How to Develop Leaders in your Team

How to Develop Leaders in your Team

Published: Jun 05, 2014

By: Randy Gage

Untitled Document

How to Develop Leaders in Your Team

Some time back, I was asked to write a chapter for a book on
leadership. It came at an interesting time, because I had just
spent a week in Los Angeles, interviewing CEO candidates for a
venture I was involved in. In 95% of the cases, I was able to
disqualify the person within one interview. The reason: weak
leadership skills.

Many of these people were in what would be considered leadership
positions in the companies they were currently working for. They
knew all the buzzwords: leading by example, developing teamwork,
creating vision, delegation, and values. They spoke of managing
resources and leading people. Yet none of them impressed me as
really understanding how to lead.

I believe that true leadership is the ability to lead others to
willingly do things they wouldn't ordinarily want to do.
Think about that a little. Causing people to willingly do things,
they wouldn't normally want to do.

In the military environment, a leader might inspire troops to get
out of a foxhole and charge an enemy encampment. In a corporate
environment, a leader may empower an employee to take immediate
action to save an important account. A leader in a network
marketing organization might inspire someone to speak in front of a
group for their first time, or it might simply be causing a new
distributor to buy their first suit and tie.

In each case, the person wouldn't normally want to do these
actions, but they willingly do them. They develop their own
leadership qualities because of the influence of the leader they
are following.

I believe this happens because of the increase in belief and esteem
they have achieved as a result of their exposure to that leader.
The leader has done much more than demonstrate leadership skills
and qualities. They have helped develop positive growth in the
individuals they lead. And inspired them to exercise those new

The old leadership model was to teach people what to think. And the
fact is, many people are actively looking to be shown what to
think. They search the globe for gurus to follow, and movements to
join. The strong growth today of gangs, religions and cults is a
manifestation of this.

People watch ESPN and other sports programs to learn what they
should think about their local quarterback, they listen to
bombastic buffoons on talk-radio stations to know what to think
about political issues, and they read the social columns so they
can know who is hip, hot and trendy. The education system around
the world is moving from institutions that teach people how to
think - into conveyor belts that disseminate facts to memorize.
Although this environment exists - real leaders do not exploit it.
They carefully choose the people they lead, and select only those
who are interested in thinking for themselves. They create
situations where people develop problem-solving skills - which
foster thought and build belief in themselves.

True leaders don't develop people's belief in the leader--they
develop the belief in the follower.

They foster growing confidence and esteem in those that follow them
and help them think independently. This freethinking and newfound
confidence causes the follower to empower themselves into
leadership ways of their own. Leaders beget more leaders - the real
test of leadership.

I believe the biggest cause of failure for most people in Network
Marketing is their failure to identify and work with the leaders in
their organization. It goes the other way as well.

The most successful distributors are able to identify and work with
the leaders in their sponsorship line above them. These people are
your best source of help and support. When you create partnerships
with the leaders in your sponsorship line - you are now
demonstrating the leadership traits that will also develop more
leaders in your group.

Never be at cross-purpose with your sponsorship line. If the
person(s) right above you is unwilling or unable to help you, keep
going up until you find someone who needs the security of depth.
Find out how he or she likes to communicate and then replicate this
throughout your organization.

One of the strongest parts of the support structure that your
sponsorship line and your company have in place for you is the
function calendar. Find out what is being provided by them so you
can tie your events around them. You always roll your meetings up
into the sponsorship line's functions, because then you have a
stronger function, a larger event, and there are lots more people.
Doing that will create the same reality in your organization and
they will duplicate the same process with you.

The secret of the business is getting your people to study, do and
teach, all simultaneously. This is the fundamental difference
between the system I teach and what most people do. And it is the
difference for creating strong, exponential growth.

Instead of conducting training on how to do home meetings - get in
your new distributor's living room and hold meetings with him. Get
him involved doing part of the meeting within a few weeks, and have
him doing his own within a few weeks.

This way, distributors are actually doing what they are supposed to
be learning. They learn it faster, remember it better, and are
actually making some money while they are doing it. This leads to
better retention, faster development of leaders, and stronger

Having this steady, regularly scheduled stream of functions keeps
your people motivated; it provides them the training they need; it
drives growth; and it creates tremendous momentum.

Now, let's look at another critical leadership strategy:

Monthly Counseling.

This is the monthly process you do with the leaders and potential
leaders in your organization, to keep them growing on a consistent
basis. Here's how counseling works.

Let's say you're a Bronze Director with your company and the next
rank up is Silver Director. You would counsel with the first
Silver Director in your sponsorship line. Now, once you become a
Silver Director, if your sponsor is still a Silver Director, you
would no longer counsel with her. You would go, instead to her
sponsor, who is a Gold Director. You counsel with the next up-line
person who is at the rank above you.

This ensures everyone has someone to counsel with, and also that
the top ranks don't have thousands of people looking to them for
counseling. Just like the sponsorship lines work, you work with
your front line leaders, who work with their front-line leaders,
who work with their front line leaders. In the event you're in a
sponsorship line with a level or two at the same rank as you - go
up the organization, you will find someone who will be willing to
work with you.

Now just because your sponsor is the same rank as you does not mean
that they are a bad leader or don't know the business.

In fact, it may mean quite the opposite. It could just as likely
mean that they've helped you achieve fast growth - and as quite
often happens - they've brought people up to their own rank
slightly before they moved up a rank themselves. So, don't judge
them or hold that against them. Celebrate the fact that they've
helped you get this far, and counsel with the appropriate person in
your sponsorship line.

Your job is to learn from their experience. They will already have
made the same mistakes that you are headed towards, which means
they can cut many years off your learning curve. Be open-minded
and coachable, for they have a vested interest in your success.

NOTE: Counseling can only help you if you do a real one. Your
sponsor can only help you if he or she has real information to work
with. Don't draw out twelve lines if you really have only two
active, core lines. Otherwise, the counseling is a lie.

I hope you got the "Duplication Nation" resource I recommended to
you last week. In it, you'll find an actual sample of the
Counseling form I recommend.

Please get the sheet in front of you now. As you see, when you
counsel someone, you need to know their rank, how many distributors
are in their group, how many lines they have, what their average
volume is, and some other important benchmarks.

Probably two of the most important variables on this list you
should be concerned with are the number of lines with a leader, and
the total number of leaders in the organization. To me, these are
the two most critical statistics that determine all future growth.

We know that a line could have fifteen people in it, but if none of
them are leaders - within three months, the line will probably have
diminished to one or two people. We can have another line with
only two people in it, but if they're both leaders - people willing
to "Go Core" - in a month or two, that line will probably have
forty or fifty people in it.

Leaders produce leaders.

So that's the number one factor you want to watch when you are
counseling - the leaders in your organization.

Then, duplicate the process with your people. Here are some
guidelines on how to counsel:

The first question I like to ask is, "So, in the last week, whose
living rooms have you been in?" This is the million-dollar
question, because it drives right to the heart of the system. If
someone hasn't been doing home meetings for anyone in the last
seven days - then they have a complete breakdown in the duplication
process. If this is the case, you need to dig deeper and uncover
the cause.

If they don't have anyone in the process - it usually means they
haven't been working. Which, of course, is their option because it
is their business after all. But if they come to you for
counseling, it is your job to call them on this, and let them know
that they cannot expect you or the company to help them if they
don't put out effort. You can also bring them back to the goals
they set in their "Getting Started" training, and ask if they were
really serious about them.

This process I've just taken you through is one of the primary
functions of counseling - namely, to direct your people on how and
where to spend their time. This facilitates the action we need -
identifying leaders. Only by doing this can you intelligently work
depth in your organization.

Last thoughts...

The last leadership strategy I want to go into is following the
system. By this point, you have probably discovered that I'm a
fanatic about following a duplicable system, and I think you can
see why.

The things that grow your business - getting your people involved
in a self-development program, getting them in regular
communication with you, and setting up the sponsoring pipeline -
really work effectively only if you're following a system. All of
these things should be inherently built into your ultimate system.
This should be a completely duplicable, step-by-step-by-step system
that anyone in your organization, at any level, will be able to

The system must remain sacred with you, as a leader. If you change
the system, even only slightly, you will send a message to the
organization that it's okay to change the system. Then they do
that and within a few levels the system breaks down.

If you implement the things we have talked about this lesson, you
will be setting a leadership example for your people to follow.
And you will be doing the most important element of leadership that
we discussed at the very beginning:

You will be causing people to willingly do things that they
wouldn't normally want to do.

And then you know you are a true leader, and you'll lead your
people towards financial security, personal growth, and the
fulfillment that comes from successful accomplishment!


P.S. For the fastest growth, please forward this lesson to all of
your key leaders. And if this lesson was sent to you and you want
to sign up for the entire series, go to: and register. The course is free.

MLM Company Distributor Contacts

Terry Kilburg
Reliv International


Distributor Links

Sue Root
It Works Global


Distributor Links

Art Burleigh


Distributor Links

Paul Taira


Distributor Links

Allan Curtis
World Global Network


Distributor Links

Robert Jugan
Life Plus


Distributor Links

Steve Hoffman
BR35 Global


Distributor Links

Lisa Wilber


Distributor Links