How to Maximize Leadership Potential: John Maxwell’s 5 Levels of Leadership

Ready to maximize your potential? Grow in leadership, and help others do the same? Today’s episode takes a deep dive into how to do just that, with best practices from the leaders in leadership John Maxwell, Jim Collins and Don Winner, as we cover:

Leadership Books mentioned:

The 5 Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Dare to Lead by Brene Brown

Leaders Made Here by Mark Miller

Lead with a Story by Paul Smith

The Leader Who Had No Title by Robin Sharma

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life & Work by Chip and Dan Heath

Good Leaders Ask Great Questions by John Maxwell

Speak like Churchill,  Stand Like Lincoln  by James Humes

21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell

The Servant  James C Hunter

The Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt

Episode timestamps:

[01:57] What’s covered in this leadership training 

[02:45] How would you define leadership? + its definitions

[03:45] Who is a leader? + How you are leader

[05:30] John Maxwell shares that leadership is about growth

[06:53] Leadership at the center of leadership at Children’s Hospital

[09:37] John Maxwell’s and DLP’s definitions of Leadership

[10:20] The job of a leader is make things easy so the team can execute

[11:36] Leadership development and opportunities for growth

[12:35] Jim Collins and his concept of Level 5 Leadership

[17:47] John Maxwell’s 5 levels of leadership

[22:56] The 24 Consistent Practices of Highly Productive Leaders

[28:29] Take intentional focus to improve 3 of these practices

[31:13] From level 4 to the pinnacle of Leadership, level 5.

[37:27] Create a leadership development plan to grow as a leader

[43:30] Recommended leadership books and resources

Transcript

* This transcript was mostly generated by AI, so please excuse any mistakes, and enjoy!

[00:00:00:0 Patrick: Hello and welcome to Live Fit Ignite Change, where together, as a community, we inspire each other to live a fit life, ignite the change we wish to see, and thrive in all areas of life. 

We all want to maximize our potential and grow and lead leadership and help others do the same, right? Today’s episode takes a deep dive into how to do just that, with best practices from the leaders in leadership Don Maxwell, Jim Collins and Don Winner. And in it we cover how leaders are made, not born, and what you can do to develop your leadership skills and the 24 consistent practices of highly productive leaders, what it takes to be a level five leader and steps you can take to start on that path today and how you can use your leadership skills to ignite the change that you wish to see. Changing our world does not happen at once. It does not happen alone. It takes a committed group to be the change we wish to see. So together, we rise above negative influences to lead by example, making a positive impact at home and around the world. 

You can learn more. Join us and get show notes at LiveFit ignitechange.com or for short, livefic.com. This was a live training and workshop at DOP Capital that I was honored to be able to lead. And in it, we mentioned a ton of resources that you can use to maximize your leadership. So they’ll all be linked in the show notes for this episode at Live Fit Ignitechange.com slash Leadership. And with that, let’s jump in.

[00:01:42] Patrick: Alright, so here we are. Five levels of leadership training and workshops. Should be a fun day. All star cast people ready to participate today, so appreciate all that. And as we dive in, let’s jump into the first slide and what this leadership training is all about. We want it to be an interactive workshop, engaging for you guys, right? And what we’ll cover is what leadership is and how it’s at the center of every great achievement, the starting point to growing your leadership skills, what’s needed to move up in the five levels of leadership and how related. To that a subset. Don came up with the 24 consistent practices of highly productive leaders, what those are, and how you can start improving them, and then the top tools to improve your leadership and how you can start using them today. Sound like good stuff?

[00:02:32] All right, let’s get this started interactively. You know the old drill. Grab your cameras if you got them. If you’re on zoom, be ready to type it in the first one. Any word or a short phrase? How would you define leadership? And while people are going in and putting in, you can scan it or go to slido.com and put in that code. While people are typing in. Feel free, shout it out, especially those that are far away. Inspiration, inspiration hands-on, official, adding, value, making jobs easy. Alpha elite comes up again. Rich, thank you for having that. Accountability, listening, influence. These are also really big ones coming up in the chat. Guidance, I like that one too. Mentor, engaging. I cut this off with these are some great words. Teacher, supporting, lead by example. Love that one. Growth, like positive, influence, listening, influence, guidance, all lead the way. All right, so that’s what this is all about. 

So next one then is who is a leader? What type of personal role? I’m talking about all types of life. You can talk about business, you can talk about the sports field, really anything you want. Who is a leader? Like some people are still typing in the last one with inspiration. But yeah, for this one, mothers and fathers, pastor, everyone. I like that. Mentor, awesome. Lots of stuff down there. You got a Tom Brady on there. God, dude, awesome. You guys are right on with all and you’re right on. You pretty much named them all, but it can be anyone. And maybe you are some of these things, maybe you are all of these things or many of these things, but really one thing is true and that is that you are a leader. And that is what today is all about. You want to get aligned with your self, your leader, your team, and how can you grow in leadership? You just did the exercise to figure out what is that thing that I need to do in the next year that’s going to take leadership to my greatest accomplishment. 

Because today is about you becoming a great leader, because seeing what you do, show of hands. Or do you influence others? Yes. Do you inspire others? Yes. You create results. Right. And you will be doing this throughout your life. Wherever you go, whenever you do, that’s what you’re going to be doing. So it always makes sense to grow in leadership. And people come to us like, how do you grow in leadership? Hopefully this will go through what that is all about. Those questions people ask is basically where are you on your leadership journey and where are you going to go from here? All right. And so that is why I started out with Don Maxwell, who a lot of this is based on Bible of leadership and what he said. Don Maxwell simply said that leadership is about growth. It’s growth for yourself, your relationships, your productivity and your people. To lead well, you must embrace your need for continual improvement and you must know where you are and where you are going. And that’s why we sent out the assessments ahead of time and it was a little bit late notice, so you might not have gotten to them. We’ll have a workshop at the end if you need to fill them out more. So basically what this is about, the leadership assessment, that’s from the five levels of leadership to gauge where you are now, and then the second one was the 24 practices based on domestic practices of highly corrupted leaders to see where you are on those teams and where you can improve. 

All right, so from there, leadership really is at the center of everything we do. If you want truly consistent, longterm results in life, you simply have to grow and develop in leadership. And if organizations truly want to achieve consistent, long term results, they must find and develop leaders. That’s why we say leadership is at the center of any great achievement, any great accomplishment, individually or organizationally. And I know, as we mentioned in your team, Huddle, when you guys shared one of those accomplishments. So open it up. Like I said, we want to be interactive. Do you have an example of how you’ve seen leadership to be the center of a great achievement for you, an organization or a team? You got one?

[00:06:53] Aaron: Yeah. So it was a hot and muggy humid day because I was in Orlando. I worked for no More Children’s Hospital System. And we were building a hospital. I think it was the first ground up hospital dedicated to children not tied to adult wing as well. So we were onboarding 2000 people in one year. Huge task. Not really set up for that, but we were hiring a new chief operating officer, and we hadn’t hired everyone yet, so they set up a meeting with him, and I’m in it. So he wanted to kind of push his culture on and kind of set some expectations. And so we had a meeting. It was a great meeting, but after the meeting is what really made a difference. And I think I’ve only told Steve in this story, but he kind of met with me and he was like, are people struggling here? Are they having a hard time with things? And I’m like, no, I haven’t really heard anything. And I don’t think that he really thought that people were having problems. I think he had a plan with the whole thing. But what he did, he took a piece of paper and he just ripped.

The corner off of a paper, just like this odd shaped piece of paper. And he wrote he wrote his name, he wrote his cell phone. And the second thing he did was he wrote his accounting unit. So if you’ve been in part of a group where they’ve done allocations or you spend money, you spend it up against a different account. He provided that account number. He’s like, if anybody is ever struggling with anything, he’s like, you don’t hesitate to use that account. Pretty powerful moment. I mean, you could probably take a lot of different things from that. He probably knew that I was never going to use that piece of paper, which I never did. And I actually had that in my backpack for probably six or seven years. I just threw it away maybe a couple of months ago. But like I looked at it and I was like it represented something to me. It represented leadership and it kind of drove me to do more and accomplish more for that organization.

[00:09:14] Patrick: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Great example. Cool.

So as we’re moving on, we talk about DOP and always developing leadership. It’s armada leaders made year developing worldclass leadership through DOP. You’ve heard Don say it a number of times is his number one responsibility and focused. So that’s what we want to do. And so we’re going to dive into the definition of leadership. One of our previous leadership award winners. Lee, take us away. 

[00:09:42] Lee: Absolutely. I’m not going to read that far away. I’m actually going to get up. So, Don Maxwell definition: leadership is influence. This is the most simple definition of leadership is leadership ad essence. However, influence is not always good. In turn, leadership is not always good. DOP’s definition. Leadership is defined by results. Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration and passion, generated by vision, ignited by purpose and produced by conviction.

[00:10:14] Patrick: Cool. So people ask, well, how do we build leadership here? What do we want to do? And really the only way to build leaders is to become a better leader of yourself. Good leaders do not follow poor ones and people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. So it’s part of what we want to do is raise up everyone and become a leader. So let’s go to Pennsylvania. Kate Hunter, take us away on the job of a leader.

[00:10:35] Kate: Thanks, Patrick. Yeah, a job of a leader. The leaders make things easy so that the team can execute. Leaders can show their way through the forest and achieve the team’s goals by teaching, coaching and empowerment. And the most important thing, leaders develop other leaders.

[00:10:51] Patrick: Well said. Absolutely most important thing there we talk about why leadership is so critical and what we just did in this exercise. Villa, you think of all your greatest accomplishments in life, it was took leadership to get there, right? Whether it’s personal, professional, you accomplished something, but it was your leadership or somebody’s leadership that made it happen. Same thing is true when you look at successful organizations. It was due to the people there and the leadership in those seats. And this is what Johnna said before and certainly I agree with it. We realize that all of our accomplishments to date here at DOP and all the goals moving forward revolve around our people. 

So again, I’d open it up. A question to you guys here. For those that have been involved or maybe even some that are new and just going through these, how have you found the leadership development focus at DOP beneficial? 

[00:11:43]  So normally I don’t ever really think of myself as a leader or anything like that. So coming in here and being like, oh, slowly but surely I found myself going and leading my training sessions for my team. And I would have never volunteered to do that had I not started here. It was just amazing, like how the effect works on me. And I really do believe, they really do believe in making leaders here.

[00:12:17] Amy: And your awesome session Destined for Greatness.

[00:12:32] Patrick: Right. Thank you, Amy. Anyone else? Right, we’ll move on. The next concept is level five leadership. We’ve heard this in multiple places. Jim Collins talks about it in his book initially in Good, You’re Great and since mentioned in other books. And then Don Maxwell, obviously, as we’ve sent out the assessment ahead of time, the five levels of leadership, they both talk about it in different ways. We’re going to COVID those. The leadership the point here, it’s not an exclusive club. They’re not just born with it. The whole point is you can develop into it and the traits and the raw materials can be acquired as you grow in your leadership. So as we go into these, the first part, this is on level five leadership from Jim Collins, and it kind of builds up from the bottom. 

For level one, you’re a highly capable individual. You make productive contributions. Then you move up. Level two, you’re contributing team members, contributing the achievement of the group. Level three, you become a competent manager, organizing people resources towards the pursuit of objectives. Now level four, you’re really starting to make things happen. This is when you’re an effective leader, catalyze commitment and vigorous pursuit of clear vision. And then you get to the level five leader. It’s so hard to achieve. And Jim Collins has described it as the X factor of truly great leadership, where the leaders go above themselves and they think about the greater good, where they have a deep humility combined with a ferocious will for something greater than themselves. And that is what catalyzes a level five leader from all of their research studies. If there was any good a great company, they all had a level five leader. And when I read that last part, that sounds familiar about any CEO that we know?

[00:14:07] Amy: Absolutely well. And thank you, Patrick. I’ll tell you, my head keeps going to this, but before I came here, I was with a company that does well, right? It’s a development company, and the owner’s name is on the side of the building. And it was not the concept there that A, everybody could lead, that B, leadership is constant learning. It was more of the kind of place where if my knee was on the side of the building, I might be golfing half a day not contributing to the team. Right. Then I come to DLP, and I remember when I first met Don, and I think Larry you said you were Larry here at I’m sure Larry said he was in the car and he heard some of this conversation. But one of the things that was intriguing is when I was asking about the company culture here. Don explained that he had actual scalable trackable evidence as to whether or not we had A team members, team members who were A players. And we’re going back five years ago, so maybe it’s a little more common for everybody to say the word rockstar or things like that. But to me it was a little unusual, I think it was not a real company culture focus. 

So talking to the CEO and he’s explaining that he can quantify how many team members he’s either elevated or how many are A Team members. And I really challenged it. You quantify it, you have a numeric understanding of it. Right. And he then broke it down and we do where he understood exactly what it was. I was so wowed by the idea that there’s somebody who is CEO who doesn’t need to invest in people and can just run with a paycheck. And that’s the truth. And that’s not about who Don is. I’m just saying that’s a name on the side of a building, but who instead produces more. And great spreadsheet came out. That’s how many people were going to have attending our Puerto Rico elite events. And the person bringing the most, the expected most tickets will be sold by Don, not the rest of us. That’s his understanding that his job is to bring and be the most productive. But little things like that all the time constantly remind me of how unusual and why a level five leader doesn’t run every company out there. It is a little bit of an anomaly to have somebody care this much and make sure we’re all kind of growing in the same direction to be successful leaders.

[00:16:27] Patrick: So well said. You wonder why humble confidence is one of our core values. Don lives that humble confidence so well and then projects it out. It’s not just about his own self game, it is about his family’s, his team, every one of us, and then making an impact out in the world. So thank you for that. Amy west.

[00:16:42] Kathy: I would just like to say, on level five, what attracted me was there are great leaders, but the X factor is, in my mind, the greater good. And for us, when you look at the flywheel, when you look at what we’re trying to achieve, is to solve those crisis ease. And it’s getting outside of not only yourself, but almost out of your own company, right? Like we’re doing this for a purpose and we’re purpose driven. And that, I think, is the most special thing. And that comes across minute one in this talk.

[00:17:39] Patrick: Thank you, Kathy. Well said. Ignited by that purpose, fueled by the passion to keep rolling. Absolutely. And so that takes us into level five leadership by Don Maxwell. Very similar to what we just covered with Jim Collins, but a little bit different, where he goes through the five levels and it takes you from position, which is the very base where people basically just follow you because they have to. 

Then you go to permission where people follow you because they want to. Then production people follow you, follow you because of what you have done for the organization. And then you get to the people development where it’s because of what you have done for them. Then you get to the pinnacle, the top, and that is where people follow you because of who you are and what you represent. And so that’s kind of what Amy was just talking about with John. And so many of us are here as we go into these and just look at the position. Like I said, people call you because they have to. You’re in a position but it’s not something where people have chosen to follow you. Like if you’re a volunteer coordinator, people might not really be following you here because they’re just not inspired, they’re not driven. So this is certainly a fine place to start, but it’s not where you want to end. You want to be able to grow and grow into each level. So as we go through this again, it’s a workshop for you guys. Start thinking, okay, what level am I, what attributes do I have from each of these levels and where can I grasp? And so that’s really what this is all about. We say use your time at this level to learn, leading yourself and work through the priorities and the selfdiscipline. And then you’ll be able to move to the next level. With that, I’m going to turn it over to Jason to go over the next couple levels.

[00:19:14] Jason: So level two is the permission level at this point people follow you because they want to, so they’re giving you permission to lead them. So this level is highly based on relationships. Again, people give the leader permission to lead them to growth. Leaders work on getting some other people connecting with them. You can’t leave without people, which means you need to learn to, like I would say a prime example of Stephen. So be a Stephen, don’t be a Jason. Kidding. So continuation here.

So when you like people and treat them as individuals who have value, you begin to develop positive influence with them. Trust grows, which usually leads to respect. The environment becomes much more positive. 

Level two is where solid lasting relationships are built. That creates a foundation for the next level. Level three is the production level. So at this level you’re starting to see results. People follow you because what you have done for the organization, the best leaders know how to motivate their people to get things done. 

Getting things done is what level three is all about. For those that don’t know, getting things done is also DLP’s definition of execution. I like the abbreviation because I am a retired Marine. So GTD as Dom puts it in his book, which again marketing folks, vision day, that should be on our shirts. Just throwing it out there. So leaders who produce results begin their influence and credibility. People still follow because they want to, but they do it because of more than the relationship. People follow level three leaders, production levels where the leaders can become change agents, work gets done, morale improves, profits go up, turnover goes down and goals are achieved. The more you produce, the more you’re able to tackle tough problems that face challenging issues. Leading and influencing others becomes fun because when everyone is moving forward together, the team rises to another level of effectiveness.

[00:21:12] Patrick: Awesome, John. Thank you. And haven’t y’all seen that when you get to that level and it really does become fun because you’re inspiring others to get to that greater good that you all are after. And so as we build this, we’re going to take a little pause here in level three because this level is so important. 

This is where Don build out this 24 practices all based on this level. And as we do this, the goal is not to leave the other levels behind. You’re building, building, building. Keep those great attributes that got you here, but keep on moving. And so this again comes from Don Maxwell and he said his quote was production qualifies and separates true leaders from people who merely occupy leadership positions. Good leaders always make things happen, they get results, they can make a significant impact on the organization. And so that’s what we’re talking about here, moving from permission to production, moving from the level two up to the level three. And as Don put it, he shared this in his thoughts and leadership is not in his book. Many people never move up from level two to level three. They struggle to produce results. And when that’s the case, it’s usually because like selfdiscipline or work ethic and you just kind of aren’t making the results happen, working with the team to do it. 

But however, if you desire to go to those higher levels, you simply have to produce. There’s just no other way around it. And that’s really what this production leadership is all about. It can be hard. It’s hard work. You’ve got to have those difficult conversations, you’ve got to have the difficult meeting, you’ve got to get out and do hard work yourself. And that’s what all this is about. Leaders must be willing to do the hard work in addition to requiring team members to do that hard work. So we’re going to go into 24 practices again, as that is the workshop. As we go through these. 

If you took the self assessment earlier, you likely already came up with your two to three that you want to work on. So those are right on the computer. Steven, just drop the link in the chat, you can take it again. And if there were maybe one or twos or threes something you want to work on the whole idea here. As we read through this, come up with two to three things that you want to become better on that you can focus on next month. So I’m going to start out and read through the first of them. 

Number one, discipline and building habits. Intentionally create and keep the schedules, habits and routines to execute. Two, do more than you ask of others. Put in the time and the hard work yourself. Three, prioritization. Prioritize and commit to the real action to accomplish top priorities. Four make hard decisions, listen to feedback and be decisive in making the big decisions. Five, have those difficult conversations. Embrace having a conversation rather than sending emails. 

Six, critical thinking. Take the time to analyze an issue. It’s pros, cons and proposed solution. Sounds like the executive idiot. Number seven. Accountability and ownership. Own the results you are expected to achieve. Say the buck stops with me. Number eight. Preparation organization. Fully prepare for meetings, issues and discussions in advance. Have the will to prepare to win. Number nine. Organization in action. Take notes during meetings. Lay out clear action. Get owners. Raise those actions. Number ten, questioning, asking why, digging deeper. Question, information and opinions. Dig deeper for the issues. 

Number eleven, embrace conflicts and lead change. Conflict is needed to make progress, so show how you will make changes. And number twelve. Keep even focused on results. Results always matter. Keep pushing forward regardless of the obstacle. And with that I’m going to turn it over. I don’t want to be too monotonous with me reading all of these. So I cannot think of a better person that excudes positive enthusiasm and turn this over to Andy Bears Alley. Take us off the rest.

[00:25:17] Amy: No pressure now. Okay. Number 13 is positive enthusiasm to bring energy and excitement to each interaction and deliver well. Which is probably like you said, my favorite core value aligning as today. I just can’t imagine another company stopping the production of a day. Spend time doing what we’re doing. It’s that important to us. 

So align on align how you spend time with your goals, yourself, your leader and your team. Listening. Not thinking about how to reply, but actively listening to understand. And number 16 is speak simply and directly. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. Really sums that up. And as Don says, give the answer first and then get into the detail. Number 17 is coaching. Invest time in others, asking clear questions to help them with their goals. And number 18 is teaching and take the time to instruct, test, evaluate and provide feedback. That reminds me a little bit right now what we’re doing with our brain dates. It’s the first time that we’ve had a brain date opportunity that’s outside of our realm of the day to day of who we work with. 

Number 19 is inspection of expectations. Inspecting what you expect shows you care about the results. Number 20 is performance feedback. We provide direct feedback with positivity and honesty on how to improve. And number 21, my age… making sure you guys are awake. Follow through, do what you say you’re going to do when you said you were going to do it. Number 22 is obtaining the buyin. Involve your team in making decisions, invite feedback and discussion. I think we can probably all talk about how we have senior leaders who actually allow us to dissent an opinion, allow us to challenge and quote John. He actually takes from that the consideration of how to improve. We don’t claim to all know everything perfectly. We want the collaboration.

[Speaker G] : I think a big example or one cool example that we do here is clarity sessions at the end of the quarter where we’re setting up our team rocks. Collectively, I think that drives we’re buying.

Patrick : In from the team. Just, yeah, it’s perfect.

[Speaker C] : And that’s exactly number 23. With the collaboration you need others leverage their knowledge, strengths, and insights. And I can tell you guys a funny note, though, is there are a lot of team members here who have not necessarily started the same job they have now. Right, Patrick? I’m okay. Patrick is the under those two. But that’s because as we evolved, we saw more of an opportunity, maybe consault or other leaders. So we had opportunities become maybe not even what we thought we were going to be doing longterm. So the collaboration, the buy in and all huge. And then of course, number 24, which is always that tough one, right? The emotional fortitude you have to develop, the ability and mentality and emotional weathering of setbacks so that when you have to hear that conversation that’s going to grow you, you take it with every openness that it’s meant to be received with.

[00:28:29] Patrick: Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you for bringing your positive enthusiasm, 24. And so, yeah, after you completed this assessment, like I said, focus on two or three of them to try to come up with what you’re going to do and let your leader know what those are going to be because you can work on these in your GPS sessions, your alignments, your huddles, all that kind of stuff. And this has been a pretty powerful exercise. I would love for those opening up again. Now, for those that have previously completed this assessment, the focus on maybe two or three of these, if you want to share what they were, or even one what the difference was and how, focusing on something with intentionality to change and improve really did make you better and or make those that you were leaving better your thoughts or anyone out online, too. From you as well.

[00:29:18] DLP member: I’ll tell you, my emails to Don drastically changed. I answer him in a bolded underlying sentence, but I don’t want him to stop there, right? Maybe I missed something, maybe I didn’t achieve something. I want to then explain the detail, right. Usually it would have been. Hidden well, here are the 25 things I did to achieve even if I didn’t get it. Instead, here are the numbers, here are the 25 things I did. Here’s how I could use some assistance. And I’ll tell you, I get responses much faster. I get the solution I need because I was clear and simple with my communication to him.

[00:29:56] DLP member: This is my first time doing this specific exercise, but I’ve done things like this in the past and as they are uncomfortable because you’re doing self assessments, right? You’re like, man, I’m not actually good at that. It’s just like remembering, like the law of awareness is like that. So that sets you free because that way you’re not aware of. You like, had no control over in the past. And so now we bring some energy and light to those blind spots. We’re able to step into our power and then be like, you know what, next time I’m going to be a five at that. And so it’s really cool. So just be honest with yourself because then you’re like, okay, those are the things I can work on. And likely my team members would say the same thing.

[00:30:30] Patrick: Brett, to go along with that, I thought it was something I thought of as saying you can’t be and everybody tells you you can be anything that you want. Well, you can’t be anything that you want. That’s been proven over and over again. But you can be everything that you are. Never forget that. Great examples bring that awareness to be everything you are. Go from where you are from there. Excellent. Both sides. Thanks, guys. Alright, so now we’re going to continue on with the five levels of leadership. And that you may have felt crazy like all of that was level three, but that’s why it is so important to focus on that. From the permissions production and now we’re going on to the people development and the pinnacle. With that, we’ll turn it over to Brandy.

[00:31:13] Brandy: Thanks, Patrick. So level four is people development. People follow you because of what you have done for them. Your goal at this level is to identify and develop as many leaders as you can by investing in them and helping them. It goes back to the leaders made here. DLP is really about that. And anybody that has not even read that book, which they’ve done and driven for greatness before, it’s really good. And it shows that no matter where you’re at in your stage of your career, you can grow to be a leader. When there are more leaders, more of the organization’s mission can be accomplished. The people you choose to develop may show great potential for leadership, or they meet maybe diamonds in the rough. But the main idea is the same. When you invest in them, you can reproduce yourself. 

And that’s exactly what we’re doing here today, especially by going through these five levels of leadership the more you raise up new leaders, the more you will change the lives of all members of the team. People will follow you because of what you’ve done for them personally. Some of those mentoring relationships are likely to last a lifetime. I know that there’s been many leaders. I’ve been here for six and a half years. I’ve seen a lot of people in DLP, and some of those I still maintain really good relationships with because of what they’ve done for me and how they’ve grown me as well, not only personally, but professionally. To grow at the people development level, you need to make investing in leaders a priority and take intentional steps every day in order to help them grow. Do that consistently, and you may begin to reap the rewards of the next level. 

And number Five Pinnacle. Pinnacle. We all think of it. I’ve got, like, a little stand in my head, and that’s the very, very top. And that’s all about respect. People follow you because of who you are and what you represent. The highest level of leadership is also the most challenging to attain. It requires longevity as well as intentionality. You simply can’t reach this level unless you are willing to invest your life into the lives of others for the long haul. This is not a quick fix. This isn’t just, hey, we’re all going to meet today and then peace out, everyone go have lunch, and then we just stop there. That’s not how we do it here at DLT. If you stick with it and you continually focus on both growing yourself at every level and developing leaders who are willing and able to develop other leaders, you may find yourself at that Pinnacle stage. 

The commitment to becoming a Pinnacle Leader is sizable, but so are the payoff. Level five leaders develop level five organizations. They create opportunities that other leaders don’t. How many times do we hear the new people coming on boards if they’re like, no, we’ve had a bunch of people, we vetted a bunch of places. They’ve worked in a lot of places but they come in and they just say, wow, you guys actually preach. You preach and practice the same exact thing. Pinnacle leaders create legacy and what they do. People follow Pinnacle leaders because of who they are and what they represent. Their leadership gains a positive reputation. And Level Five leaders often transcend their position, their organization, and sometimes their industry.

[00:34:34] Patrick: Awesome. Thanks so much, Brandy. So well said. And you guys listen to that. I mean, wow, that’s pretty amazing hearing about all the different things and growing and just what that level Five leader is all about. So now that you’ve heard all this and you probably want to make some change, you want to improve in some way, you want to grow, see the slide on the screen and word or short brace. Where do you plan to go? Lower your leadership. See some coming in, having those hard conversations, training others, soft skills, influence production, sitting the lowest seat of the table, hard conversations. That was coming up a lot. Definitely one of the 24 practices. Production all about level three. What that is all about. Self honesty, coaching, better listener listening is the one that we need to work on a lot of times as well. And if anybody hasn’t, they want to share something that you’ve learned today that you want to work on. Feel free, people. Development, impact, making bigger impact. That’s right. Get to that level five to make an impact. It looks like everyone is looking to grow in some area and that’s what this is all about. 

We’re always looking to grow in leadership and certainly do give us many of the tools to do that. As I said a couple of times, it’s not just a training. The point of this is to be a workshop so we can work through it now or even when we finish up early. Here it is, workshop timed before you have the one on ones. One of the first tools, the Leadership Toolbox is one of the great places to go. It’s LinkedIn here, put it out in the chat. It’s going to go in a follow up email after this. So you’ll have all the links, which basically has a lot of the assessments that we’ve been talking about so you know where you are and where you’re going. It also has a lot of the leadership resources that people at DLP and don’t have collected over the years.

[00:36:19] DLP member: And I’ll tell you one thing that I took from a few years ago about the Leadership Toolbox is to put a recurring every month, 1 hour on your calendars and it always falls on a Saturday. I swear I didn’t start that way, but that way you’re focusing on getting back into it because there really are additions. Otherwise you just don’t know until somebody says it out loud. Usually remember greatness, Don will reference the fact that he maybe added something to it or now we’re getting John’s thoughts pushed out to us. But this is where all the most updated, interesting, best practices are going to be housed. So if you said just a reminder, every month somebody has to read through them all. Every month. I find something almost every month in there. I didn’t have preview. 

[00:37:01] Patrick: But sounds like another practice and functionality with your schedules and teams to grow, right? I use those and certainly, obviously use Alignment, which is what today is all about. You have your Alignment Puddle, your GPS, it stands for the Growth and Progress support which basically performance check in and then do the brain day so you can actually meet with somebody. And hopefully I’ll have those set up for today. Meet with someone, ask them three questions so you can grow. We also get into the other part about knowing where you’re going. You need a map. And when you need a map, it doesn’t mean it could just be a bad map or one that’s unachievable. Plans or low quality needs to be a map to be able to get you to where you want to go and have solid details. Because a lot of times plans lack details but they need to be meaningful, focused and should be reviewed regularly. 

That’s what development plans are all about. Development plans keep that focus. Just like our compass provides a focus, you can concentrate in one or two areas that you want to develop and grow in your current role or in a future role or wherever you want to go in the future. Identify the challenging goals, push that personal growth and as you’re doing this, ask yourself how will others notice your template changing and how will you measure your success? So we get into the development plans of DLP. It’ll soon be in EES tools, but for now we have a template that was just dropped in the chat box and the team members, you all start working on your plans first, then it becomes collaboration with your leader. With your leader. You should be referenced in guest meetings and the Huddles. 

As I mentioned, I’ll walk through a little bit of what this development plan is all about and again this will be linked out afterwards as well. So the first part is to excel in your current role, you would write down what your goal is. Again, make your goals smart so you can have it specifically known that you’re going to get there and then how reaching that goal will impact you and others in your organization as well. And then self understanding what you need to do to get there, the strengths that you already have to build on for the developmental needs based on your weaknesses that you want to improve. And then the second part, which can be optional but great to do if you want to go into a future role, where are you going to go? What do you want to have in the future? Again, the same thing what’s your goal is there. Say it specifically and clearly what it will do to you, yourself and others forgetting there. And then the really important part is having the action points down at the end. You can restate your goal, have a deadline for it and have the milestones. So if you have your deadline, this could be like rocks and milestones by the quarter or it might be something a few years down the line. And so you know, you have to do something by year one and something by year six months since you’re going to dial in all the things you need to do. So that is really what the development plan is all about. 

So to summarize, written development plans, team member starts it, collaborate with your leader, have smart action steps and review them regularly. It’s a really powerful tool and it’s such a powerful tool. I’d love to open it up again. For anybody else that has used a plan like this development plan or something similar to achieve a goal, what it’s done for you or others that you’ve mentored them through the process? I’d love to hear on either side of how these development plans have worked.

[00:40:13] DLP member: I use the rocks and milestones of my daughters, and it has kind of revolutionized their teenage brains. And we use it pretty much for everything meals, school, cheerleading, physical activities, all those things. They send an intention and they go after it awesome.

[00:40:37] DLP member: One note. And I didn’t do this in my previous world, so I’m glad you even just said this. If you’re not taking all the things that we have at yo team and applying it in some ways, if you determine that this is how you want to live your life personally. So whether you are creating a family compass or using rocks and milestones at home, these are not applicable. Only your job. You guys have heard me say I don’t get out of spend the morning to go to work. I get out of bed a good life. Work is the worst four letter word we have. So integrating all of that is huge. So, I mean, I can think of developmental plans for team members and developmental plans that my husband and I did to do things we never thought we would do at home in life. 

And one big one I’ll say for me was after reading Eat the Frog for anybody who has my husband will remind me of that. Maybe you got up and didn’t do the hard work today because you postponed it till later, but I can’t tell you how many difficult conversations I would have to have with a resident. Just think about, you know, I mean, you either own a home, you rent a home, right? And it’s your biggest expense at your home. You have a very personal relationship with that home. Right now, I just jacked you up $200 or I didn’t fix something you wanted or I’m not going to give you a washer and dryer for free or your neighbor’s annoying you, right? 100 reasons. We’ve got 100 plus plus people who at any given time would call us to tell us something that they were dissatisfied about. 

My development plan years ago was getting comfortable being uncomfortable in those conversations as part of the process that I was learning. And it ends up becoming me inviting the opportunity because at the end of those conversations, those people were satisfied and excited that somebody listened to that. They all didn’t get washers and dryers and $200 free rent, but they all did get somebody who spent the time with them. So from a development perspective, it made me approach it not as a job, but as an opportunity. But we have a lot I mean, we can go into everything which we’re not. But from alignment workbooks to anything that’s available to us in the US, we have a lot of opportunities that are not specifically applicable. Just our job.

[00:42:48] DLP member: I think development plans are great. So it’s a great conversation just to have with your leader so that they have an idea of where you want to go as well. So I’ve had in the past people on my team who don’t come to me, a position would open, they’re like, oh, I’ve always wanted to do that. Well, what have you done? I didn’t know that. So what have you done to prepare yourself for that position? So it’s a great way to kind of prepare yourself as you’re working on developing yourself of things that your leader may already be looking for. And if something opens up, you’re prepared for that and it becomes a natural progression and like, this is our person.

[00:43:30] Patrick: It’s awesome. Thank you. That’s what they’re all about. Utilize these tools. Right? Awesome. And then wrapping up your books to read again, likely to the list for those that want to listen, but otherwise we’ll link these out afterwards. 

But obviously The Five Levels of Leadership like we talked about today is going to be great. The Coaching Habit, Leadership and Self Deception, Dare to Lead, Leaders May Be Here, Lead With The Story, Leadership Wisdom, How to be a Great Boss, The Monk Who Sold the Ferrari, The Leader Who Had No Title, Leading Change decisive. Good leaders ask great questions. Speak like Churchill. Stand like Lincoln 22. The 21 in reputable laws of leadership. Observant troy Narcoach seven Habits of Highly Infected People. Again, quite a list. They’re all out of leadership toolbox. We’ll bring them out afterwards. These are ways to grow in your leadership and continuing to grow over time.

[00:44:29] Patrick: Yes. All right. And now, as we wrap up, it is time for you guys to make it happen. We covered quite a lot today. It’s workshop time. If there were any final comments or any questions, we can take those. Because really, I think today what it was all about was you learned a lot, but it had really become the best leaders in the field of leadership, being able to say what they’ve taught and try to present that in a really concise way here. So now is really the time to make it happen. Put into practice what you learned. Take the investment, the five levels, 24 practices, if you haven’t already, do the five levels of assessment on your leader to help them grow or draft your personal development plan. Commit to those two to three practices and what you will focus on in the next month and before. Be sure to bring those words and go make it happen.

[00:45:15] Patrick: If you resonated with us and would like to go deeper to live, fit and ignite change in your life. You can get started for free at LiveFit Ignitechange.com Start, where you can join our community of high performers and get access to our Kickstart resources for free. You can get plugged in at LiveFit Ignitechange.com start or for short, livefic.com start also. My family and I, we’re igniting the change that we wish to see. We were sick of all the processed, sugar loaded foods and drinks marketed to us, especially to our youth. So we’re developing a line of truly delicious, grain free sugarfree products that student athletes and onthego adults love as part of our Inrive Performance nutrition brand. Learn more and join the Inrive Insiders for free. To be the first to hear about samples, launch parties and specials@inrive.com that’s inride.com. Thank you so much for tuning in and please be sure to like, share, rate and review this show. That’s what’s needed to help us reach more and serve more. So together, we truly can ignite the change that we wish to see. Thank you for your help. I hope you make it an outstanding day and go forth to light, love, serve the world, and live the life you’ve always imagined.