something like, “You know what? I will lose weight.” You can say, “I will stop eating this. I will stop laying around. I will stop doing XYZ.” I will stop spending time with Fred because Fred is crazy. I hope nobody on this call is named Fred because if you are, I’m not talking about you, Fred. You’re a good fella, okay? I’m talking about imaginary Fred. He’s crazy. He’s negative and he sucks the life out of me. So I need to stop spending time with Fred. So make some stop doing lists. Some things that are not helping you grow as individuals. Make a list that you will stop doing those things.

So that’s the Law of the Lid. Now we’re going to move into the Law of Influence. I may have mentioned it earlier but we’re going to try to do at least three laws a week. Of course, there are 21 laws, so if we do three a week, that’s seven weeks. That’s this course. So there you go. I’m not great at math but I know it a little bit. So we’ll do three laws per phone call.

Allison:       Well, I also helped you with the math, Will, right?

Will:            Yes, you did. It’s always good to have a doctor on your team because they can fill in those little blanks for you if you’re mathematically challenged like I am.

Allison:       No, you’re not.

Will:            So, thank you, Allison, for doing that division for me. I appreciate it.

The Law of Influence. According to John, leadership is influence. Nothing more and nothing less. I mean you’re ability to influence others is what leadership is because really it’s kind of a vague definition. If you ask ten people what leadership means to them, you’ll probably get ten different definitions. But a good working definition for you is that it’s the ability to influence, which basically means you can have good leaders and you can have bad leaders.

As Allison mentioned earlier when she was reading my bio, I was a state and federal probation officer for eighteen years. A federal officer for fourteen of those. I met my share of individuals who were good leaders and bad leaders. First of all, I worked with the government. So, you know, leadership and government is kind of an oxymoron anyway. So just the people that I worked with sometimes, it was a challenge.

But sitting across opposite the side of the desk from me were many, many young men and women. A lot of them gang leaders and they had leadership capabilities. They were very influential within their circle. They were. So you can have a leader who has the influence but if they’re not leading the right way or for the right things, that makes them a bad leader. So people think of leadership, they only think of the good ones but you can have a bad leader as well.

Some years ago, many years ago, the Supreme Court was wrestling with the concept of obscenity. They were trying to find a working definition of what an obscenity means. So finally one of the justices, I think it was the Chief Justice at the time said, “You know what? I don’t know what obscenity means. I probably can give you a definition for it but I sure know it when I see it.”

So leadership is kind of like that. A lot of people can’t give you a good working definition of it but you know it when you see it. You have to understand that it cannot be awarded. It cannot be appointed. It cannot be assigned. It must be earned. So in this chapter, John talks about five prevailing myths of leadership and we’re going to go over that list right now.

The first one on the list is the management myth. This is the one that says the idea of managing and leading are different things. You know, there was a time when books on managing people and all of that sort of thing started coming out and it wasn’t really about leadership, it was about manager. How to be a good manager. How you do this, how you do that. Now people use the word interchangeably. I’m a leader. I’m a manager. But they’re two different things and two different concepts.

Management really focuses on maintaining systems and processes. Leadership is about influencing people. Management manages things. Leaders lead people. Now I’m going to give you a few differences between management and leadership.

When you’re talking about a manager, you’re talking about someone who is a copy. A manager is a copy. What that means is basically a system has been put in, this is the way we always do it. This is the way it’s always been done. So my predecessor did it this way, that’s the way I’m going to do it. So essentially, they’re just copying the things that they have seen before them. The leader is an original.

Now understand, there is nothing wrong with seeing someone that has does something successfully and emulating that because you absolutely don’t need to or don’t want to reinvent a wheel every time you attempt something. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But on the other hand, the leader, that’s an original person. They have their original thoughts and their original ideas. They’re not trying to be like anyone. After all, you might as well be yourself, right? Because everyone else is taken. So the leader is the original.

The second one, the manager maintains, maintains systems and structures. The leader develops. See the manager is focused on maintaining a status quo. These are the things that we’ve done in the past, so we want to continue to do those things. But the leader is constantly developing and challenging and looking to grow. Looking to go different directions to improve. A manager gets kind of scared to make changes because they’re afraid they’re going to mess with the status quo. But the leader is constantly developing.

The manager relies on control. Policies and procedures. I’m in charge. If you want your paycheck, this is what you need to do or they’re going to be some consequences and repercussions. Obviously there’s nothing wrong, we need control, we need discipline, we need systems in place to get things done. We recognize that. But that is not what you want to rely on. The leader relies on trust.

See the manager comes to the people and says, “We’re going to do this because X, Y, and Z.” And the people will do it because they have to. But what the leader … the leader is saying the something but the people do it because they want to. Because they trust the leader. That’s why they’re following the vision. They trust the leader.

The next one is that the manager does things right. The leader does the right thing. Because sometimes we realize that the one thing that’s right technically may not be the right thing to do at that time. So the leader is not so concerned with, “I’ve got to cover my own backside on this one.” No. They’re like, “The right thing to do in this moment is this. So this is what we’re going to do.” It’s a difference. Doing things right versus doing the right thing.

Managers have employees. Leaders win followers. Managers have good ideas. Leaders implement ideas. You may know a lot of people who always have a good idea, “I think this would be a good idea. I think this would be a good idea. We should try this, we should try that.” But they never actually try to implement it. They just come up with all these wonderful ideas. Without action, the ideas are just pipe dreams. Leaders actually implement them. So that’s the management myth.

The second myth is the entrepreneur myth. That’s the one that assumes that all entrepreneurs are leaders. No, that’s not true. Entrepreneurs are skilled at seeing opportunities and going after them. They understand how to produce profits but not all of them are necessarily good with people. Not to pick on the Cowboys but I’ve been a Cowboy fan since I was a little boy, so I’ve earned the right to talk about them because they deserve talking about. When I think about that, I think about Jerry Jones.

Jerry Jones is an entrepreneur. Jerry Jones has managed to take an average product and turn it into a multi-billion dollar organization. His franchise is the most expensive, the most valuable sports franchise in the United States, in any sport, the Dallas Cowboys. But since 1995 or 1996, whenever it was they won their last Super Bowl, the Dallas Cowboys’ record is 138 wins, 135 losses, which makes them average.

We know what average is, average is the top of the bottom, the bottom of the top. It’s the best of the worst. It’s the worst of the best. That’s what average is. He has an average product but he has made a lot of money on an average product. That it is a great entrepreneur.

But Jerry Jones isn’t necessarily a great leader of that organization, which is why they’re average. Because his ego is such that he doesn’t put people in the place to do the things that they’re great at. That’s why he continues to be the general manager when he will admit that based on the productivity, if he had a general manager, he would have fired him a long time ago. But he says, “I’m not firing myself.” So we’re just going to have to do something different. So entrepreneur, yes. Jerry Jones knows how to make money. Leader? Not the same skill.

There’s the knowledge myth. That’s the next one, the knowledge myth. This is the one where we think IQ makes people a leader. People who are really smart are the ones best equipped to lead and that is not true at all. You can go to any university and find brilliant, brilliant people but that doesn’t mean that they’re leaders.

You look at Bill Gates and his Microsoft Corporation. They’re probably some computer programmers in there who are smarter than Bill, who know things that Bill has never envisioned. But can they lead a multi-billion dollar corporation? No they cannot just because they’re smart.

Think about the five most intelligent people that you know in your life. Write their names down. Think about them and write their names down. Now ask yourself who of those five people actually leads you? Who would you follow just because they’re smart? IQ doesn’t equal to leadership. Actually EQ, emotional intelligence, is the greater sign of leadership ability than IQ. So the knowledge myth.

The fourth one is the pioneer myth. That’s the one that says being first is the same as leading. That’s not true. You can get there first but if no one is following you, you’re not leading. You just happened to get there first. In order to be a leader, you have to have people intentionally following you. So being a trendsetter is not the same as being a leader.

I remember when I was back in high school in the 80s, so I’m telling you what my age is, they had the parachute pants come out. I don’t know if any of you guys even remember what they were but they were big ole blooming pants. MC Hammer used to where them. For some reason, people thought they were cool. I had a pair, okay? Don’t tell anybody. What happens on this phone call needs to stay on this phone call. But I had a pair of parachute pants and I was one of the first guys to where them to school. Did that make me a leader? Well, yeah, it made me a leader in bad taste but that didn’t make me a leader just because I wore them first. So being a pioneer, being the first to do something, doesn’t make you the leader.

Finally, the last one, which is probably the greatest misconception of all is the position myth. The position myth. These are individuals who have maintained a position of leadership and they automatically assume that that makes them a leader. It is two different things. The position does not make the man. The man makes the position, or woman. So being in the position does not necessarily make you a leader. You have to lead from that position.

Think about your own experiences. Think about the people who have been your bosses and you look at them, you look at their characteristics and you look at how they led and you ask yourself, did you do what they said because you had to or because you truly valued their vision and what they brought to the table?

Positional leadership is the lowest form of leadership. John talks about in his book Five Levels of Leadership. It’s the lowest form of leadership. That’s because people do what they do because they have to. Because of the position that you hold. It’s not because of you. It’s because of the position. So those are the five myths of leadership.

There are seven factors of leadership and this is another way that you can look at yourself and kind of rank where you lead as far as influence goes. What you’re strong at. What you’re weak at. When you find something that you’re strong at, I’m going to talk about this for a second, develop that. There are a lot of people that think that you should find your weaknesses and develop those and make those strengths. But the fact of the matter is, some things that we’re weak at, we can work as hard as we want to on them but we’re only going to improve that only so much.

While you’re busy working and focusing on those weaknesses, what you’re doing is neglecting the strengths that you already have. So now, not only are you not strong in that area, but you’re average in the area that you were originally strong at. So basically what you should do is find out what you’re strong at and you should become stronger at that and build that up.

If the weakness is something that is a character issue, then definitely you need to work on that and build that up. But don’t spend so much time trying to be great at everything. You target in and focus in on the thing that you are really good at and become great at that.

I’m going to give you seven factors of leadership. The first one is character. We talk about leaders. People want to know: who are they? Because people can sense the truth. People can see transparency. So they want to know, who are they? Who is this person? Can I trust this person?

The second one is relationships. Who do these people know? Who do they know? That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with the right people. It’s been said that we are really a combination of the five closest people to us so look at your circle. See who you’re spending your time with. Look at your relationships. Great people spend time with a certain type of person.

The third one is knowledge. What do they know? I know we said that the knowledge myth was a factor in the myth of leadership, but the fact of the matter is you do need to have some knowledge to be a leader. You do have to be competent in what it is that you’re doing. If you can’t do it yourself, you’re going to have a difficult time trying to teach and convince someone else to do it if you don’t have the knowledge to do it. So know the facts, study, learn, and do your homework.

The fourth one is intuition. What do they feel? The energy. The morale. The timing. The momentum. What do you feel?

The firth one is experience. Where have they been? When you look at leaders, we want leaders who have experienced some things, some evaluated experience. See some challenges in the past and see how they’ve handled that. Where have they been?

Six, past success. What have they done? What’s your track record? Have you taken risks before and succeeded? You know it’s wonderful when you can give testimonies of real life things that you’re trying to teach someone something, you’re trying to lead them a direction, and you can legitimately say, “I did it before. These were the end results. So you can trust me when I tell you it can be done.” So the experience, the past success, is important.

Finally, ability. The seventh one is ability. What can they do? What are you capable of? Can you be a good coach? Can you be a good mentor? Because if you can’t deliver the goods, then you’re going to lose credibility. Just like in sports, you can talk, you can be the rah-rah guy, you can be the most motivational person in the world. You can be Tony Robbins. But if you can’t deliver the goods yourself and you can’t produce, then you’re going to be ineffective and somewhat hypocritical.

Because the fact of the matter is if you’re riding the bench, you can be the best cheerleader in the world, but you’re not going to be the leader. The leader has to be a producer. So people look at that in leaders. What is your ability?

So you look at those seven factors: character, relationships, knowledge, intuition, experience, past success, and ability. You ask yourself, which one of these do you use in your leadership? Which one serves you best in your leadership? You look at the ones that you’re low at and you determine for yourself, do I need to raise these up? Can this help me increase my influence?

Ask yourself a question when you look at those five myths. How many of those myths have you bought into? The position, the pioneer, the knowledge, the entrepreneur, the management. How many of those you yourself have thought of and say, “Well, yeah, I used to think that myself.” If you have, good. I’m glad you’re on this call.

There are really three questions that followers ask leaders and these are important. You want to lead people? You need to recognize these three questions because these are the questions that they may not literally ask you, but in their heart they’re asking.

Number one, do you care for me? Do you care? Because people don’t care what you know until they know that you care. So they’re asking, do you care for me? The second question is, can you help me? Because truth of the matter is, we operate under that W.I.I.F.M principle, what’s in it for me? So they want to know, can you help me?

The third one, can I trust you? Those are the three questions that you have to have in your heart that your employees want to know and the people that you want to influence are asking. Do you care for me? Can you help me? Can I trust you? If they can answer those three questions affirmatively, yes, then I promise you that you’ll have somebody willing to follow you.

One of the ways you can try to increase your level of influence, try volunteering. Because sometimes when people are doing something because they’re being compensated financially, it’s hard to tell if you’re really leading them or if they’re doing it for the money.

But if you go to a volunteer organization where people have to volunteer willingly their time, sometimes their finances, try working with one of those organization and practicing leading those people. It’s a high form of leadership when you can do that. Also you’re peers, people who you don’t have any authority over, practice trying to lead individuals like that.

Third and finally, we’re going to talk about the Law of Process. The Law of Process says that leadership develops daily, not in a day. This is the law that John himself calls the lid lifter. This is the law that’s going to affect that first law, the Law of the Lid. Because if you do these things, that’s going to help you lift your lid.

In the book, he talks about a lady named Anne Scheiber from New York City. She was 101 years old when she died in 1995. She worked for the IRS and she retired at the age of 57 and she had never been promoted although she had a law degree and according to her coworkers, she did excellent work. At the time of her retirement, she was making $3,150 a year. That’s how much she was making. She lived a very humble lifestyle. She went to the public library to read the newspaper every week because she didn’t even subscribe to a newspaper.

So you can imagine upon her death in the releasing of her will, that she had left her estate to a college called the Yeshiva University in New York City her estate was valued at 22 million dollars. 22 million dollars. That’s because Anne spent her life investing and growing one day at a time. That’s what the Law of Process is about. Leadership is not done in a day. It is done daily. It’s a process of continued growth, kind of like the stock market. If you play the stock market, you’re not going to get rich in a day. You’re not going to. It’s a process.

Being a great leader is the same process. It’s not done in a day, it’s a daily thing. John quotes a gentlemen by the name of Tag Short who stated that the secret of our success is found in our daily agenda. While it’s true some people have natural leadership abilities, the overall ability to lead is the collection of skills and can be learned, cultivated, and improved upon. All successful leaders are learners. They recognize that the learning process is ongoing and it’s not a quick fix. It’s not instant gratification. It’s not a singular event.

As a leadership trainer, and teacher, and coach, I get called in to organizations to train their staff, their leaders in leadership principles and it’s rather amusing to me that a lot of these organizations do it once a year or twice a year and that’s it. They send people to a conference, to a seminar, half a day training, full day training, once or twice a year. They think that, yes, this is how we’re building leaders. No, that’s not how you’re building leaders. Those things are good and they’re necessary. They should be done more often. But leadership is a process. It’s a daily process.

You should be doing something constantly to build your people up. To build yourself up. It’s not reading a book once every six months. It’s not attending a seminar once a year. It’s a constant process. It’s just like education. We can’t go to school a couple times a year and consider ourselves to be educated. It’s just like when a lot of people attend church services, worship services, once a Sunday, at least once a week. Because it’s a process. Self-growth is a process and you have to continue to do it. You have to continue to do it. It requires a continued process of growth.

So there are five phases of leadership that I’m going to talk about. The first one is: I don’t know what I don’t know. That’s because most people fail to recognize the value of leadership because they don’t know the things that they don’t know. They think they’re doing it right. Most people lead by their personalities and they’re doing the best that they can. They really are. Most people do the very best that they can.

But they don’t understand that there are principles and skills that they can learn to help them get even better. So they think they’re doing it good because they don’t know any different. That’s why many times bad leaders hire bad leaders because they don’t know what a good leader looks like. They don’t know what they should be looking for. So you don’t know what you don’t know.

The second one is: I know what I need to know. These are the people in leadership positions that realize they don’t have a grasp on what they’re doing and no one is following them. They wake up one day and say “Hey, I got promoted and I’m doing the best that I can but nobody’s following me.” So now they’re recognizing that. They know that they need to know something.

The third level is: I know what I don’t know. So these are the people who have recognized, okay this is what I need to learn. This is what I need to do. John says when he was first coming up in leadership, he recognized at the developing of a leadership and a growth plan what he needed to know, so he identified ten top people in his field and he paid them $100 for a half hour of their time. He would chase them all over the country, wherever they were, he would go and find them. He traveled to find them and talk to them and gain some of their knowledge because he recognized, this is what I need to know.

The fourth one is: I know and grow and it starts to show. This is when you recognize your lack of skill and you begin to apply the daily discipline of personal growth. That’s when exciting things start to happen in your life.

The last one is: I simply go because of what I know. That’s when leading is to the point where it becomes almost automatic to you. You develop great instincts.

So here’s some things that you can use to help you grow in the process. You can live the law. Ask yourself what your plan of growth is. If you don’t have a goal, if you don’t have a plan, then how are you going to know that you’ve accomplished anything? There has to be active steps in accomplishing a goal.

The second one is: I need to plan and reflect daily. How many times do we plan something but we don’t really evaluate it to see whether it’s working or not, whether it’s beneficial. We just do it to say we’re doing but we don’t reflect on it to see how is this helping me? So sometimes we spend a lot of wasteful time doing things because we haven’t reflected on it to see if it’s actually working. Some people make a lot of goals but they never evaluate the progress. So you need to plan and reflect daily.

John wrote a book called Today Matters and it’s a really good book. And, today matters. Not just in the book for leadership but in real life. Today matters. I don’t mean to be morbid, especially at this time of year, but there are people sitting right now doing things, working, talking, eating, enjoying life, and they’re not going to be here tomorrow and they have no idea that they’re not going to be here tomorrow. None of us do, so that’s why today matters.

It amuses me when I offer a training or I’ll do something and somebody will say, “Well, not this time, Will, but I’ll catch you next time.” Or, “I’ll do it next time.” Because people always assume there’s going to be a next time. But you don’t know there’s going to be a next time. That’s why today matters. So make it count in your daily growth.

Commit. You’ve got to lead the law. So what would I commit to daily? You have to make sure you’re committed to what you’re trying to achieve. You know, people hear the word commit and commitment all the time but very few people actually commit to things.

People confuse commitment with interest. It sounds good, it sounds exciting, “I think I’ll do it.” But then they’ll only do it when they feel like doing it. They’ll only do it when it’s convenient for them to do it. But when you’re committed, you do it regardless. It becomes a priority and you do it regardless. Being interested is about convenience.  Being committed is about results.

How do you be committed? You form good habits. Author Rob Collier said in his book, Secret of the Ages, he said, “Success if the result of small efforts repeated day in and day out.” High achievers don’t get to the top by accident or by fluke. It requires focused action, personal discipline, and energy every day in order to make things happen. The secret of our success is discovered in our daily agenda.

So if you want to see what someone is about, look at their daily calendar. See who they’re spending time with. See what they spend their money on. Don’t listen to what people say, see what people do. See what they are committed to. See if they say, “Hey, I’m going to do this” and they actually do it. Lead the law. Commit. It’s a process. Sometimes it’s a painful process. But it’s a necessary process. Anything worth having is worth working for.

You know, John talks about boxing and says that boxing is really a great analogy for leadership and I agree with him. I think sports in general have a lot of great analogies for leadership. But in the book, he quotes Joe Frazier, Smokin’ Joe. Joe Frazier said this, “You can map out a fight plan or a plan for life. When the action starts, you are down to your reflexes. That’s where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, you’re getting found out now under the bright lights.”

I love that because you have a lot of people who say they do this, say they do this, say they do that. But when it’s crunch time, when they’re on that stage, it will show who’s really been doing it. In order to be successful, you have to prepare and train daily. You can’t wait for the opportunity to somehow come up and then start. You have to be prepared in advance. Leadership is done daily, not in a day. That’s what the Law of the Process is.

So today, that is it. I’m wrapping up. I certainly hope and pray that I was able to add some value to you guys and that you take something away from this and can apply it to your own life. Because remember, learning and knowing is fine, but knowing without doing is not knowing. So take the things that you’ve learned and apply them to your life and you will have the ability to raise your leadership lid. Thank you all for being on the call and God bless. I’m open for any questions if you have any.

Allison:       Awesome. Thank you, Will.

Will:            Thank you, Allison.

Thanks for listening to Practicing with the Masters for dentists, with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. For more about how Allison Watts and Transformational Practices can help you create a successful and fulfilling practice and life, visit transformationalpractices.com.