DALLAS — Leadership is about more than just attaining a certain position or being able to connect with people, says leadership expert John Maxwell.
In the end, the “pinnacle” of leadership – the highest level – is about respect. It’s about inspiring people to follow you because of “who you are and what you represent,” Maxwell told the audience in a keynote at the annual convention of the American Association of Community Colleges.
Leadership is critical for community college presidents because how well you lead determines how well your institution will succeed, Maxwell said.
Under what he described as the “the law of the lid,” an organization won’t go any higher than the leadership level of the person in charge.
Maxwell believes anyone can become a good leader, but leadership development is a process that takes a long time. He compared the journey to cooking in a crockpot rather than toasting a pop tart.
Levels of leadership
To become a better leader, one must ask these questions, Maxwell said: “What are you doing to develop yourself, and what are you doing to develop others?”
Maxwell breaks down leadership into five levels.
A Level 1 leader is a leader because of the position he or she holds. If you’re a teacher, for example, your students are bound to follow you. “You get compliance; you don’t get commitment,” he said.
Level 2 leadership is about relationships. “People follow because they want to,” Maxwell said. “Your energy greatly increases once you connect with your people.”
There are three things Level 2 leaders do well: They listen, so they get their leadership cues from knowing where their people are. They observe well, because they know what counts is what people do, not what they say. And they value people and appreciate the diversity among people.
Attracting good people
People follow Level 3 leaders because they’ve been successful, Maxwell said. They lead by example, and “they really understand leadership is vision.”
“Many leaders are like travel agents. They send people where they’ve never been themselves,” he said. “Leaders should be more like tour guides; they take you along with them.”
Level 3 leaders also create momentum, he said. When you’ve got momentum, “it makes you look better than you really are.” But when you lose momentum, “people think you’re worse than you are.”
Having “big mo” is like being a train speeding down a track and smashing through a steel-reinforced concrete wall. Without momentum, though, a one-inch block will stop a train.
Under “the law of magnetism,” Maxwell said, leaders attract people who are like them, not like who they want to be. “A high-energy person has never been attracted to a low-energy person,” he said. That’s why “you want to keep growing and developing yourself as a leader.”
Level 4 is about “people development,” Maxwell said. “People follow because of what you have done for them.” A leader at this level becomes a mentor.
What Level 4 leaders are good at is attracting good people. “Every organization is like a revolving door. The question is who’s coming in and who’s going out,” he said. The key in recruiting is “having a clear picture of what you’re looking for.”
“To be good at equipping people,” he said, “you need to be good at what you’re equipping people to do.”
Level 4 leaders have the people they hire watch them as they take them through the process, have them do the work while coaching them, and then have them do it themselves. Most leaders stop there, but there’s another step: having the person they have trained equip someone else.
And that gets Level 5 – when a leader is respected for what they’ve accomplished.
“Your goal,” he told the audience, “is to get your people to a higher level.”
