Recently I’ve been reading up on John C Maxwell’s “5 levels of leadership”. I really like his approach for its simplicity and its ability to be readily applied in leadership development plans for leaders.
In summary Maxwell’s five levels of leadership are
- Position – you are newly promoted. Team members will follow you because of your title.
- Permission – you focus on getting to know your team. People follow you because they choose to.
- Production – you focus on delivering results. Others follow you because of your achievements.
- People Development – you focus on developing others. Others follow you because of what you do to them.
- Pinnacle – you focus on continually developing yourself and others. Many follow you because of who you are.
I find Maxwell’s approach is very easy to refer to when putting together individual development plans for leaders. Maxwell’s levels provide a set of clear expectations of the skills and knowledge necessary at a particular experience level. By following Maxwell’s approach a leader will become well rounded and well skilled.
I will look at the first two levels of leadership in this article. I will discuss other levels in later feeds.
Level One Leaders
Position is the level that all leaders enter when they first become a leader.
At this level a leader is a leader by title only. The quicker you move out of this level, the better the leader you become. A good development plan for new leaders would include learning about the role of a leader and gaining self awareness. Leaders should discover their strengths, beliefs and behavioural patterns and the impact these have on others. They should understand the importance of developing good leadership skills. Mentoring, 360 feedback assessments, and formal education are good way to begin developing these.
Level Two Leaders
Level two is called Permission and is about forming great relationships with the team members. Leaders do this by getting to know each individual, identifying their strengths and motivations. Relationships are not just between the leader and the team however, a good leader will encourage the team to increase their knowledge and understanding of each other too. The leader at this level needs to become highly skilled in communication, that is their listening, observing, and questioning skills. Development can focus on perfecting these skills and engaging with the team in an authentic manner.
Level two leaders must also learn to be courageous.
You cannot lead people you don’t like nor can you have a productive team. Therefore a leader must either find things to like about the person, through being a good listener and having an open mind, or remove the person from the team. Removing people from the team would be considered only when attempts to form an authentic relationship have failed. High performance teams do not harbour toxic or poor performers. The leader must step up and effectively manage the employee if their goal is to lead a high performing team.
So there we have the first two of Maxwell’s five leadership levels and some suggestions for development plans. In my next post I will look at the third level – Production.
