Chik-Fil-A LeaderCast Indy Live Blog (session 1)

Good Morning!!

I’m blogging from the downtown Marriott, listeing to John C Maxwell speak live from Atlanta. He’s starting on the 5 steps of Leadership.

Level 1: A leadership position in title. The people who follow you follow you because they have to — they follow you to get their paycheck. They will give you the very least, because people don’t like to do it. How can you tell if you are a leader in this kind of environment??

At 4:30, people clear their desks.

They talk to co-workers.

At 4:50, they go to the bathroom. They like to pee on company time.

At 4:57 they are just waiting to leave

At 5:00, they are out the door.

Also a sign? People back into their parking spots– they like to make a quick getaway.

At Level 2: Permission Level

People begin to follow you because they want to do so. What’s happened? You (the leader) have connected with your people. You’ve gotten to know each other, and  you’ve become a supervisor people like.

People in leadership positions need to be likeable.

Relationships are the foundation of leadership. You cannot influence someone you antagonize.

1) Listen Well, take all of your leadership cues from listening

2) They observe, and are conscious of where their people are and what they are doing

3) They are learning.

They have an attitude of serving. They love to serve.

Level 3: 1) They produce by example. People produce what they see. You can’t send people where you haven’t been yourself.

Your leadership gains credibility because you are starting to produce. You attract people you want to be productive. Law of magnetism. We attract who we are, not what we want.

Managers solve problems, leaders create momentum.

Momentum at level 3 leadership with take care of 80% of the problems.

Level 4: quick check– are you learning something?

People development level. This is what he (maxwell) lives for.

You commit to developing the people of an organization. You build an organization by growing people.

1) the key to devleoping good people is recruitment — the better they are, the better they’ll become.

Successful leaders discover what other people are good at.

At level 4, you recruit well, position well and equip well.

Level 5: The Pinnacle Level — RESPECT. You’ve done it so well for so long, people just follow you because of what you have done. It takes a long time to get to level 5. Leadership is always an ongoing, growing, learning process.

Your assignemnt: Take the people that you lead, write down their names and think about what level you are on with each one of your people. Once you know, you’ll know how to lead them. The commitment level of your people is higher, the higher the level you’re on.

Seth Godin is Up Next!

The Act of Making a Decision

He’s staring with seeing the future/seeing what we want to see: starting with the newspaper business. Newspapers should have seen 15 years ago that 10 years from now, we are not going to chop down trees, print a paper, have it delivered to your house, even if you’re not home, something for you to read. After 15 minutes, you’ll recycle it. It won’t be happening forever. But papers don’t want to see that.

There are two ways to get marry, walk up to someone in a bar and propose. Keep asking people til someone gets married. The other way to do it is to go on a date, if it works, keep going out until you want to get married.

Are you invisible or are your remarkable?

Yelling doesn’t work ,average doesn’t work becasue it’s boring. (mass marketing to the masses no longer works)

Now he’s talking about socks — wanna see my socks? That’s the marketing strategy — three socks to a pack, they don’t match. $10 packs, marketed to 12 yr old girls. “Our job is to give 12yr old girls something to talk about at recess”

How did you decide to spend the extra money? You tell yourself a story about our worldview.

Now he’s holding a record. For a long time, the music industry was perfect. You hear music on the radio for free, and you could buy it at the record store. You play it enough, and it wears out and you buy another one.

Then digital comes along, and you can listen to anything you want for free. What did the music industry do? They sued their biggest customers. That’s a strategy.

Either you defend or you invent the future. The Future doesn’t care if you believe in it. Either you’re leading it or you’re not.

The edge of the box is where the magic happens. That’s where the action is. It makes people nervous.

Henry Ford was the most important person in the 20th century by far. He figured out mass production and interchangeable parts.

Interchangeable parts brings us to interchangeable people. This is the discussion of our time. It’s what we all grew up with, and now it’s not working so well. Interchangeable people are really good at running a factory that makes average stuff.

It’s not smart enough.

The notion of choosing to be irreplaceable is frightening.

We need individuals who will lead, not manage. Management is what you do when you want your employees to do what they did yesterday, a little faster, a little cheaper.

Leadership is giving them a platform and then getting out the way. It’s being surprised by the the people who work for you. It means giving up control. Are you in the business of complying or do you want to own things.

What used to be scarce is now abundant (books on paper, vs. books on Kindle). What’s scarce now? Our attention.

Zappos — if someone takes the time to call customer service, that’s the greatest marketing oppotunity of them all. Their phone reps are encouraged to keep people on the phone.

You’re either an accountant, doing it again and again, or a you’re an artist– doing something that’s never been done before.

(This is seriously motivating and an interesting look at the future of business)

The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win (doing average things for cheap)