Ep #15: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with Will Bess Part 7

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.

All right, here we are, call number seven. Gosh, hard to believe, huh?

Will:            It is.

Allison:       Thank you guys all for joining us on a Saturday. Will and I, and actually Lisa was there too, we had a Leadercast yesterday with a bunch of really excellent speakers: Andy Stanley, John Maxwell, Jack Welch, Condoleezza Rice. Anyway, it was a great day and thank you guys for being here on a Saturday.

We’re going to tackle the last three laws today. The Law of Timing is law number nineteen, the Law of Explosive Growth, and the Law of Legacy. These sound pretty exciting, Will.

Will:            Okay. Are we ready?

Allison:       Are you ready to go?

Will:            I’m ready to go.

Allison:       Awesome. Okay, Will, we’ll let you take the stage.

Will:            Okay, thank you. It’s great to see, or to hear, all of you this morning, on a Saturday morning. I hope you’re not like me, I was up at the crack of dawn this morning helping my wife with a garage sale. Of course, she would pick the weekend, the Saturday that I had something else to do. But what can you do, right? If momma is not happy, nobody is happy. So a man has got to do what a man has got to do.

But at any rate, good to be on here with you. This is the last week and it’s been seven weeks. It’s been a quick seven weeks but I’ve enjoyed speaking with you guys and I hope, I truly hope, that you have gotten some value out of things that we have done. So we’re going to do just a quick recap of last week.

We talked about laws number sixteen seventeen, and eighteen. Law sixteen was the Law of the Big Mo, which basically says that momentum is a leader’s best friend. That’s the great exaggerator, it makes you look better than you are. So when that momentum goes, and I think I used a lot of sports clichés last week, but I think that’s really accurate when you think about momentum.

If you are any type of sports fan and you’ve ever seen it, whether it’s basketball, football, or whatever the case may be. It doesn’t matter how bad a team is playing or looking, as soon as they get momentum, then everything changes. So that’s the Law of the Big Mo.

The next law that we talked about last week was the Law of Priorities. That’s the law that says that leaders understand that activity is not necessarily accomplishment. Eighty percent of our results comes from about twenty percent of our efforts. So basically just being busy does not mean that you’re necessarily accomplishing anything. This law, the Law of Priority, is the law that determines our effectiveness because you have to be effective in the business that you’re doing. We did hear about some of that at the Leadercast yesterday.

Finally the law, number eighteen, was the Law of Sacrifice. This is the law that says that leaders must give up to go up. There’s no getting around it, there are no shortcuts. There is no success without sacrifice. Often leaders are asked to give up more than others. This is where most leaders really fall off because many times leaders think once they reach the pinnacle of their career, they reach a certain level, then it’s time for them to relax and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

But the truth of the matter is, as a leader, the higher up you go, the more responsibility you have. The more rights you give up. We talked about the president last week, about how every word, every minute detail of a president’s life is scrutinized. They hold the highest office of the land but they pay severely for having that because their life is not theirs anymore. So that’s the Law of Sacrifice.

Okay. This week, we’re going to start with number nineteen, the Law of Timing. That’s the law that says when to lead is as important as what to do and where to go. John begins this chapter talking about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. We’ve talked about it a little bit before but for a different reason. This time, we’re talking about it as it pertains to the law of timing and leadership.

I don’t know how many of you guys have ever been to New Orleans, the “Big Easy,” but it’s an unusual city. That’s because it’s surrounded by water. You can’t just really walk to New Orleans. You can walk there, but you’re going to have to go over a bridge to get there. There is no part that you can enter New Orleans that you don’t have to cross a bridge. Most of the city lies below sea level and it’s kind of shaped like a bowl, if you’ve ever been able to see it on a map.

On average, the city is about six feet below sea level. In the lowest points of the city, it’s actually nine feet below sea level. Every year, the land sinks just a little bit more. So for years and years, the citizens have worried what would happen if a severe hurricane hit that city. Well, in August of 2005, unfortunately, they found out exactly what would happen.

On Wednesday, August 24, 2005, Katrina started off as a tropical storm. It wasn’t until Friday that the National Hurricane Center predicted the storm would reach land on that Monday. So that Saturday, the leaders in the city started ordering mandatory evacuations, but for higher level places around New Orleans, not the actual city of New Orleans. In the actual city of New Orleans, no evacuations were ordered at that time. The time for New Orleans to move was that time. That was the time for them to get out. But the mayor at the time, he didn’t heed the call.

So on Saturday evening, he called for a voluntary evacuation. That was only after hearing from the director at the National Hurricane Center. You know people, if you give people a choice to do something, especially with their homes, a lot of people don’t want to leave. I mean, sometimes it’s kind of like children, you have to do what’s best for them because they’re probably not going to do it for themselves. So it should have been a mandatory evacuation but it was a voluntary evacuation, which meant a lot of people didn’t leave.

It wasn’t until the next morning that the mayor finally ordered a mandatory evacuation. This was only fewer than 24 hours before Hurricane Katrina would actually make landfall. By this time, it was too late for many of the citizens of New Orleans. So by this time as well, the Superdome was offered as a refuge to some. But then the water started flowing into the port of New Orleans on Monday morning, many of the citizens were stranded on the rooftops.

The mayor simply complained to the media. People were looking to the local government, to the state government, to the federal government for help. But everybody dropped the ball on every level. So it was only when the director of Homeland Security released a memo to get the federal government moving. President Bush didn’t meet with the Cabinet until the next day to discuss how to launch a taskforce. The Red Cross requested permission to take water, food, and supplies to the people stranded in the city but their request was denied until the next day.

So you can see the Law of Timing working in all of these places. Katrina was botched at every level. Two days prior to Katrina arriving, this is so ironic, hundreds of animals were evacuated to Houston, Texas. I mean, isn’t that amazing? The local animal shelter did a lot better than the government.

So in the end, at the end of the day, 1,836 people died as a result of Katrina. Of that number, 1,577 of the deaths occurred in New Orleans and in St. Bernard Parish. If the leaders had paid attention to not only what they did, but when they did it, many, many, many more lives could have been saved. Good leaders recognize the when as well as the what and the where. That’s what good leaders do.

Every time a leader makes a move, they’re really only four outcomes that can happen. The wrong action at the wrong time leads to disaster. We really don’t even have to break that one down because that’s common sense. If you’re doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, there is really no way how it’s going to come out right. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I don’t care what kind of math you use. So we can just leave that one alone.

The second one, the right action at the wrong time brings resistance. So you can do the right thing, but if you do it at the wrong time, then it can cause a resistance with your followers. See, good leadership and proper timing involves an understanding. You must have a firm grasp of the situation. You must know what’s going on. You must have maturity. Because if your motives are not right, then the timing will be off. If you’re doing something for the wrong reason, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to do it at the right time.

Confidence. People follow leaders who know what must be done. Wisdom equals knowledge and insight. So you must have confidence. I remember yesterday at the Leadercast when the soldier was talking and he said that calm is contagious. Confidence is contagious. Basically he said anything that you put next to each other will fit. Panic is contagious. Chaos is contagious. Bad attitudes are contagious. Confidence is contagious. So if the leader is confident and knows what they’re doing, then it’s going to trickle down to the followers.

Decisiveness. A wishy-washy leader creates a wishy-washy follower. If you cannot make up your mind, if you are indecisive and cannot make a decision, your followers will fall in line with the same thing. You must be decisive.

Experience. If a leader doesn’t have experience, and we mean evaluated experience, if you don’t have it, you may be new. You may be new to a leadership position. You may be new to leading that particular organization, and that’s okay. We have to start somewhere. But if you don’t have experience, you need to seek it from someone who does. That’s why mentoring is very important. Coaching is very important. Planning and reflecting is very important.

Lastly, preparation. If the conditions are not right, then the leader must create the right conditions. Basically that means you may have to do it another time. If the conditions are not right right then, don’t force the issue. You may have to do it another time. It’s better to move something back and get it right than to force the issue and do it wrong and end up setting yourself back so much further than you would have if you would have just waited.

Okay, the next one of the outcomes: the wrong action at the right time is a mistake. John, in this chapter, he talks about entrepreneurs and their expertise in knowing what move to make at the right time. Sometimes entrepreneurs make key mistakes in key moments. He talks about his brother, who is a successful businessman. His brother says the biggest mistake people make is knowing when to cut loses and when to increase investments.

I recall originally a couple of months ago, I was at a luncheon with John and some of the business people in this area. Collin Sewell, and you guys probably you know, well if you’re from this area, you’ve heard of Collin Sewall, Collin Sewell Ford and Volkswagen. Well he made a statement during that little dinner. He basically said that the people in this area were going to mess around and waste a perfectly good boom. And I think that was so well said because this is the right time for many people to make things happen. It’s the right time.

But people are taking the wrong actions. They’re not making good moves. See, this area right here has just experienced explosive growth in so many areas, economically, people are moving in, there are employment opportunities. I mean, there’s a lot of explosive growth going on. This is the time, right now, for people to be growing leaders because of the opportunity to build the greatest.

People are not doing it. They’re not doing because they’re too busy in the right now. They’re too busy with that right now dollar. That’s why yesterday at the Leadercast, this probably was after the numbers were tallied, there were over 100 people who had purchased tickets but did not show up. Why do you think most of those people didn’t show up if you ask them? “I was too busy, I was too busy, I was too busy.”

But you have to make the decision. Are you or are you not going to invest in training, invest in learning to be a better leader, invest in personal growth? Are you going to or are you not going to? This is the right time to do it because this fire is not going to burn forever. And the people who are not investing right now, growing leaders, when they have the opportunity, when that fire starts to die down, they’re not going to know how to build their own fire.

Because the fact of the matter is, if we’re honest, in this area many of the people are being successful, it’s because of the product that they’re pushing. It’s not because of any discernable great skill that they have. They are in the right time and the right place and they have the right product and they are being successful.

But it has nothing to do with their skills. It could be anybody, which is why so many people are being successful right now. They have a chance right now to gain some skills and keep the momentum going. The Law of the Big Mo, they have momentum. They can keep it going by learning to be better leaders, learning succession, learning to train their people. But so many people don’t have the time. So at the end of the day, I believe that Collin is right. People are going to waste a perfectly good boom because they’re doing the wrong actions at the right time.

The final one: the right action at the right time results in success. Greatness happens when the right thing is done at the right moment. Winston Churchill once stated, “There comes a special moment in everyone’s life, a moment for which that person was born. That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission. A mission for which he is uniquely qualified for.” That’s all about the right opportunity and seizing the moment.

I believe … how does that saying say? The opportunity of a lifetime is only during the lifetime of that opportunity. So you have to have the right action at the right time to result in success.

John talks about the Civil War and how the consequences of the Law of Timing were dramatic and immediate. General Lee was in the position to end the conflict in his favor as the war had been going on for three years. Fortunately, and I say fortunately, because I wasn’t around during the Civil War but if the history books are correct, I believe it would have been in my favor to vote and root for General Grant in the Union army. So for these purposes, I say fortunately, the Union army had moved quicker than General Lee had anticipated. It ruined Lee’s strategy, but more importantly, it ruined his timing. It threw off his timing of what he was intending to do.

Consequently, the Union had the same opportunity to end the war as well. President Lincoln was expecting the war to come to a conclusion but General Meade did not seize the opportunity when the timing was right. Because he failed to move when he should have moved, because he failed to act when it was proper to act, this Civil War continued for two more years. During that period, hundreds of thousands more Americans died.

Both leaders had known what to do but they didn’t follow up at the crucial moment that they needed to follow up. Leaders have to pay attention to timing and ensure that the right thing is done at the right time. That law, the Law of Timing, is so easy to see in sports. In every sport, timing matters, every sport. If it’s football, when do you snap the ball? Basketball, when do you shoot the ball?

And the thing about it is they’re timed. In football, there’s a time clock, there’s a play clock. You have 25 seconds, you have 40 seconds to get a play off. In basketball, you have 25 seconds to shoot the ball or it’s a penalty and the other team gets the ball. Everything is based on time.

In baseball, when to swing the bat? Timing, milliseconds. Milliseconds are the difference between somebody getting the hit and striking out. When you’re boxing, milliseconds, timing is the difference between you being knocked out and hit with the punches you didn’t see because you don’t know when to duck, when to block, or you don’t know when to punch.

Whatever the case may be, in any sport, you can go down the list, timing is crucial. It’s the same thing in life. In business, timing is crucial. When it’s time to buy. When it’s time to sell. When it’s time to hold. When it’s time to bid. When it’s time to decline, invest, spend, save. Timing is crucial in all of these areas.

Allison:       Will?

Will:            Yes, ma’am?

Allison:       Lisa has a question. Sorry to interrupt you.

Will:            That’s no problem.

Allison:       I just thought I would grab … Okay, all right, Lisa.

Lisa:           Thank you, my question is, this definitely is speaking to me. I’m a results-oriented person. I’m a D on the DISC profile and when I see an opportunity, my tendency is just to move forward. Do you have keys or tips on when to know when to push through the challenges or maybe push through the obstacles and when to see the obstacle as maybe a sign that now is not the right time?

Will:            Yeah, that’s a good question. You remember yesterday when John was talking about leaders do it, they do it fast, but they do it deep? I think the deep is more important than the fast. So there’s nothing wrong with being a quick thinker and wanting to move quickly. But you have to ensure that you have all the information. Leaders don’t always wait for the whole picture to be painted to move forward, but they have to get enough information that they can make a legitimate decision.

So basically, you have to use your heart of hearts. Your gut instinct is going to tell you some things, your intuition. The Law of Intuition is going to tell you some things. But you need to make sure that you have enough information to make the decision. Basically meaning that you can weigh the outcomes. If this works, this is what I expect. If this doesn’t work, this is what can happen.

A lot of times, people jump into something thinking of the best-case scenario. But they have never considered the worst-case scenario. There’s nothing wrong with being a positive thinker, but you still have to be a realist. So if you have a decision to make, if you want to jump into something, and you’ve evaluated the best-case scenario as well as the worst-case scenario and if you know that you can deal with the worst-case scenario, then I say move forward. Does that make any kind of sense to you, Lisa?

Lisa:           Yes, it does. Thank you.

Will:            Okay, you’re very welcome. But yeah, sometimes as much as we want to move, and it’s all through this book and other leadership books, that it’s hard for leaders to sit still because they see something. They see an opportunity and they want jump into it. They want to move. But you have to discipline yourself. You have to discipline yourself to make sure that the timing is right. Nobody can teach us discipline but ourselves because we know what’s best for us.

So like I said, I think once you’ve weighed the options and you realize if it’s successful, wonderful. But if it fails, this is what can happen. And if that failure is going to be catastrophic, you’re like, “No, no, I can’t do that.” Then yes, you may want to slow down, hold off on that and reevaluate some things.

Lisa:           Thank you.

Will:            Anyway, great question.

Allison:       Thanks for the question.

Will:            Please don’t hesitate to interrupt me at any time, okay? Anybody else, Allison?

Allison:       And thank you for the question. Yeah, anybody else? *2, just let us know. That’s it, Will, for now.

Will:            Okay. Then we were talking about the times that it’s really important for timing. So I talked about business and I’m talking about horticulture. I don’t know how many of you guys have green thumbs. I don’t. But anyway, some of you do. But you know, it’s very important when it’s time to plant, when it’s time to water, when it’s time to feed, when it’s time to prune, spray, graft, clip, or harvest. All of these things are ultimately crucial and important.

In relationships, when it’s time to meet, when it’s time to greet. When it’s time to love. We have children, when it’s time to discipline. When it’s time to give. When it’s time to take. When it’s time to applaud. When it’s time to challenge or praise. Timing is crucial in all of these things.

Sometimes somebody does something and you ordinarily would discipline them then but your leadership instinct and intuition tells you that I have to do something different this time because this situation and circumstance is different. So timing is everything. You can say a lot of things to people. But if you say it at the wrong time, it can ruin everything. So that’s where our emotional intelligence comes in. It lets us know, when is the time to say something and when is the time not to say something. Timing is crucial in relationships.

In leadership, we know it’s crucial. We have an organization, when it’s time to hire someone. When is the right time? When is the right time to terminate someone’s employment? Do you do it too soon? Do you hang on too late and let them negatively impact your other team members? Or hurt your company? Hurt your finances? Or do you do it too soon? Before you’ve really gotten that great potential out of them that they may have? Timing is everything. When it’s time to demote. When it’s time forge ahead.

Like Lisa was saying, when is it time to move? When is the right time to do certain things? Timing is crucial. Timing is crucial. When it’s time to slow down. To rein in, to empower. We talk about empowerment so much as a leader. Timing is crucial though.

If you give someone too much responsibility before they’re ready for it, you can actually set them back. You can affect their confidence. If they can’t handle it, then all of a sudden their self-esteem is negatively impacted. So even though we encourage empowering as leaders, timing is involved in that.

There’s a time to empower someone, when they’re ready to hold the power. There’s a time to hold people accountable. Time to give rewards. There’s a time to buckle down and there’s always, always a time to celebrate. We can’t celebrate all day, every day but we need to make time to celebrate. So in all of these areas, timing is crucial.

So when making decisions regarding your personal, individual success, or your team’s success, you have to ask the following questions: Do you have a firm grip on the situation? Do I know what’s going on? Are my motives right? Do I want to do this for the right reason? Does the team believe in what I’m doing? If I have followers, if I have people that I’m going to impact with my decision, do they believe in what I’m doing? Can I initiate action with confidence and win people’s trust? Do people trust me? Even if they don’t have the whole picture, will they say, you know what, I trust that you know what you’re doing?

Have you drawn upon wisdom from others to inform your strategy? That’s something that we have to work on, especially as leaders because sometimes we get an idea in our heads and we want to roll forward. There’s nothing wrong with getting opinions. Now, you’ve got to get it from the right people. You can’t get too many. But there’s nothing wrong with going to somebody and drawing upon their wisdom, especially if they’ve done it before. Especially if they’re somebody who is where you’re trying to go.

Have you taken into account intangibles such as momentum, morale? Okay, I want to go forward, I want to make this change, how is it going to affect the morale of my team? A lot of times, especially old school quote/unquote leaders say, “Business is business. This is what we’ve got to do. So you’re just going to have to suck it up and move on.”

Well, sometimes that works depending on the circumstances. But I can tell you, if that’s how you’re going to run your whole business all the time, it’s not going to work for long. So you have to ask yourself these questions. Have you done everything you need for your team’s success? That’s what the Law of Timing is about. Right place, right time, doing the right thing.

We’re going to move on, number twenty, the Law of Explosive Growth. To add growth, to lead followers, to multiply, we need leaders. John talks about he initially thought of his company, EQUIP. That’s the acronym for Encouraging Qualities Underdeveloped In People. John and his wife, Margaret, and I’ve met Margaret, she is a beautiful woman. I asked John, how in the heck did he marry up like that.

But anyway, John and his wife had traveled to South America to teach leadership at a national conference. And John, if you’ve met John Maxwell, you’ve seen him, you’ve interacted with him, you can tell that he can connect and he can do it quite easily. I believe that’s just a natural born gift that he has. So he was able to connect with the people in South America rather easily despite the language barrier, despite the cultural barrier.

But before long, he discovered that the people and he were not on the same page. When he started to teach, it was apparent to him that they were not engaged in what he was saying. I don’t know how many of you guys have ever given a presentation or spoken in front of a crowd, but you can tell when you’re losing people. If you’re paying attention, you can tell when you’re losing them or when you’ve lost them or when they don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

Some trainers are so self-absorbed and so self-engaged, that they’re just rambling on and on oblivious that the only person hearing their voice in that room is themselves. So as John was speaking, he recognized, these people are not feeling what I’m saying. They’re not getting this. So he started having some individual sessions and he wanted to talk about leadership and the things that they can do to become better leaders. But they weren’t concerned with that. They were more interested in talking about their personal problems, conflicts they had with other people, personal things of that nature.

So John really felt like he was doing personal counseling just like he was when he first started in ministry. That’s not what he wanted to do. He began to realize that every time he spoke in an underdeveloped country, it was the same thing. They were not interested in leadership principles and the Law of Sacrifice and the 21 Irr … they weren’t worried about that.

They wanted to know, “How do I deal with my brother-in-law who won’t leave the house? He came to visit and he has stayed for three years. What do I do about that?” It was personal things that they were worried about. So on the flight home, John was frustrated. He was complaining to Margaret that he did not want to travel all of those miles again just to hear petty conflicts. So Margaret told him, “Maybe you’re the one who should be doing something about it.” The wisdom of women.

So in 1996, John brought together a group of leaders to assist him in creating EQUIP, which is nonprofit organization designed to help leaders in government, education, and religious communities. Just like most startup organizations, they went through turbulent times and after September 11, 2001, they had to lay off half of the staff. But what this did is it caused them to narrow their focus and develop one new goal.

That goal was they would try to develop one million leaders around the world by the year of 2008. The strategy involved was to develop 40,000 leaders in countries around the world. Those leaders would attend a training session every six months for three years and then they would commit to developing 25 leaders of their own in their own cities. EQUIP would provide the training material for the 40,000 people plus the 25 additional leaders that each leader trained.

The trainers, the people who were going to these different countries to work for EQUIP, were people who donated their time, they paid their own way, because this was a nonprofit, they didn’t have the funds. They donated their time, they paid their own way to the cities to teach twice a year. On top of that, they donated funds to underwrite the costs of the materials. So we’ll come back to EQUIP a little bit later.

Allison:       Will, can you say what EQUIP stands for again, the acronym?

Will:            Oh yes, it stands for Encouraging Qualities Underdeveloped In People.

Allison:       Oh, okay.

Will:            Okay?

Allison:       Thank you.

Will:            You’re welcome. So John said, and what Lisa said, is perfect because this is what he says. John states that leaders want to move fast and are impatient. They want to see the vision fulfilled and they want progress. Leaders tend to feel a tension between where they are right now and where they ought to be and that they are leading people where their people ought to be. So John stated, how can you overcome that? Well, it can be found in the Law of Explosive Growth. So Lisa, you asked a question just one chapter too soon. But now we’re right there.

He says, this is what you do. If you develop yourself, you can experience personal growth. If you develop a team, your organization can experience growth. But if you develop leaders, your organization can achieve explosive growth. You can grow by leading followers, but if you want to maximize your leadership and help your organization reach its potential, you need to develop leaders.

The following are some of the differences between leaders who attract followers and leaders who develop leaders. Leaders who attract followers, they need to be needed. They do. They need to be needed. Leaders who develop leaders want to be succeeded. They want somebody to take their place. You see, this really is a self-esteem issue. It is perfectly fine, it is perfectly okay, to feel good about being of use to someone. It’s a basic human element, wanting to be loved, wanting to be needed.

But to need to be needed is not really what the leader desires because the true leader wants it that if he or she isn’t needed anymore, that’s what they want. Because if they’re not needed anymore, that means that you have developed leaders beneath you. You recognize that you have developed your people when this happens. It’s ego, it’s ego that a person, whether it’s a leader or not, it’s the ego that’s the person who wants or needs the organization to falter with them.

Have you ever worked with some people like that? They think the organization is going to fall apart without them. That they’re the key to everything. That’s the ego booster right there because you don’t want to work in an organization where you are the key to the whole thing. You can be the leader, you can be an impactful person, you can be an influential person. But if you’re doing the job that a leader does, you’re building up other people.

So who wants to work at a place where if they call in sick, everything’s going to go to Hades? If you take a vacation, when you come back, it’s just going to be chaotic. That’s not a good organization. You want to have the peace of mind that I’ve trained my people, I’ve brought them up in the right place, so I can leave. I can do this.

I can take some time off if an emergency situation comes up in my life. I can remove myself from the organization and we’re still going to be fine because my people are properly led, they’re properly trained, and they can handle this. That’s what good leaders are doing. They’re constantly preparing people to succeed them. And it may never come that way. You may own your own company, you may own it until you retire. But you want to know that if something catastrophic happened, you have somebody on your staff that can step in for you and do the job.

Good leaders put their ego aside, they’re not worried or concerned about somebody becoming better than them. That’s what they want. They want somebody to be better than them. Leaders who attract followers develop the bottom twenty percent. Leaders who attract leaders develop the top twenty percent.

I believe Jack Welch talked a little bit about that yesterday in the Leadercast, about that twenty percent and focusing in on them. At most organizations, who constantly demands the most of our time and our attention? If you’ve ever been a supervisor, you probably know the answer to that. It’s normally the weakest, the least competent, the most troublesome person. The person who’s got to come to you over and over because they’re not getting it. And if you’re not careful, that’s where you’re going to spend the most of your time, trying to help them build themselves up.

What the good leaders do is they find the best twenty percent, the ones with the greatest leadership ability, those are the ones with the most potential to grow because if you focus on those, if you grow those, if you develop the best, then they’re going to help the rest. So you don’t have to spend all of your time on some of that eighty percent that’s struggling because the ones that you develop, they can help them. They can help develop them so you don’t have to do it by yourself.

So if you identify your best twenty, raise them up. Majority of your time needs to be spent with them, building them up to be good leaders because truth of the matter is not everybody is built to be a leader. If everybody was a leader, then leadership would cease to exist. Everybody is not meant to be a leader, so you have to identify those best twenty percent.

Leaders who attract followers treat everyone the same. Leaders who develop leaders treat individuals differently. You hear all the time, you know what, you’re supposed to treat everybody the same. You’re supposed to treat everybody the same. That’s foolishness. Why would you treat everyone the same? We’re not the same. Yes, you treat everyone fairly. But you treat people according to who they are.

Mick Delaney makes the statement that any business or industry that pays equal rewards to its goof-offs and eager beavers, sooner or later will find himself with more goof-offs than eager beavers. I mean, nothing frustrates an eagle more than to be compensated the same as a duck. A good leader recognizes that you treat people fairly but according to what they bring to the table.

If you guys have children, most of us probably have children, if you have multiple children, you recognize that yes, you can treat them fairly, love them, but you love different things about them because they’re different. You treat them differently. I have an older brother and an older sister. My sister, very, very, very, very sensitive. Always wore her feelings on her sleeves. So when it comes down to discipline, all you had to do was yell at her or pull out a belt and she was boohooing and she was crying.

So my mother never had to rant and rave with her because she was already emotional anyway as soon as something happened. My brother, he needed a beating. He needed a beating every day. He still probably needs a beating and he’s 46. This guy is not one, someone you can just sit down when he was young growing up. He wasn’t the one that you could sit down and rationalize with him, talk, and no. It didn’t reflect. He understood pain. So my mother understood, this is how I have to deal with him.

I, I was the baby of the family, I was the one in the middle. I wasn’t that emotional, I was the rational person. I was the one that mom would sit down with and talk about how disappointed she was in me. That’s how she would get to me. So she recognized, her children are different. So you have to treat them differently according to who they are. You treat them all fairly, you love them. But you treat them differently.

So leaders recognize that. They recognize that everybody is different. Everybody’s personality is different. You have to treat people according to who they are. Not to who you are but to who they are.

Leaders also attract followers who spend time with others. I’m sorry, leaders who attract follows, they spend time with them. They spend time with others. Leaders who develop leaders, invest time with others. See, just spending time with somebody, that’s not bad. We tell leaders, get to know your people. Invest in them, get to know who they are, develop a relationship. That’s fine. But if you find yourself, that’s all you’re doing and you’re not investing in them, then that could become wasted time.

The leader who attracts followers only to spend time with them, they go to lunch with them. And there’s nothing wrong with going to lunch with them but that’s the only interaction that they do. Go sit in their office, chitchat a little bit, go to lunch with them, but that’s all that they do. That’s fine. You’re going to attract probably a level two follower. That’s nothing wrong with that. But if it’s your goal to attract a leader, you’re not just going to spend time with them hanging out, shooting the breeze, going to lunch, you’re going to spend time with them investing in them.

I use you as an example, Allison. You’re going to spend time going to training with them. Discussing what you’ve learned together, growing together. That’s what a leader who wants to develop leaders do. They spend time with them, yes, but they spend time investing in them. There’s a difference. Leaders who attract followers grow by addition. Leaders who develop leaders grow by multiplication.

We don’t have to be math majors to know that you get bigger numbers by multiplying than you do by adding. Some leaders grow their organization one person at a time and they may be small and able to do that. But basically when you grow one person at a time, you’re only impacting one person at a time. The leaders who attempt to grow leaders, they multiply because they receive the value of all of that leader’s followers.

A leader’s math, and that’s what John calls it, a leader’s math is adding ten people and getting the power of ten people. But adding ten leaders, you get the power of those ten plus ten times the amount that they have. So you get the power of them plus the power of those leaders that they’re leading, plus the power of the people that those leaders are leading. It’s multiplication.

I think several weeks ago, I was talking about Bill Walsh, the football coach, the former football coach for the San Francisco 49ers who is deceased now. But his coaching legacy, which the Law of the Legacy is the last law, but his legacy was the coaches that he coached directly, in his staff, I think he had about seven of them. And four or five of them became head coaches and three of them won Super Bowls.

But it wasn’t just that. They coached coaches. And they coached coaches. And they coached coaches. So directly because of his influence, there are 33 individuals who coached in the NFL. That’s multiplying. That’s multiplying.

Leaders who attract followers impact only those they touch. Leaders who develop leaders impact people beyond their reach. There’s nothing wrong with impacting people that you directly touch. That’s good. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you have to recognize that it’s limiting. If you’re in an organization, not only is it limiting, it’s tiring because you have to deal with every one person personally over and over again.

When you lead leaders, it helps you reach many others because you don’t have to directly touch all of those people. Those leaders that you developed, they can touch. And that they’re developing leaders they can touch. So your arm is extended all the way through the organization because you’ve led leaders.

So the question is why doesn’t everyone develop leaders? If that’s the key to success, that’s the answer, that’s the magic potion, why doesn’t everybody do it? Well, leaders are hard to find. I mean, just look at your life. Look at the things around us and ask yourself, how many good leaders do you know? Really good leaders?

Most people are followers. That’s just a fact. Most people are followers because they want someone else to take the responsibility so when something goes wrong, they say, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t make the decision. They did it.”

Leaders are like eagles. They don’t like to flock together, that’s why they’re so hard to find because they’re separated. They’re out there. They are out there but they’re hard to find because most people are not leaders. That’s just the truth of the matter is most people are average. Because being a leader requires … we just talked about these 21 laws. It requires a lot, it does.

It requires a lot of discipline, a lot of dedication, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of reflection, a lot of self-evaluation. It requires you to step out of your box, out of your comfort zone, to grow, to stretch. And most people don’t want to do that because it’s uncomfortable and it requires effort. So that’s why leaders are rare. Because it takes work.

Leaders are also hard to gather. What that means, they’re entrepreneurial and they want to go their own way. I mean, you have to be very compelling. Most leaders, if they’re doing something, what they’re doing to them is compelling so in order for you to get them to follow you, you have to be very compelling yourself in order to get them to stop doing what they’re doing.

Your organization is going to have to create an environment that’s attractive to them. Most organizations they want stability, they want status quo. They want the systems and all of the mechanisms of the system to just flow properly. No problems. Leaders want excitement. They want to mix it up. They want to see something different.

They don’t want to just come to work every day doing the same, mundane, routine thing. Because they’re safe. Because they’re stable. Because it’s comfortable. That’s not what leaders want. So if that’s the kind of organization that you’re in, that’s the kind that you’re running, you recognize that the people that you have there, that’s not really probably going to be a bunch of leaders. Because most leaders, they’re going to shake it up a little bit and they’re going to bring suggestions to you. “Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we try this? Have you ever thought of this?”

They’re not the ones who are going to be studying your policies and procedures all day long, making sure that they follow all those rules, because they want to live out of the box. They want to try something different. You have to have an environment where they can thrive if you want to have leaders. They’re hard to keep. As hard as it is to find them, it’s harder to keep them. So in order to keep a leader, you have to lead a leader and become a better leader yourself. You have to keep growing and keep adding value to them.

You see potential in a leader, you have to keep developing them. That’s your job as the leader, to develop them. You’re raising up leaders. It’s kind of like your children. You’re raising your children up so you keep investing in them and doing things so they can get better and better. It’s the same thing. Because it takes a leader to raise up another leader.

John took a poll at one of his conferences and he found that only one out of every ten leaders were able to blossom without the help of another leader. The rest of them, they needed other leaders who were ahead of them in the journey to help them grow. To help them to their path. So if you have a leader that you’re trying to keep, you need to make a habit of continually to add value to them. If you do that and you do it on a consistent basis, you may have them forever.

And, finally, we’re going to talk about back to EQUIP. The story of EQUIP. When they started, hundreds of hungry leaders traveled to each site in India and Indonesia and the Philippines and he chose that site because he had had some success there in the past about leaders wanting to develop themselves. So those are the areas that he found, he picked out.

Well do you know, there were some people who were walking five miles to get to the two-day event. Five miles. Just think about that. I mean, I love leadership, I do. I enjoy it. Would I walk five miles to go to a conference? Whew, I just really can’t say that I would. I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know that I would. But they did.

So by the spring of 2006, EQUIP had reached its goal of training one million leaders. They were two years ahead of schedule. By 2007, another million had been trained. See the more you invest in people, and the longer you do it, the greater the growth and the higher the return. So this is what we want. We must, to grow our organization to its fullest potential, we have to develop leaders and not followers. When we do that, we experience great, great multiplication.

Okay, so does anybody have any questions thus far before we get into the very last one?

Allison:       I don’t think so, Will. I think we’re good.

Will:            Okay. Well, let’s dive into the last law, number twenty-one, the Law of the Legacy. The Law of Legacy says a leader’s lasting value is measured by succession. Ask yourself, what do you want people to say at your funeral? That may sound a little morbid but it really asks a great question. What legacy will you leave? Will people have to guess why you lived or will they know why? I mean, will your work show who you were and what you accomplished?

I’ve been to a few funerals in my life, most of us have. You hear family and friends standing up saying all these nice things about the deceased but I often wonder, other than those family members and those friends, who else notices that that person is gone? Who else notices that that person is not on this earth anymore? That’s what a legacy is about.

See, John believes that everybody creates a legacy. It’s either good or bad. But we all have a choice about the legacy that we leave. If we want to leave a positive one, we must do it on purpose. We must be intentional. It’s not going to be an accident. There are four disciplines to developing your leadership legacy.

The first one is you have to know what legacy you want to leave. Most people accept their lives but they don’t really lead them. They just accept them. It’s kind of accidental. But you have to be proactive about the life you’re living. You have to live life on purpose. Most people, they live accidentally, basically hoping for good things to happen to them and trying to avoid bad things.

So we end up in certain jobs, certain relationships by basically just reaching out to whatever came close enough for us to grab. You ask people, how did you end up here? “I don’t know, just decided to make a move.” Or, “Why are you working here?” “Well, you know, at the time I needed a job and they were hiring and it’s okay.” But it’s not what we really wanted. We just grabbed it because it was there. That’s unintentional living. You want to leave a legacy? You have to be purposefully and proactively doing things to leave the legacy that you want.

The second one, you must live the legacy that you want to leave. You must live what you say that you believe. One way or the other. John’s legacy involves influencing leaders. That’s what he says, that’s what he wants. If you pay attention to John, if you know him personally, that’s where he focuses most of his attention, is on people who he has identified as leaders and who he is trying to develop. He does that by continuing to grow himself. We must be what we desire to see in others. So you have to live the legacy that you want to leave.

Ask yourself, you choose who will carry on your legacy. Because legacies live on in people, not things. It’s not the amount of money you’ve left someone. It’s not the foundation. It’s the people. What have you invested in the people? And succession is the key responsibility of leadership. Making sure that whatever good works you’re doing can carry on.

That’s one of the reasons John created this John Maxwell team because he understands he’s not getting any younger. He wants to leave a legacy. He wants to know that when his time is coming, he passes, there are still people running around on this earth trying to train in principles of leadership. That’s what he wants his legacy to be. That is the reason he created the John Maxwell team. It is for his legacy. Purposeful. He’s choosing who he wants to carry out his legacy.

The natural progression of that is follows, achievement comes when they do big things by themselves as a leader. Success comes when leaders empower followers to do big things for them. Significance comes when leaders develop leaders, do great things with them. But their legacy comes when they put leaders in positions to do great things without them. Training people to do it without you, that’s a legacy. That’s what you’re leaving behind.

So you have to make sure, number four, you make sure you pass that baton. Because the legacy is only created when a person puts his organization into the position to do great things without them. It’s okay to be needed. But your purpose as the leader who wants to leave a legacy is to get your organization to the position where they can do it without you. The reason they can do it without you is because of you, two different things. But you want them to be able to do it without you.

John uses the example of a baton passed in a relay. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a relay race. You know, four people running. It doesn’t matter how fast those people are, each one of those men and women could be faster on each leg than the people that they’re racing against, but if the baton exchange is faulty, they’re going to lose. If they pass out of their lane, if they pass too late after they’ve crossed a certain spot, or they drop the baton, they will lose the race.

The same thing with leadership and a legacy. It’s measured by succession. You can do some great things but as soon as you stop doing them, if it all falls apart, you have failed in your legacy because you did not create the environment for someone to succeed you. It was all about you. The organization all depended on you. That’s not what you want. You have to prepare someone else to finish the race. Someone else to pass the baton on to.

The best leaders today lead with tomorrow in mind by making sure they invest in leaders who will carry the legacy forward. Life is fleeting, it is, it’s short. It seems long but at the end, it seems short. When all is said and done, your ability as the leader, it won’t be so much judged on by what you achieved personally. But we will be judged by how well the people we invested in carry on after we’re gone.

The great Jackie Robinson once stated, “A life is insignificant except for its impact on other lives.” It’s about people, investing in people, developing people. A leader’s lasting value is measured by succession. So the question that we should ask ourselves is, what legacy do we want to leave? That’s one of the reasons that I love speaking to young people. I never charge for speaking to young people. That’s the reason that I teach.

I love when I get performance evaluations, not because I need my ego stroked but I have yet to get a student to say, “Hey, I loved this class on probation and parole. I love this class on constitutional law.” Or whatever it is that I was teaching that semester. No, not ever. All of the thank yous I’ve gotten were like, “You know what, Mr. Bess, you said something in one class that made me think and now I do this differently.”

Or, “We were discussing something one time that I had never thought of before and now I understand certain things.” They thank me for the life lessons that they’ve learned. That’s what I want my legacy to be. I want people that I impact on every level to learn something that maybe years from now they say, “Hey, I remember Bess said that. I remember that.”

I want somebody to look in the newspaper many, many years, I hope, many, many years from now, and see my name in the obituary and say, “Oh man, know what? I remember such and such years ago I was struggling with some relationship and this guy said this and this and that and that. I started doing this one and it got better.” That’s what I would like.

So we all have to ask that, what is our legacy going to be? What are we intentionally doing to create that legacy? So I pray that myself, and as well as all of you on the call, and all of you listening later, that we all can live a life intentionally and that we all have the ability to leave a legacy that we really, truly desire. So with that, that ends the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

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.