The Six Things: Leading People to Outstanding Achievement

By Jim McLaughlin

What you learn here can change your life as a leader. It can change the lives of those who achieve more under your direction. The process outlined in The Six Things will help you create greater enthusiasm, a stronger sense of team, increased passion and greater results from the people you lead. This book is for anyone in a supervisory position who wants to leave a legacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim McLaughlin
• Release date: Dec 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458139610

Jim McLaughlin

Jim McLaughlin is the founder of Mac Performance Improvement, a consulting firm specializing in performance improvement in the areas of leadership, management, sales, and organizational development.Jim specializes in performance improvement through training and coaching.He has helped hundreds of leaders, individual contributors and sales professionals become top producers and achieve more than they thought possible.Jim has a master's degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology.

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The Six Things: Leading People to Outstanding Achievement

James R. McLaughlin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 James R. McLaughlin

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: What makes someone a leader?

Chapter 2: The styles and qualities of leadership

Chapter 3: The difference between leadership and management

Chapter 4: The six things a leader must sell

Chapter 5: Putting management and leadership to work

Chapter 6: The effects of leadership and management on personality styles

Chapter 7: Understanding and addressing followers’ changing needs

Chapter 8: Role of the comfort zone in maximum outcomes

Chapter 9: The role of self-concept in maximum achievement

Chapter 10: Developing the vision, legacy and action plan

Chapter 11: Maximizing the effectiveness of the vision and action plan

Conclusion: Key leadership sales concepts

Endnotes

Introduction

Leadership means moving followers to achieve more than they thought possible. It is connecting with followers in such a way that they take on a vision or desired outcome as their own because they understand what it will do for them personally and professionally. Few people who call themselves leaders achieve this.

The Six Things: Leading People to Outstanding Achievement demonstrates how any leader can reach that level and create follower excitement, passion and commitment. It focuses on the all-important interaction between leader and follower and on six things leaders must sell their followers.

Effective leadership is not all about the leader, which is where many books focus. It is about the interaction between leader and follower, and that is what determines the effectiveness of leadership. If there are no followers, there is no leader. This book focuses on maximizing the interaction between leaders and followers.

Leadership effectiveness is catapulted to a whole new level when followers are sold on The Six Things a Leader Must Sell, which permeate every aspect of leading people to outstanding outcomes. These six concepts provide the necessary motivational focus and assurance that followers must have to maintain their passion and keep driving toward the desired outcome.

A group of followers is a collection of individuals with different needs and wants, so no one-size-fits-all approach works when moving people to outstanding outcomes. What it takes to sell followers on The Six Things depends on their changing individual needs, personalities and inner beliefs and on each individual’s unique self-concept. When they are sold effectively, followers will be in hyperdrive as they move toward outcomes they never imagined were possible.

Leadership isn’t telling people what to do. It is selling followers on the possibilities, on what the outcome or reward will do for them personally and professionally, and on their abilities to achieve over any obstacle. It is selling them on the reward and that it will be worth the effort and selling them on your own ability to help them obtain the reward.

Selling is so important because followers often do not clearly see the opportunities in front of them. In their pursuit of achievement, people often encounter obstacles that divert their focus away from desired outcomes and cast doubt on the viability of achievement. When this happens, great leaders put things into perspective for followers, which is selling.

If you merely tell someone to work toward a goal, you likely will have to push, pull and drag them to the outcome – or they might do exactly what you tell them to do and achieve predictable results. If you sell your followers on what the outcome will do for them – if you sell them on The Six Things – they will come up with creative approaches that will surprise you. They will take you further than anyone thought possible.

To continually sell your team, you have to understand their needs and wants, their hopes and dreams, just as you would in any other selling situation. We’ll show you a process you can use to get that information from your team.

If you’re in a position of leadership now, some followers embrace your direction and some probably struggle. Why do some direct reports achieve more in the face of significant challenges while others freeze? Why do some people work hard toward a goal only to back away when they get close? Why can’t some of your team members seem to get past the status quo? How is it that some of your team players embrace new and exciting direction and others don’t? We’ll examine answers to these questions and others and show you how to address such situations and turn them around.

We’ll also explore the differences between leadership and management. Both are essential, and it’s important to know when to lead and when to manage in order to maximize achievement. To be effective in moving your team to greater outcomes, you will need to use leadership skills in some situations, management skills in others. Most often, you will use both.

We will examine the personality types that relate best to leadership and those that respond better to management. You will recognize some of your team players in these examples and get new insight into how to guide them to greater levels of achievement.

No meaningful change will happen unless people move out of their comfort zone. A variety of fears and the possibility of discomfort or embarrassment often keep people from doing the very things that will make a difference in their lives. We will explore the comfort zone concept in depth to help you better understand why followers don’t take advantage of opportunities that are easily accessible. By selling followers on The Six Things and implementing the process laid out in these pages, you can help followers change their inner beliefs and move well beyond their comfort zone to achieve significant results.

People’s inner beliefs about their abilities dictate how much effort they will put into activities that lead to achievement, so we also will explore the effects of self-concept on a person’s view of possibilities. We will examine some scenarios you likely will have experienced and provide guidance into how to expand followers’ inner beliefs and self-concept.

When creating a strong motivating environment, it’s imperative to know what needs are driving your followers at any given time. Your direct reports’ needs often change in response to a dynamic environment. People who are top performers when times are good, for example, often lose ground in the face of anxiety related to a bad market, cutbacks, downsizing or other negative situations. Through examining a hierarchy of needs and the impact those needs have on driving performance, we will give you tools to better identify followers’ needs and what you should be selling in any economy.

Finally, we will lay out a process you can use to create a team vision that will excite followers, win their commitment to the outcome or legacy, and get them working passionately to achieve it. The process includes steps for developing, implementing, leading and managing an action plan to ensure that your team achieves the goals in the vision.

If you want to lead a group to achieve a difficult or outstanding outcome, you will benefit from this book. If you follow through and implement this proven process and sell followers on The Six Things, you will have more committed and more passionate followers. You will achieve significantly greater results.

Chapter 1: What makes someone a leader?

How much more committed would your followers be if they understood that achievement of the vision or outcome will take them further than they ever thought possible?

How much more driven to achieve would your followers be if they felt they were part of something great?

Leaders inspire followers to a shared vision or outcome. They look beyond the here and now and imagine a brighter future for themselves and the people they lead. They picture the opportunities that will come when team members all achieve their dreams of the future. They see things that others cannot and they believe in a future that others don’t or won’t see as possible. They need to make things happen, to change the way things are done. They want to create something not created before, to leave a legacy. A leader rallies the troops to work to achieve a vision.

Having a vision alone does not make a person a leader. You cannot be a leader unless people follow you; there is no leadership without the movement of followers. You must be able to get people to accept the vision or desired outcome as their own and to work to achieve it. They have to believe the direction is the best direction for the company and for themselves.

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done. – Ralph Lauren

There are some who believe that only those who run companies, like presidents and CEOs, can be leaders. There are others who believe that a leader can be anyone on any level within the organization. I believe that anyone who is responsible for moving a group of people to an objective is a leader.

One of the best leaders I have ever had the pleasure to follow was president of one of the largest mortgage companies in the country. He created a vision that few people thought was possible. We were going to change the way mortgages were done. We were going to take loan applications by phone from all 50 states in one location.

PHH Mortgage was part of Cendant Corporation and a sister company to Coldwell Banker, ERA and Century 21. The company provided mortgages as Coldwell Banker Mortgage, ERA Mortgage and Century 21 Mortgage. Our customers were real estate agents who were free to refer buyers to any mortgage company for their home loans.

Many in the industry were certain this new approach would fail and openly expressed their doubts. They didn’t believe real estate agents would encourage borrowers to pick up the phone and talk to someone in New Jersey about getting a loan. Mortgage banking was said to be local, and real estate agents and borrowers simply would not do it. It was said that others had tried this in the past on a much smaller scale and failed.

Terry Edwards, who was PHH president at the time, sold the vision to leadership as an exciting proposition: Transform the way mortgages were being done.

While some in the industry laughed at the thought that this venture could be successful, the company grew significantly. Leaders on all levels sold the vision and the company was able to attract top-quality people who wanted to change the way mortgages were originated.

Edwards understood one of the premises of this book: that people want to be part of something great. They want to know they’re contributing to something larger than themselves.

You might look at your own team and say, Not my team. They’re just looking to get through the day.

I would say, Yes, your team, too.

Perhaps they just don’t see their current jobs as offering those opportunities. Still, they need to feel they are part of something great. They need fulfillment in their work.

As University of Northern Iowa Professor David Whitsett, Ph.D., said in a lecture: When people don’t find fulfillment in their work, they turn to hobbies to fill the void because they don’t believe work will move them to self-actualization.

Most people don’t recognize this in themselves. They don’t expect to see it, so they don’t see what’s in front of them. That’s why leadership is so important, and it’s another reason I say leadership is sales. A leader sells a vision by putting things in perspective, by helping people see the opportunities that are right in front of them. Followers will embrace a vision when they see how it will satisfy their needs and move them further along the continuum of development so they can be more, have more and experience more.

At a national sales rally in the late 1990s, Terry Edwards addressed the entire field sales force and announced, The mortgage business is considered a slimy business and we are going to change the way mortgages are being done. We will change [the public’s] view of mortgage companies.

Jaws dropped all over the auditorium.

He went on: Our mission statement says we treat customers like family. What that means is that we will treat our customers like your sister, your mother or any member of your family. … We will always strive to do the right thing. We will not put customers into a loan they should not be in just to do a mortgage and make a buck. We will not give them a loan if they shouldn’t get a loan. If you have trouble accepting that, this is not the company for you. You should leave.

He felt so strongly about treating customers like family that it became a part of the company’s mission statement. The company’s values included the statement: We always do the right thing.

The president created the new vision and sold it to other leaders. They, in turn, sold it to their direct reports, who sold it all the way down the line. Leadership sold the vision to new people coming into the organization. People were expected to be able to recite the mission statement at leadership meetings and sales rallies. Several people stayed with the company simply because they were a part of something great, even while knowing they could make more money elsewhere.

Many loan officers were frustrated because they didn’t have a lot of the exotic loan products that other companies had. They lost commissions when borrowers were turned down because they didn’t fit the loan parameters, only to go down the street to another mortgage company and get the loan.

Some people didn’t buy into the vision and they left. They were replaced by people who were attracted by the vision. The new people and those who stayed became jazzed and excited. Many of them shared the vision with others, telling individuals and groups of agents who needed reassurance that their buyers would be well cared for because, as they said, We treat customers like family. They would say, We make mistakes but we always do the right thing in the end and we will make it right.

The effect on the company’s culture was profound. While