Maintaining Leadership

One of the aspects of Leadership that no one ever tells you is how difficult it is to keep a flow going. A flow is the ability to keep yourself working at a large enough level to earn the awards but also keep your team working and then keep on recruiting to fill in where you need it. This is where so many good Leaders feel like failures because they just can't get to the levels where some Leaders are maintaining. I think it is crazy to feel like you are not doing enough etc. because Leadership is a huge learning curve. Comparing yourself to other Leaders is silly as you have no idea how long the person has been a Leader, perhaps they may have been a Leader before in another company or they may have taken some extracurricular training in this area. So here are some sneaky secrets that may help you get an handle on this Leadership thing:

+ First and foremost is getting your business flowing before you even consider working with your team in this area. This means that you have to go back to Consultant school possibly. If you are not doing 12 shows or more a month then you can not begin to understand a team member who is. So go back to basics and start finding more bookings - forget everything else until you can maintain 12 bookings a month!!!! ( For some this may not happen but perhaps you could use some training from Network Gals, let us know)

+ Running your business (not your team) effectively and duplicateable with purpose is very important. The more that you let your business happen by accident the less control you will have on it! Be in Control!!

+  You need to overbook and over recruit to find a balance in your business. If you are over booking then you can help to motivate that one Consultant on your team that isn't doing so well. You can offer to give them a booking once they have done a booking of their own. When it comes to over recruiting I believe this is very necessary. We tend to get a recruit and drop everything to get them going and forget about recruiting for a while. Challenge yourself to recruit/train/mentor 12 new Consultants at once and then you will see why it is so much better when you do many at once. I once offered people $100 to join, buy their kit, do their 6 shows and after that they could leave with all the great products plus my $100 to each person. This worked very well. Several of the 8 people I recruited left with their kits but 3 remained and went on to be great Consultants.

+ Talk to other Leaders! Stay in the loop. If you are having a tough dry spell you might consider asking a Leader who is doing very well if she would consider giving you one recruit or a few booking. This is what a Leadership relationship should be like. Understand that one day she will want you to give her one back in return - don't put it off because she may expect that one to come during a promotional period leaving you without.Ideally we want to keep all of our bookings and recruits but some company's may frown on this. I believe it is the key to creating a Leadership lock which keeps all Leaders humble and caring!

+ One of the best things I ever did was schedule a coffee time luncheon with the top Manager of the company. I was very nervous and very shy about asking but I also knew her time was valuable and I would have to be creative to find time enough to chat. That Manager was very helpful. She gave me some very clear and easy ideas on how to find more of everything I needed and also told me that most Leaders flounder for 5 years but usually get to a leveling off point there after. At the time, 5 years sounded way to long but you know it was there before I knew it and by then I had recruited over 30 Consultants and still had 24 of them after 2 years.

Check out Networking Gals website and template library for members as there is more help on this subject. Never be afraid to spend money finding bookings and recruits. We have talked about that before in the blogs. Another idea we have talked about is setting up a very lucrative referral system see Networking Gals "Referral Guide" in our template library. Remember.....

                                      Life is too short..................so go out and Party!!