Las Leyes del Liderazgo

5.
The Law of Addition – Leaders Add Value by Serving Others
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Adding Profits by Adding Value – Costco’s CEO, Jim Sinegal, believes the success of Costco comes from treating his employees well.
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Costco employees are paid an average of 42% more than the company’s chief rival and they also receive generous health care coverage.
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Sinegal shows he cares and respects his employees – he has an open-door policy. He is on a first-name basis with everyone.
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Sinegal’s salary is well below what other CEO’s of similar size company’s make because he is more focused on serving his employees than making an exorbitant salary.
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The result: Costco has by far the lowest employee turnover rate in all of retailing.
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The bottom line in leadership isn’t how far we advance ourselves but how far we advance others.
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There is one critical question: Are you making things better for the people who follow you?
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If you can’t answer with an unhesitant yes, then you likely aren’t.
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90% of all people who add value to others do so intentionally. Why do I say that? Because human beings are naturally selfish. Being an adder requires me to think about adding value to others.
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Adding Value, Changing Lives – four guidelines for adding value to others.
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Truly Value Others – effective leaders go beyond not harming others, they intentionally help others. They must value people and demonstrate they care in such a way that their followers know it.
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Make Yourself More Valuable To Others – the more intentionally you have been in growing personally, the more you have to offer your followers.
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Know and Relate to What Others Value – this can only come by listening to your people’s stories, their hopes and dreams. Learn what is valuable to them and then lead based on what you’ve learned.
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Do Things That God Values – God desires us not only to treat people with respect, but also to actively reach out to them and serve them.
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The attitude of the leader affects the atmosphere of the office. If you desire to add value by serving others, you will become a better leader. And your people will achieve more, develop more loyalty, and have a better time getting things done than you ever thought possible. That’s the power of the Law of Addition.
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6.
The Law of Solid Ground – Trust Is the Foundation of Leadership
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Trust is the foundation of leadership. It is the most important thing. Leaders cannot repeatedly break trust with people and continue to influence them.
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Your people know when you make mistakes. The real question is whether you’re going to fess up. If you do, you can often regain their trust.
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How does a leader build trust? By consistently exemplifying competence, connection and character. People will forgive occasional mistakes on ability. And they will give you time to connect. But they won’t trust someone who has slips in character.
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Character Communicates – a person’s character quickly communicates many things to others. Here are the most important ones:
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Character Communicates Consistency – leaders without inner strength can’t be counted on day after day because their ability to perform changes constantly.
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Character Communicates Potential – weak character is limiting. Who do you think has the greater potential to achieve great dreams: someone who is honest, disciplined, and hardworking or someone who is deceitful, impulsive and lazy?
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Character Communicates Respect – When you don’t have character within, you can’t earn respect without. How do leaders earn respect? By making sound decisions, by admitting their mistakes, and by putting what’s best for their followers and the organization ahead of their personal agendas.
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No leader can break trust with his people and expect to keep influencing them. Trust is the foundation of leadership. Violate the Law of Solid Ground, and you diminish your influence as a leader.
7.
The Law of Respect – People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themselves
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People naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. That’s how the Law of Respect works.
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People don’t follow others by accident. People who are an 8 in leadership don’t look for a 6 to follow – they naturally follow a 9 or 10. The less skilled follow the more highly skilled and gifted.
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Occasionally, a strong leader may choose to follow someone weaker than himself. But when that happens, it’s for a reason. For example, the stronger leader my do it out of respect for the person’s office or past accomplishments. Or he may be following the chain of command. In general though, followers are attracted to people who are better leaders than themselves.
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When people get together for the first time in a group, take a look at what happens. As they start interacting, the leaders in the group immediately take charge. But after the people get to know one another, it doesn’t take long for them to recognize the strongest leaders and to start following them.
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In time, people in the group get on board and follow the strongest leaders. Either that or they leave the group to pursue their own agenda.
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Top Six Ways That Leaders Gain Others’ Respect
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Natural Leadership Ability – if you possess it, people will want to follow you. They will become excited when you communicate vision.
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Respect For Others – when leaders show respect for others – especially for people who have less power or a lower position than theirs – they gain respect from others. If you continually respect others and consistently lead them well, you will continue to have followers.
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Courage – Good leaders do what’s right, even at the risk of failure, in the face of great danger and under the brunt of relentless criticism. Can you think of one great leader from history who was without courage? A leader’s courage gives his followers hope.
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Success – When leaders succeed in leading the team to victory, then followers believe they can do it again. As a result, followers follow them because they want to be part of success in the future.
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Loyalty – When leaders stick with the team until the job is done and look out for their followers best interests even when it hurts them personally, followers will in turn learn to respect them.
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Value Added to Others – Followers value leaders who add value to them and their respect for them carries on long after the relationship has ended.
8.
The Law of Intuition – Leaders Evaluate Everything with a Leadership Bias
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The Law of Intuition is based on facts coupled with instincts plus other intangible factors, such as employee morale, organizational momentum, and relationship dynamics.
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The Law of Intuition often separates the great leaders from the merely good ones.
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Leadership intuition is the ability of a leader to read what’s going on. For that reason, I say that leaders are readers:
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Leaders Are Readers of Their Situation – leaders pick up on details that might elude others. They sense people’s attitudes. They are able to detect the chemistry of a team. They know the situation before they have all the facts.
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Leaders Are Readers of Trends – leaders discern where the organization is headed, often times they sense it first and find data later to explain it. Their intuition tells them that something is happening, that conditions are changing. Leaders must always be a few steps ahead of their people, or they’re not really leading.
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Leaders Are Readers of Their Resources – leaders think in terms or resources and how to maximize them for the benefit of their organization. They are continually aware of what they have at their disposal.
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Leaders Are Readers of People – Intuition helps leaders sense what’s happening among people and know their hopes, fears and concerns. Reading people is perhaps the most important intuitive skill leaders can possess.
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Leaders are Readers of Themselves – leaders must know not only their own strengths and weaknesses, but also their current state of mind. Why? Because leaders can hinder progress just as easily as they can help create it.
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Without intuition, leaders get blindsided, and that’s one of the worst things that can happen to a leader. If you want to lead well, and stay ahead of others, you’ve got to obey the Law of Intuition.
9.
The Law of Magnetism – Who You Are Is Who You Attract
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In most situations, you draw people to you who possess the same qualities you do.
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Who you are is who you attract. If you want to attract better people, become the kind of person you desire to attract.
10.
The Law of Connection – Leaders Touch a Heart Before They Ask for a Hand
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For leaders to be effective, they need to connect with people. All great leaders recognize this truth and act on it almost instinctively. You can’t move people to action unless you first move them with emotion.
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“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” You develop credibility with people when you connect with them and show that you genuinely care and want to help them. And as a result, they usually respond in kind and want to help you.
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How do you connect with people?
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Connect with Yourself – If you don’t believe in who you are and where you want to lead, work on that before doing anything else.
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Communicate with Openness and Sincerity – People can smell a phony a mile away. Authentic leaders connect.
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Know Your Audience – When you work with individuals, knowing your audience means learning people’s names, finding out their histories, asking about their dreams. When you communicate to an audience, you learn about the organization and its goals. You want to speak about what they care about.
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Live Your Message – Practice what you preach. That’s were credibility comes from.
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Go to Where They Are – Remove as many barriers to communication as possible. Try to be attuned to their culture, background, education, and so on. Adapt to others; don’t expect them to adapt to me.
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Focus on Them, Not Yourself – Focus on others, not yourself. That is the number one problem of inexperienced speakers and ineffective leaders.
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Believe in Them – It’s one thing to communicate to people because you believe you have something of value to say. It’s another to communicate with people because you believe they have value. People’s opinions of us have less to do with what they see in us than with what we can help them see in themselves.
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Give Them Hope – French general Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Leaders are dealers in hope.” When you give people hope, you give them a future.
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Successful leaders who obey the Law of Connection are always initiators. They take the first step with others and then make the effort to continue building relationships. It’s not always easy, but it’s important to the success of the organization. A leader has to do it, no matter how many obstacles there might be.
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You connect with others when you learn their names, make yourself available to them, tell them how much you appreciate them, find out what they are doing, and most important, listen to them.
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There’s an old saying: To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. That’s the nature of the Law of Connection. Always touch a person’s heart before you ask for a hand.