One of the biggest problems that I see in most leaders inside the network marketing industry is that they lack the leadership skills and ability to be able to effectively grow their team and their organization.
This is due to a concept I call accidental leadership.
An accidental leader is someone who is in a leadership position, but isn’t effective.
How do you know if you’re an accidental leader?
It’s simple!
Don’t look at the leader – look at their team.
You might say, “I am definitely a leader! I work with my team all the time!”
But does your team 100% operate as you want? Is there momentum and excitement? Are your active team members developing as leaders themselves? Is everyone growing and is there a great team culture that outsiders are drawn to?
If you look at your team, and you can’t think to yourself, “This is a dream job with a dream team. We’re doing this! And we’re doing this together!” – then you need to work on your leadership ability.
Don’t worry – if this is you, you’re not alone.
Most network marketers fall into this category of ‘accidental leadership.’
The problem with accidental leadership is that it will never get you freedom you so craved…the freedom that propelled you to start your business in the first place!
“We need to work more closely with the people who don't need our help, but that deserve our help.”
So how do you avoid being an accidental leader?
By starting to practice intentional leadership.
There are three main areas of work to develop as an intentional leader:
1. You have to learn how to lead yourself.
2. You need to know who the right people on your team are to work with.
3. You need to know how to work with those ‘right people’ in a structured way to develop them.
The main area of focus that most leaders struggle with are knowing exactly who on their team to work with. Who are the ‘right people’ to spend your precious time and energy with?
Most leaders spend their time working with the wrong people.
Here’s what is great. You will always have a small percentage of your team that are performers. These people are MOTIVATED. They are COMMITTED. They do the work.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we honestly feel like these people don’t even need our help! They’re already performing!
As a leader, we have a tendency to just let these people do their own thing. We focus on everyone else ‘who needs us.’
However, this is the WRONG way to develop a team!
The problem is, as your team grows in size, the “everyone else” becomes unmanageable.
You wind up trying to be everything to everybody. You find yourself incredibly busy, but you’re not getting anything done.
This is because you are investing your time, wisdom and expertise into people that aren’t doing anything with that investment. There’s little to no ROI on the time and energy spent.
When you are acting as an intentional leader, you begin looking for certain qualities/criteria in in your team members.
There is an actual proven equation called “Pareto’s Law” that states that 80% of all output is generated by 20% of all causes.
In other words, more plainly said, 20% of your team (or less!) will create 80-90% of your results.
But, unfortunately, as accidental leaders, we tend to focus on the other group – the 80%ers – those that only give us 10-20% of our sales volume and new team members.
And I personally found when I had my own team that the 80%ers were very needy, but rarely produced any results!
Shift Your Thought Process – and Your Attention
We have to learn how to stop focusing our time on the 80%ers and shift our time and attention to the 20%ers.
We need to work more closely with the people who don’t need our help but that deserve our help.
Yes, they are already performing, but you can push them harder!
Human beings will NOT reach their fullest potential on their own. We need that external force.
You are taking a team member that is already good and making them great!
Here’s a special homework assignment from me. I want you to identify your 20%ers.
You can find them by looking for the people that are already performing and already committed. They join and go to work right away.
The quality I personally look for to identify these people is attitude. If somebody has a positive attitude about the way they do things, that is one of the #1 predictor of success.
Start identifying these people, and ask yourself: Are you working closely enough with them? Do you have a plan for them? A strategy?
If not, it’s time to get started!
