The Leadership Challenge

The Network Marketing business is loaded with “reluctant leaders”; that is, sincere people that enthusiastically joined a business with a personal drive or goal, intending fully to follow the program to success, but suddenly discovering (after a month or two) that what they really signed on for was a leadership project:

Find and build a team of people “just like you”.

From outward appearances, most take on this challenge willingly and claim to understand it. But inside, they hear voices — voices of reluctance. Like, “So how do I get people to do this, anyway” or “Why doesn’t anyone see what I see in this” or “I got my first guy— how do I motivate him to work the business?”

Your upline may answer with, “Get them to the next Seminar” or “Have them read the literature” or “Make sure they are on the next conference call” or “Build their dream!” The inference is that if you can get your prospects or new distributors to the right information and/or get them around the right people and/or sufficiently excite them about things (success) that they don’t now have access to— you will be a great “leader”.

I call this “leadership by cattle prod”.

Think about it.

You can’t push someone while you are leading.

It’s physically impossible. Look at an actual cattle prod for a minute. How can you get a cow to move forward if you hold a prod in front of them? The only way to apply the prod in a way that causes action is from behind the cow. But is that “leading”?

Further, let’s say you continually apply the prod from behind…over and over again prompting the cow to go where it doesn’t want to. What happens? Sooner or later there is resistance or even rebellion. Becoming accustomed to the pain of the prod while both resenting the pain and the direction they are being pushed…well, sooner or later the cow has had enough and both the method and the goal become obsolete.

The problem here is not simply that the “prodder” isn’t leading but worse, the leader is trying to “motivate” results.

Let’s apply this to the people business. A fundamental truth that every network marketing leader — reluctant or willing — must embrace in order to be successful is that you can’t motivate people.

People motivate themselves.

So that leaves a huge question: how do you lead if you can’t motivate?

The answer is simple and, if you allow yourself time to practice you can master this critical leadership skill. It’s called building confidence. No matter how motivated or skillful a person is, they will never move, get into action or pursue their desires unless they have the confidence to do so. Action — and therefore results — requires confidence.

So — as a leader in network marketing you should be asking, “How do I build confidence in others?”

Over the next few months I will be giving you the keys to developing this critical skill but for this month let’s start with the very beginning. The first and most important person to work with in building confidence is…you!

Are you confident? Confidence is having an unfailing and indomitable belief in yourself, your business, your capabilities and your dreams. Got that?

If not — or you think you can improve (and who can’t?!), here is a checklist of 5 powerful methods to build your own confidence so that you can be more effective in building confidence in others…and so you therefore can be an effective leader:

• Take some simple, measurable action in your business every day

(contact a new person, make a sale, offer a sample, etc.)

• Ask 3 people close to you to tell you the 3 things they like about

you. Write those things down and re-read them weekly.

• Think back to your previous most successful accomplishment and

write down what you learned and how you have changed as a result of accomplishing that success. Re-read that once a week.

• On every Monday morning, write down the first and most

important task that you must accomplish in the coming week that will move your business forward. Concentrate on that task until it is achieved.

• Reward your achievement of the task define in #4 with a

celebration (get a massage, have a picnic, buy a new pair of shoes, go out to eat at a special place, etc.)

Here’s a guarantee: implement the 5 efforts each week this month (between now and your next issue of The Network Marketing Magazine) and I guarantee you will find a greater confidence than you have today. You will be more able to take action. You will find your dreams showing up in your head in color instead of black and white. And you begin to see yourself as a leader. It’s a start but definitely in the right direction.

Log in next month. We’ll explore how you can leverage your confidence to help build confidence in others…and as a result you will find the path to building a large and successful network marketing business.

Steve Dailey is the Founder of PrimeFocus Coaching and AchievementBridge, Inc. Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Exercise Science from Colorado State University, Steve Dailey launched his first career as a professional swimming coach. During what he calls a "laboratory experience in human performance,

psychology and motivation" he built "feeder" programs for aspiring national level swimmers in Colorado, Oklahoma, Illinois, South Carolina and Texas. Though rewarding, swimming offered limited financial opportunity so Steve followed his entrepreneurial urgings to launch a business in the field of Sports and Recreation management. Starting with less than $200, he grew that business to a multimillion-dollar enterprise in only 2 years. Leveraging team building skills, organization development insights and coaching techniques learned on the pool deck, his business grew to serve tens of thousands of customers and employ over 300 people annually.

This success was soon recognized in the local business community as other entrepreneurs began to request Steve's insight on business building strategies. Responding to this interest, he began to market services as a "Business Development Coach" noting that coaching high level athletes and coaching goal-focused business people had many parallels. Soon, the concept attracted entrepreneurs and business leaders from a wide variety of marketplace segments, business models and stages of growth. Through the process, Steve rapidly honed an array of essential achievement principles that positively influenced success in virtually every business environment. Not incidental to this broad exposure were lessons learned in observing both "best practices" and "lethal errors" in leadership, sales and marketing, strategic business development, human resource management and motivation, financial planning, career advancement, predicting and responding to business trends, corporate ethics and innovation.

As the technology "boom" rumbled to the forefront of the marketplace, Steve then narrowed his niche to coaching early stage technology companies. His coaching model offered valuable input, collaboration and direction to eager executive teams, the new executive talent they were attracting and the venture capital companies that were funding them; all in maximizing opportunities in an extraordinarily fast paced time in business history. Again, more insight was gained - this time in defining critical factors that influence success and failure in high velocity/high risk business environments.

Most recently, Steve has focused his passion for coaching in developing high-yield achievement systems for Sales Professionals, Business Executives and Entrepreneurs that include web-based tools, leading edge coaching methods and executive "coach mentoring" programs where business leaders learn to be effective coaches to their own teams. You can find out more about that at his website: PrimeFocusCoaching.com Coaching Philosophy Over 20 years practicing the "art and science of coaching" Steve has truly been on the leading edge of the development of business coaching as a profession. His philosophies have helped shape other professional coaches and coach teams, as well as the success trajectory of the hundreds of clients he has served. The essence of Steve's approach to coaching can be defined by his emphasis on "achievement" rather than simply "personal development". Steve says, "True achievement is attained only through the experiences one has in producing tangible results while developing new habits in the process. When a person then learns to build and leverage a broad scope of resources toward specific intent, they will win at everything they pursue. A coach's value is defined by the degree to which they can build these attributes into their clients as permanent, reusable tools." Personal Steve resides in the beautiful hill country of Austin, Texas with his wife and son. He ranks in the top 10 in the country in Masters Swimming and, having eclipsed the 50-year mark, thoroughly embraces the second half of life as the "better half".