"Lift The Lid "

Using Five Laws to Become Someone Who Others Want to Follow

All network marketers begin their business wanting to be successful. The individual network marketer learns and practices the skills to grow a successful personal business. A network marketer who seeks to reach new heights of success in their sector realizes they can not do it themselves.

Building a thriving, sustainable and scaleable business requires much more than personal achievement. This level of success depends on the individual network marketer developing the skills to lead others and help them develop.

This network marketer helps develop others and become leaders who know how to attract and develop others to follow and lead. The result can be a thriving, growing, sustainable business benefiting many. This type of success in network marketing or any other endeavor can't happen in solo success.

To build a hugely successful business, the network marketer must attract followers and develop them into leaders. It really is simple math.

A network marketer with a solid business expands their success by attracting and helping others be successful, so they attract others and on and on.

The way to attract followers and develop leaders to achieve thriving, sustainable, and scaleable success is not through massive individual sales, marketing, or niches. These are all undoubtedly wonderful, yet they may not attract followers to achieve the highest achievement.

The path to developing a thriving, sustainable scaleable business is leadership.

This may seem odd, but it is true in any organization, especially in network marketing. People join network marketing organizations because they are attracted to the person who will be their leader.

The first step to attracting followers to develop into leaders and create sustainable scaleable success is for the leader to learn how to be a leader themselves first. This process does not result from a title, personality, or even individual high sales and sharing.

Leadership is a learned set of skills. The first person that must learn those skills to attract followers and develop leaders to lead others must be the leader.

In a recent Maxwell Leadership webinar, Leadership Expert John Maxwell noted, "If you cannot lead yourself, how can you lead others? Before leading others, you have to lead yourself first. The network marketer aspiring to be the person people are attracted to and follow has to, as Maxwell says, "lift the Lid " They must develop themselves first as a leader to attract others by following what he calls the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

During this recent webinar, Maxwell described the laws in the 25 th -anniversary third edition of the internationally acclaimed bestseller The 21Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

This book is among the most often cited Leadership books selling over four million copies. It is highly recommended for anyone who wants to develop themselves as a leader to attract followers and develop them into leaders. This article will briefly summarize five of these 21 Laws to guide a network marketer or any aspiring leader in developing leadership skills to attract others.

1. The Law of the Lid

The Law of the Lid is the first law of the 21 Laws as it is foundational. The Law of the Lid states that your level of effectiveness as a leader depends on how you grow as a leader. The level a person develops in their leadership skills is then "The Lid "on their personal success and determines the type of people attracted as followers. A network marketer who is a level five out of ten leaders will only be effective at that level and only attract followers at that level or lower. What this means to a network marketer seeking to be someone others would follow is continually learning, practicing, and refining their leadership skills to raise "The Lid."It is not one workshop, one speaker destination. The higher the Lid, the more effective the leader and the higher the level of people attracted to follow the leader.

2. The Law of Influence

The Law of Influence states that leadership is influence. This may run contrary to many popular misconceptions about leadership. Leadership is building people up to get things done. Yelling and power plays rarely work, even in the short term. People are attracted by who a person is as a leader and as a person. This is especially true in network marketing which is a volunteer enterprise. People must know that you care about them, that they can trust you, and that you will help them. These practices build influence.

3. The Law of Process

The Law of Process reminds the network marketer that building up personal leadership skills is a process, an inside-outside process. This is a never-ending daily journey with many ups and downs. The commitment to this process and the discipline to learn and refine skills raises "The Lid." The leader then gets better and attracts higher-level followers.

"The interaction between every leader and follower is a relationship, and all relationships either add to or subtract from a person's life. " John Maxwell

4. The Law of Addition

This leadership law reminds those network marketers who want to attract others to their group team or unit to intentionally add value to others to build relationships. Following this law leads to developing a mindset of looking for value and adding value to everyone you interact with.

Maxwell writes that following the Law of Addition is seeing "the interaction between every leader and follower is a relationship, and all relationships either add to or subtract from a person's life."

Following this law also requires a network marketer committed to attracting followers to think of others first.

Teddy Roosevelt said, "People don't care about what you know until they know that you care."

Adding value is as simple as knowing a sales associate is caring for a sick father or knowing another's kids. It is paying attention to what people care about. Jon Achoff, in a recent Global Leadership Summit presentation, stated it this way" Care about what those you lead care about." To assess how you add value, Maxwell suggests asking yourself, "Are you making things better for those who follow you?"

5. The Law of Connection

This leadership law reminds the network marketer who wants to be someone people will choose to follow that connecting is critical. Connecting is the intentional practice of making contact with as many of your team as possible. Try this experiment. Call someone you want to attract as a follower and ask, "How are you doing?" instead of What are you doing? This experiment will yield surprises, but most importantly, tell the person they were on your mind, adding value to your relationship and enhancing your connection. Connection is critical, especially in volunteer organizations like most network marketing groups. Increased connection enhances attraction and engagement. Intentional connection displays a commitment to the other person's development.

"If you help enough people get what they want, they will help you get what you want." Zig Ziglar

In network marketing, a person can choose to be an individual superstar. The problem here is they become, in the terminology of my wife's direct sales company, "shooting stars" who rarely sustain their momentum over the long haul and fizzle out.

Those who are successful in a sustainable, scalable way develop themselves to be the best leaders they can be. They raise "The Lid "for themselves and those they attract. This is hard work. The hardest person for anyone to lead is themselves. It is a responsibility and commitment to improve and help others improve.

The late motivational speaker Zig Ziglar shared the benefits for anyone who raises "The Lid" of their leadership to attract and develop people decades ago.

"If you help enough people get what they want, they will help you get what you want."

This was true then, and it may actually be more accurate today. Start the journey with these five Laws; buy and read them and use the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership to guide your leadership practice to attract and develop followers. You will then reap success in sustainable scaleable ways;

As Zig used to say at the close of any talk, "We will see you at the top!"