Leaders Grow Leaders

"You've got to have great athletes to win,  I don't care who the coach is.  You can't win without good athletes but you can lose with them.  This is where coaching makes the difference." - Lou Holtz

The longer I work with great leaders the easier it is to spot them.  You know who great leaders are because they are surrounded by great subordinates.  

When you walk into a business, a team, an organization of any kind and see highly motivated well operating systems and people you know a great leader or leaders is near.

Being a leader means more than just having authority it means having influence, the power to motivate, the power to build high performance teams.  Great leaders pick influence over authority any day.  They understand that the person who brings the most clarity and emotion to the challenge becomes the leader, and at that moment who has the position of authority means very little.  Great leaders have always know how to rally people to their cause, to invoke and spread excitement, emotion, and passion to others.

Great leaders:

• Attract great people
  
• Recruit great people
  
• And build great people
  

When you are looking to be a part of a new job, new organization, new relationship of any kind.  Test the climate of the group.  Are you surrounded by high performance people or does it feel more like the "dysfunction junction."

Excitement is probably the most transferable human emotion on the planet.  It is hard to be in the presence of someone who is excited and not feel it or react to it in some way.  Great leaders transfer emotion and passion to others.

A mentor of mind once told me before I was about to speak to a large crowd that if I wanted to transfer excitement and emotion than I would have to feel it 10 times greater than I wanted them to get it.  In other words if I want the audience to "bleed"  I would have to "hemorrhage."

Do you "hemorrhage" an excitement that motivates?  Inspires?  Attracts? Recruits? Builds high performing people in your life, family, or business?  Do people pick up what you are laying down in your sales job?  Do people feel your passion for life?

If not.  Then I encourage you to look into at least one of these 2 areas:

1. Do you have something, anything, that one thing that gets you out of bed in the morning?  I mean really gets you jazzed? If not, then find something that does and learn to make money at it.
   
2. If yes, then let it out!  Express it!  Be you!  Do you feel shy about expressing a new idea- your products- your business- life in general because others don't share your joy yet?  Well...thats the point.  That is why you have to help them feel it.  That is why you are in a position to lead. Everyone doesn't "get it" yet, that is exactly why the world needs you to help them.
   

Great leaders reach out to optimize not only their own skills but the skills of all they run into.  Spot great leaders by the team they develop- become a great leader by being contagious with your passions.

-Jon Bohm