This episode deals with what it means to be a leader, and the differences between effective and ineffective leadership. The job of a leader is not to manage, it’s to lead and develop more leaders and in doing so, productivity and results become the by-product.

The Funnel of Leadership

According to this framework, the roles of a leader are as follows:

• Enroll: To enroll qualified candidates into a vision, mission and purpose.
• Engage: To get them to a point where they are truly engaged with what they do.
• Empower: To empower them at a level where they feel they have meaning, importance and appreciation for the things they do.
• Educate: To lead the people by educating them which allow them to grow their skills.
• Elevate: To elevate them to a higher level in terms of value, meaning and purpose.

Effective vs. Ineffective Leadership

This funnel of leadership can be divided into two sides—effective and ineffective. The stuff on the ineffective side is coming out of the industrial age and the effective side belongs to the connection age.

We can see how they work out in each roles of a leader:

• Enroll: If you fail at the fundamental level of enrolling people, you end up with no one. But if you get it right, you get qualified candidates.
• Engage: Ineffective in engaging folks mean inconsistent results. But if they are engaged, they are going to have a consistent work ethic and attitude.
• Empower: Getting this piece wrong will make people just checklist or task-driven. But getting it right means they are going to come up with ideas and be more innovative.
• Educate: If we don’t educate and facilitate growth, people are going to stagnate. But if you teach them skills, they will grow.
• Elevate: If they don’t believe they’re elevating, they won’t feel appreciated and will leave when there is a better alternative. Elevating them sees to it that they play a higher role.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution. Hope you’ve gotten it and you’ve had a chance to read it. But if not, it’s still available. But at any rate, welcome to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. This episode, I’m going to continue, last episode we talked about self-leadership. In this episode, I’m going to continue about leadership but,

• How a leader shows up?
• What does the leader mean?
• And the things about a leader.

It’s because I had a question posed to me this weekend, this past weekend as I was out to dinner about leadership and how to frame that. So, we’ll get to that question. We’ll get to the framework. How I see leadership and the difference between effective and ineffective leadership in the thinking and the process; right after this brief introduction. So, I’ll see you right back here after this brief introduction.

And at the same time realize that I’m going to give you a tool, a downloadable. It’s called The Leadership Advantage and in order for you to get that go ahead and go to MelAbraham.com/session038.

And if you’re not at your computer and you’re out running around, doing things and maybe, you’re at the gym, maybe you’re driving; whatever it is, do it safely but you can also get the download link by just texting MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470. I’m going to make sure that you get all the tools, all the value, all the things that can guide you to your success.

And so, I’ll see you right back here after this brief introduction. See you soon. Bye.

Hey there, welcome back. I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.

And so, welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and in this episode, we’re going to continue kind of on the leadership theme. And in the last episode, we talked about self-leadership and how I believe that before we get into self-development, personal development, we need to think about: How do we lead ourselves? Now, I want to shift gears a little bit. If we’re leading ourselves then how do we lead others?

And this came about because I had a conversation with two amazing leaders, in leadership, in the executive suit who have, both of them in their own right, both the ladies in their own right have been responsible for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of sales through their leadership efforts. But more importantly what they’ve been responsible for is the development of people, the development of teams; the cohesiveness that created that.

And one of the questions that came out up during our conversation was this concept of, there are some leaders that actually look at a corporate ladder, that actually look at a pathway and think that methodically we ought to be only looking at getting to that corner office. Only looking at what that trajectory is and then I thought about it and said, “But the reality is from a people standpoint, from an individual standpoint, we operate on a couple of different levels.”

For instance, you can relate this back to in essence Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. And as, if all we’re trying to do, if we go into leadership perspective and all we’re trying to do is lead from the prospective of, “Here’s your title and here’s your paycheck.” That only goes so far. And I really believe that that’s not what leaders do.

I think the job of a leader is not to manage, it’s to lead. And management vs. leading are totally different things. And so, if it is to lead:

• What are we leading to?
• What are we leading from?
• What are we leading and guiding for?

And my belief is that, a leader is there to do one thing and that is to develop more leaders. And when we’re successful and these two ladies are immensely successful at doing that. When we’re successful at developing other leaders, we are serving at the highest level.

Now, maybe, it’s that from a corporate standpoint, we may not want to necessarily continue our upper path because:

• We’re in the place.
• We’re in our zone.
• We’re in our element.
• We’re in our wheelhouse.

We’re doing the things that we love to do, and we’re getting phenomenal results doing them and we’re creating and allowing people to grow to their best, to their potential. And so, when we look at it from that perspective, I think that leadership takes on a different role because we’re not there to lead in affect to manage the tasks that they’re doing or even to manage the results that they get.

We’re there to lead to create additional leaders and when we do that, the results, the profits, the production, the productivity, all of that becomes the by-product of the efforts in the process that we go through.

So, what is the process?

And this is what I call, the last time we had The Funnel of Self-leadership, this is The Funnel of Leadership itself. It’s about leading teams and what I believe our role as a leader is. And one of the first fundamental roles of a leader, I think, is to Enroll.

• To enroll the people that may be qualified candidates as I call them.
• To enroll the folks into a mission.
• To enroll them into a vision.
• To enroll them into a purpose that is beyond punching a clock and getting a paycheck.

Then the next element and we’ll talk further about this in a moment but the next element is, “Great we got them enrolled, we got their attention.”

How do we engage them?
How do we truly engage them?
How do we get them to a point where they’re fully engaged with what they do?

Now, part of that is to make sure that we’re consistent and aligned:

• With their values.
• With their vision.
• With their purpose.

And working at it from that perspective to engage them in something that is meaningful to them, that isn’t just some checkbox on a list or isn’t just some profit line on a financial statement. I know that’s kind of crazy stuff coming from an accountant but I believe that profit is the by-product of the people that are working in the element, for the purpose, on the mission, with the vision, and going forward.

And when we support them. When we give them the tools to grow. When we give them that vision and we give them the ability to do what they do best and then give them the opportunity to coach them through it, the bottom line will take care of itself. It truly will.

So once we enroll them and engage them, then the next piece is to Empower them.

We don’t want to tie their hands. We want to empower them at a level where they really feel like:

• That they have meaning.
• That they have importance.
• That they have appreciation.
• That they have gratitude for the things that they’re doing.

That they’re not some cog in the wheel that really have no bearing and that you disregard them in the process.

And then, the next level is what I call is to Educate them.

Because I really believe that as a leader, one of the elements of that leadership is to lead our team to lead our people to a higher level. To feel that they’re becoming more.

The human spirit in my opinion and this is only my opinion. You may argue with it but in my opinion, the human spirit, its natural tendency, the natural tendency of that human spirit is:

• To grow,
• To expand,
• To be more,
• To do more,
• To impact more.

And I’m not talking about acquiring stuff. I’m not talking about materialistic and look at all the toys and keeping up with the Joneses. It’s about

• Being more in society.
• Being more as a parent to your child.
• Being more as a spouse to your spouse or your significant other.
• Being more as a son to a parent.
• Being more as a sibling to a sibling.
• To being more as a peer to a peer.

> It’s about showing up at a different level.

Now, at the same time as a leader for a team in business, they are really looking for a growth in their skillset. And the reason for that is that in order for people to feel valued, they need to create value. And one of the things that they, one of the ways they create value is to continue to grow and find new ways to provide value not only to the organization, but the people the organization serves. And people find meaning in that because they feel like they matter. So, one of the things that we want to do is to educate them.

And then, the last piece of this is really about Elevating them.

Remember, I said it’s about leaders are there to develop leaders. It’s not about managing them and I’ve seen leaders and leadership structures where they’re worried about managing people and “What have you got done? Let me see the timesheets. Let me see the call sheets. Let me see your productivity sheets. Let me see all of that.” And it’s not about that.

You’ll get that from them:

• When you elevate them to a higher level,
• When you educate them,
• When you empower them,
• When they’re engaged, and
• When they’re

So, what does this all mean? And when I look at this; if we look at this and say, “Alright. Let’s divide this funnel. Let’s divide this cone of leadership, if you will. This funnel of leadership into two sides.”

One side is effective leadership in my mind and the other side is the ineffective leadership. When I look at this in, if I fail at the fundamental level of enrolling people, I’ll end up with no one.

• I’ll end up with no one in the organization.
• No one paying attention to the organization.
• No one in the process of being willing to support my mission, my vision and my purpose.

But if I get this right, and I enroll them, I got all the qualified candidates I want. All of them. They’re there. And they come running to us because we’re enrolling them.

Now, let’s go to the next level, the Engage. When I’m ineffective in engaging folks then we get inconsistent results. They are spotty. They may take time off, the, and I believe in time off but they may take time off just because it’s one thing to take time off to what I call the three R’s: to Reflect, to Re-connect and to Rejuvenate. But it’s another thing to take time off because they hate coming to work.

If they’re engaged they’re going to have consistent performance.

• They’re going to have consistent work ethic.
• They’re going to have a consistent

But we got to engage them right. So, if we get the engaged part wrong we’re not going to get that from them. We’re going to get a lot of:

• Inconsistencies
• Inconsistent performance
• Inconsistent support
• Inconsistent showing up

All of that. But we get it right, they’re for us. They’re there for us. They’re dependable and they’re engaged in the process.

What about empower?

If we get this empower piece wrong where we’re not empowering them to do things, then they’re simply going to be checklist driven. They’re going to be task-driven.

They’re the ones that are going to punch the clock and do what they need to do at the minimum standard to get by. And you’re not going to feel good about it and they’re not going to feel good about it.

But when we empower them, they’re going to come up with ideas, they’re going to be more innovative. They’re going to be willing to explore, “Is there a better way to serve at a higher level. Are there things that I could be doing differently, that we could do better as an organization?”

That’s what will allow the organization to grow. Organizations like Google. Google gives them innovative time. They get a chance to take 20% of their time and spend it on projects that interest them. And through that process that’s what came out of, with Gmail, and all of the, and many of the different projects that came out of Google, came out of this innovative element because they empowered their people—the people that they were leading.

They empowered them to think differently. That they weren’t task oriented. They weren’t so concerned about that one task and say, “This is all you do. This is all you do and just check it off, check it off every day, 8 hours a day.”

Well, let’s look at education and if we don’t educate our people, if we don’t allow them to grow from a knowledge standpoint, from a skillset standpoint, they stagnate. And when we stagnate, we start to shrivel and die versus when we give them tools, when we give them education, when you turn around and do things, such as, and I’m not talking about just technical skills, I’m talking about even soft skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, sending them to seminars, sending them to programs, sending them to charitable events and community service events is a way to educate them.

And when you do that they feel like they’re growing. They’re growing in a skill set, in value and in meaning and purpose in their life; and that’s a whole different ball game. And then when we elevate them, if we don’t get this elevate piece right, we’re not treating them that well.

• And they’re not going to feel appreciated.
• They’re not going to feel grateful for what they do.

They’re going to look at it over time and when the better alternative comes up, they’re gone. They leave.

So, it’s important that we elevate them, so they see a higher role for them to play and that we’re willing to move them up, remember? Leaders develop leaders. So, we shouldn’t be threatened that someone’s developing fast and they may move beyond us.

These two individuals that I was talking to, there’s plenty of folks that they nurtured as they came up and they went beyond them. They’re serving their purpose in a meaningful, passionate way and that’s the key.

So, we need to get this elevated part right and as I set back and thought about this framework, and what it means, I realized something that the stuff, the stuff that is on the ineffective side is coming out of the industrial age.

The industrial age thinking of task driven, assembly line stuff, get it done kind of work, punch the clock type of work is where that comes from and it worked. It worked during the industrial age but you know what? We’re not in the industrial age anymore.

When you think about it we’ve gone from, I guess, Stone Age, if you will. Ice Age, Stone Age to Agricultural Age to Industrial Age to then Information Age and Technology Age. I think we’re in the Connection Age now.

And if we’re truly to be in the environment that our society is hungry for we need to connect with people and that’s how effective leadership comes about. It’s by enrolling, engaging, and empowering, and educating, and elevating them to a level that they feel that they matter.

And when they feel that they matter, your bottom line will be taken care of on its own because they will be willing to fight for you. This is the way that you create an army of champions for your cause. An army of folks that will fight to the end for you.

A good friend of mine, Gary Erickson is the founder of Clif Bar. He does this and the way he teaches and works with his people and this is a story about when he, before he even founded Clif Bar, he was a manager of a bike shop and as the manager of the bike shop, he had the responsibility of managing the team there and the owner of the bike shop happened to come in one day and there is Gary in the bathroom cleaning the toilets.

And the owner says, “Gary, Gary, Gary, I don’t pay you to do this. That’s for them to do.” As if there was a difference between Gary and them.

And Gary looks at the owner and says, “Oh no, no, no, no, you do pay me to do this.”

He says, “No, I don’t. You’re the manager and you need to manage.”

He says, “You’re right, I am the manager. And one of the things I need to manage is their morale and how they value themselves and to set an example for them. And what you want me to do is to make sure that they’re happy here and for that purpose to set an example I need to be doing this.”

And that’s the way Gary went from bike manager. It’s not really how he got to Clif Bar but this is the same philosophy that he brought to Clif Bar and built an organization of an army of champions of a cause and a mission. Their number 1 priority is people first and that’s the way he has treated everyone. That’s the way he has built his company and he has built one of the most successful companies around. Privately held, taken care of other … of all his people in a way that when the low-carb diet came in or when the tainted peanuts scare came in, they all looked at him; they all rallied behind him and said, “Gary, we got this. Don’t worry. We got this. We’re going to find the alternatives. We’ll make it work and we’re going to survive this.”

That’s what happens when you work in the connection age.

• You’ve got effective
• And you’ve enrolled
• You’ve engaged
• You’ve empowered
• You’ve educated
• And you’ve elevated

And that’s what I think the role of leadership is. That’s funnel of leadership. I think that’s our role of a leader. It’s not to just get the results at the bottom line. It’s to develop people to the highest level and when we develop people to the highest level, the results at the bottom line will be the by-product.

I hope you found this of value. I hope you will take this in and start reflecting and asking yourselves,

Am I doing this?
Am I giving this to my people?
Am I allowing them to be engaged and to enroll them to be engaged?
Am I giving them the power to do things to be innovative?
Am I developing and giving them skills, additional skills or value sets?
And am I elevating them in the process?

So, I hope you found this of value and if you haven’t done so already, do me a favor. Subscribe. Be part of our community. Be part of this journey with us. We’ve got a tremendous number of subscribers on this channel and on the podcast and on the blog that I think are the army of entrepreneurs.

We live in a society where I think entrepreneurship is the key to changing and shifting everything we have and we have all these micro-entrepreneurs making a difference. Making a difference, living life their way and having the freedom to do things and the peace of mind.

And in that journey, that’s what I feel like I’m here to do. Is to give you the information, to give you the tools, to give you a place to go to get some answers; so you can develop to your fullest, so I can try to lead you through that process. So make sure you subscribe to get access to all this training and the things that I have for you.

And do me a favor, while you’re at it, share it with a friend. Click the share button, share it with a friend. Let them know that this information is accessible, it’s out there. That they don’t have to try to figure out business on their own, and that there is a way to create a business of meaning with profit at the same time and do that.

And again, if you want to download the leadership advantage tool, go to MelAbraham.com/session038. And if you’re not at the computer, go ahead and just send me a text. Text it to 38470 MYLEGACY one-word and I’ll make sure that we get you the download link, so you can get access to that tool.

And if you have a question for me and I’ve had a lot of questions come in, just go to AskMelNow.com. Leave me the question. That’s AskMelNow.com. Leave me your question there. I’ll make sure that I get your question answered on one of the upcoming episodes of the show.

So, you can feel supported. So, you can make sure that you continue on your journey based on your life and on your road to success. And if I can have any little part of that I would feel blessed and honored to be a part of it. So, I hope to see you. I hope to hear from you. I hope to see you soon.

And until we get a chance to talk again,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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