Bob Burg

Help one, help many

The theme on my blog page is: Change The World Through Leadership Now. I chose that to represent the impact I want to have through my passion for Leadership. Every article, Instagram picture, Tweet, LinkedIn post, or FaceBook post is designed to reach as many connections as possible. My desire is to Change The World, one person at a time, through the sharing of leadership insights.

In his bestselling book, The Go Giver, Bob Burg stated, “Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interest first.” The impact of your helping one person is far reaching. The residual effects of helping one person can truly change the world.

Help them help themselves. As a leader, your help should not be in the form of micromanaging. Sure, you will set the vision and work to align the goals, but your employees need to experiment, build experience and learn to excel using their strengths to accomplish the goals and achieve the vision. Doing it for them is short lived and offers no value beyond the immediate.

“A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves…and succeed beyond what they thought possible.”– Simon Sinek

Help them help you. There are two personal benefits to helping others. First, it’s rewarding to be part of someone’s success – it feels good to help. There’s a Chinese Proverb that says, “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” Second, the people you help will want to help you in return; they want that happiness for themselves.

Help them help others. Changing the world is a big endeavor. And if we are being realistic it’s hard to think of a way to do that. Steve Jobs got really close with Apple and his personal goal of, “Making a dent in the universe.” One way we can all think changing the world is by helping one person at a time who will also help one more person at a time – eventually it will reach the world.

“We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”– Ronald Reagan

Leadership: If you want more – give more

you can have everything you wantHow can leadership be about giving more to get more.  Early in my career I had two questions about this when my mentors shared this philosophy with me. First, I questioned whether I would get more by giving more – would this actually work?  If I focused my efforts on giving more than I received how could that end up as my success?  From an accounting point of view, if more goes out than comes in that gets recorded as a loss.  Second,  “Let’s assume that it did work,” I said. “Isn’t my success the wrong reason to give more?  After all helping others it is just the right thing to do.”

Then I heard the great Zig Ziglar say, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want” 

I confirmed this concept does in fact work, and not just for you as the leader.  This concept works for everyone on your team, your company, the shareholders, and the community.  Giving more to everyone around you than they can give back is the path to success.

Here are the three areas of leadership where you can get more by giving more:

If you want to be successful, ensure the success of others. Your success is nothing but the cumulative success of every person on your team.  The sooner you realize this the closer you are to success.  Think of the football coach.  His success is absolutely defined by how well his assistant coaches coach, how well his players play, and with what level of expertise everyone on the team performs.  His job is to find and lead the best people in every position.  No matter where you lead, your success depends on the performance of everyone around you; your job as the leader is to do everything you can to ensure their success.

If you want to be recognized, recognize others.  Everyone likes to hear “Good Job!” And every leader should praise their staff – that is the minimum. You should also recognize the accomplishments of your team to others – after all they did the work.  This activity will bring more well deserved recognition to your team, and spread the word about their potential for future opportunities.  This will also highlight your accomplishment in building and leading a strong team.

If you want to be promoted, promote others. You cant do more until what you do is being done by someone else – it’s a simple as that.  Strong successful leaders strive for more responsibility, and opportunities to make a greater impact.  If that’s you, then working with your team to get them ready to take your job is a sure way to get yourself ready for the next opportunity.  It also gives the strong successful leaders on your team the same chance to take on more.

So Leaders, if you want more  – give more.  It’s just like Bob Burg said in his book, The Go-Giver, “Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.”

 

 

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