How are the OTHERS Doing?

It stopped me dead in my tracks when I read it.

As a result, I put the book down and couldn’t come back to it for days. When I finally did, I was still stunned by the revelation of my inadequacy.

What was it that shot like a lightening bolt of illumination into my blinded mind? This statement:

“To determine how well you are doing as a leader, take a look at how well the people you lead are doing.”

Ouch.

To that point, I had been thinking I was a leader when actually I was operating only at the lower level of “performer.”

It was all about me, my goals, my performance, my motivation, my accomplishments. I thought that if I drove myself hard enough, learned enough, and tried enough, I would be a good leader.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

As Orrin Woodward and I wrote in Launching a Leadership Revolution, leading involves much more than that. Leadership is the art of influencing other people to high performance.

It is the power of a performer enabling and enhancing the performance of others. And therein lies the key: OTHERS.

Want to be a leader?

Want to increase your influence?

Want to take your performance to the next level?

Become OTHER-focused. Decide right here and now that your life will not be about you, but about others.

Figure out how to add more value to more people with everything you do. As Zig Ziglar famously said,

“Help enough other people get what they want and you’ll have everything you want.”

This statement, I believe, is both literal and figurative. By helping others succeed it boomerangs back around and helps the helper.

However, the deeper and more figurative meaning is that by helping others get what they want you receive so much more. You receive their thanks and gratitude, adulation and respect, friendship and loyalty, comfort and presence.

Just by being the “raiser” of others you have been raised yourself.

So make your work and life about others.

How they do is the gauge of how you are doing.

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Chris Brady co-authored the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Weekly, USA Today, and Money Magazine best-seller Launching a Leadership Revolution.

He is also in the World’s Top 30 Leadership Gurus and among the Top 100 Authors to Follow on Twitter. He has spoken to audiences of thousands around the world about leadership, freedom, and success.

Mr. Brady contributes regularly to Networking Times magazine, and has been featured in special publications of Success and Success at Home. He also blogs regularly at Chris Brady.

He is an avid motorized adventurer, pilot, world traveler, humorist, community builder, soccer fan, and dad.

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