– Leadership Develops Daily, Not in a Day

(DAY 3 – The 21 Day Leadership Challenge)

Leaders use a process whenever they build something. It makes your ventures repeatable and scalable. Build a step-by-step process for doing something.

Dig into it:

• Leaders require seasoning to be effective. If you continually invest in your leadership development, the inevitable is growth over time.

• The relationship between growth and leadership: It’s the capacity to develop and improve one’s skills that distinguishes leaders from their followers.

• Successful leaders are learners. And the learning process is ongoing, a result of self-discipline and perseverance.

• The Phases of Leadership Growth

Phase 1: I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know – few think of themselves as leaders and as long as a person doesn’t know the importance of leadership he isn’t going to grow.

Phase 2: I Know That I Need to Know – at some point we discover we need to learn how to lead.

Phase 3: I Know What I Don’t Know – if we don’t get better at leadership, our careers will eventually get bogged down. In this phase you develop a plan for personal growth on areas you need improvement.

Phase 4: I Know and Grow and It Starts to Show – when you recognize your lack of skill and begin the daily discipline of personal growth, exciting things start to happen. You start becoming an effective leader but you have to think about every move you make.

Phase 5: I Simply Go Because of What I Know – your ability to lead becomes almost automatic. You develop great instincts which results in incredible payoffs. But the only way to get there is to obey the Law of Process and pay the price.

• Benjamin Disraeli asserted, “The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his time when it comes.”

• There is an old saying: champions don’t become champions in the ring – they are merely recognized there. That’s true. If you want to see where someone develops into a champion, look at his daily routine.

– The True Measure of Leadership is Influence – Nothing More, Nothing Less

(DAY 2 – The 21 Day Leadership Challenge)

Leadership is not about your title or position. It’s about leading. Can you lead in a situation where your title or position don’t matter? Practice some anonymous leading.

Dig into it:

• True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that cannot be mandated. It must be earned.
• Five Myths About Leadership

1. The Management Myth – that leading and managing are the same. Leadership is about influencing people to follow, while management focuses on maintaining systems and processes. Managers can maintain direction; to move people you need influence.

2. The Entrepreneur Myth – entrepreneurs are skilled at seeing opportunities and going after them. But not all of them are good with leading people in their vision.

3. The Knowledge Myth – neither IQ nor education necessarily equates to leadership.

4. The Pioneer Myth – being a trendsetter is not the same as being a leader. To be a leader, a person has to not only be out in front, but also has to have people following his lead.

5. The Position Myth – leadership is not based on rank or title. It’s not the position that makes the leader; it’s the leader that makes the position.

• Several Factors That Make a Leader

a) Character – Who They Are – true leadership always begins with the inner person. People can sense the depth of a person’s character.

b) Relationships – Who They Know – with deep relationships with the right people you can become the real leader in an organization.

c) Knowledge – What They Know – information is vital. You need a grasp of the facts to develop an accurate vision for the future.

d) Intuition – What They Feel – leaders seek to recognize and influence intangibles such as energy, morale, timing and momentum.

e) Experience – Where They’ve Been – the greater your past challenges, the more likely followers will be willing to let you lead.

f) Ability – What They Can Do – the bottom line is followers want to know whether you can lead them to victory. As soon as they no longer believe you can deliver, they will stop following.

– Leadership Ability Determines a Person’s Level of Effectiveness

(DAY 1 – The 21 Day Leadership Challenge)

Every leader has a ceiling. Maybe you’re destined to be the supreme master of the universe or maybe you can’t even get your dog to come when you call him. Think about your leadership lid and what you can do to push it higher.

Dig into it:

• Leadership ability is the lid that determines a person’s level of effectiveness. Your leadership ability always determines your effectiveness and the potential impact of your organization.

• Let’s say you’re an 8 on a scale from 1 to 10. But let’s say that your leadership ability is a 1.

• Let’s say you become a real student of leadership and you maximize your potential, taking it all the way up to a 7.

• By raising your leadership ability – without increasing your dedication at all – you can increase your original effectiveness by 600 percent. Leadership has a multiplying effect.
• Smart, talented people are able to go so far because of the limitations of their leadership. To reach the highest level of effectiveness, you have to raise your leadership lid.

Every no and then I read up some old books, and by old I mean before year 2000. I now not everybody would agree with me but I mean that very much have change in our society the last ten years.

But never the less I find it educational to read them anyhow. So the pile before me contains seven books from the same author starting with a book from 1998.

The author is John C. Maxwell and he is an internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker, coach, and author who has sold more than 19 million books. His organizations have trained more than two million leaders worldwide. Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP and INJOY Stewardship Services.

Every year he speaks to Fortune 500 companies, international government leaders, and organizations as diverse as the United States Military Academy at West Point, the National Football League, and ambassadors at the United Nations. A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best-selling author, Maxwell was one of 25 authors named to Amazon.com’s 10th Anniversary Hall of Fame.

Three of his books, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Developing the Leader Within You, and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader have each sold more than a million copies.

After reading the book and about the author I find out that it is also a 10´th anniversary edition from 2008.

So I’ve put together a 21 days leadership challenge. Starting in March the 1. and for the next 21 days, make it your mission to practice one of the laws of leadership. Someway, somehow, any way you can.

So the 1. Of March I will start this challenge.

Good luck!