“You’ll get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

 – Zig Zigler

One of my best clients has told me repeatedly that his goal in his business is to build people. Yes, he wants to be amazingly successful and build an empire. But underneath all of that is a desire to help people succeed in life.

Not surprisingly, that translates into very strong business practices and a business that keeps growing.

Another past client once told me he didn’t really care what happened to his company. He didn’t see the point of working through issues that brought him to me. He and his partners had figured out how to make a lot of money now. He was willing to, “Ride this horse until it drops.”

Not surprisingly, their business has plateaued. It’s true, they have a corner on a unique and highly profitable niche. But they’ve created an internal bottleneck. They have a difficult time attracting new, skilled employees. Their most skilled staff are retiring out and they don’t have new leaders in the pipeline.

Why? Because employees and their growth are not prioritized. They don’t recognize it, but they are at risk of collapsing on themselves.

Two Drivers

Leaders tend to be driven by one of two different motivations or drivers. In the world of entrepreneurialism and business ownership these owners are described as:

• Lifestyle Owners (An owner who prioritizes using his or her business to support a current lifestyle.)
• Value Building Owners (An owner who prioritizes consistently building value into his or her business.)

In the world of leadership and management thought and writing, different terms are frequently used:

• Leader-First Leader (A leader who primarily seeks a leadership position because he or she will benefit personally.)
• Servant Leader (A leader who primarily seeks a leadership position because of the value they bring to others by being in that role.)

While these two sets of concepts aren’t precisely the same, in practice, they are nearly indistinguishable.

The Consequences of Lifestyle Ownership and Leader-First Leadership

It’s entirely possible and not uncommon to achieve a high level of success as a Lifestyle Owner or Leader-First Leader. But those approaches come with costs.

Lifestyle Owners: Research indicates that lifestyle owners nearly always find that their businesses are either:

• Impossible to sell. (As many as 80% of owners never find a buyer.)
• Impossible to sell at an amount that will continue to support their lifestyle. (Over 75% of those who do sell are dissatisfied with the sale.)
• Impossible to sustain or run if they hand the business over to family or management. (Two-thirds of business handed over will fail.)

Leader-First Leaders: Often find that they experience very little loyalty from their teams. They end up spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with internal politics and challenges to their authority. Or their authority is accepted and tolerated but they experience demotivated and under-performing employees. Staff retention slips. Conflicts go up.

A culture of attracting and retaining other Leader First Leaders is established and internal silos and/or infighting is a natural result.

This cause and effect is so predictable that when I talk to prospective clients, I screen for the nature of the leaders I’ll be working with.

If the leaders I work with don’t care about building up their people or building value into their organizations then the likelihood of any project succeeding is dramatically reduced. And it will probably be a miserable experience for me.

The Value of being a Value Building or Servant Leader

In very simple terms Value Building Owners tend to build more valuable companies while increasing their revenues (giving them better lifestyles.)

Servant leaders in other contexts will also find that by focusing on growing the people and value of the service offered around them – they create healthier, more impactful, more effective organizations. This often has a personal benefit as well in terms of opportunities, financial rewards, influence, etc.

Building value and serving others creates win-win opportunities.

It starts with the leader helping others win first.

The concept of servant leadership has been around for thousands of years. The term, itself, was coined in the 1960s by Robert Greenleaf. Greenleaf formulated his ideas while working for AT&T and helping build their staff and teams.

The ’60s, probably not unlike now, was an era of significant social change and challenges to established approaches to authority. Greenleaf began to be curious about what really makes leadership tick. What legitimized leadership and motivated people to defer to and be led by someone? Particularly if they had a choice?

What he formulated was this:

“The servant-leader is a servant first… Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is a leader first… The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant, first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test and the most difficult to administer is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

In the lead-in to this article, I described a client who has built a very successful and rapidly growing business because of being a servant leader.

His employees reflect this. Over the years that I’ve known and worked with him, I’ve watched the individuals on his team grow as people. They become more confident, more skilled, they make better choices with less support and they handle increasingly complex situations on their own.

He has benefited as well. When I first started working with him, he was still involved in all aspects of his business. Chief cook and bottle washer. Now, he has an executive team that leads an expanding company and he isn’t directly involved in any of it. His primary engagement back into his company is guiding the overall vision and mentoring.

He is able to focus on new ventures. Which, unsurprisingly, have all been variations of helping others succeed.

How to Build Value

To build value, you need to first be able to answer these questions:

• Who am I building value for? Who is my customer?
• What does my customer want and need?

Wants and needs aren’t the same things. But knowing them and figuring out how to serve both, if you can, is a key part of bringing value to your customers.

After this, you need to build your organization. Christopher Snider is a business owner and consultant who has been able to multiply the value of numerous companies by 3-5x. His Value Acceleration Methodology focuses on building these four areas:

• Human Capital: The quality, health, and capacity of your employees and team.

Do you know how to predictably attract, engage and retain your ideal employees? Are your teams healthy, focused and productive?

• Customer Capital: This is the quality and nature of your relationship with your customers.

How strong are your customer relationships? Do your customers rely on your services or products for their success? Do they receive something from you that they couldn’t easily receive elsewhere? Do you have diversity in your customer base? Are your customers loyal to your organization or company – or just one member of your team?

• Social Capital: This refers to your culture, how your team relates to itself and to others and your reputation. It’s the invisible factor that doesn’t end up on a balance statement but has the largest impact on success.

Is your organization or brand respected? Does your team relate to each other well? Is there a culture in place that brings the best out of everyone? How resilient and innovative are your team? How do they relate to conflict or differences?

• Structural Capital: This is the infrastructure of your organization. It is the tools, processes, and systems that:
  • Create transferability: Takes what exists in a leader’s mind and makes it easily transferable to others. Whether this is vision or performance expectations.
  • Connects information and resources: Connects people to the information and expertise that they need quickly and easily.

Are expectations clear? Are roles and responsibilities defined and known? Does everyone use the same processes? Is there anything about our processes or tools that make us special? Is there something about how we operate that contributes to our “special sauce?” If so, do we know how to replicate this?

Helping enough other people get what they want

Bring value to others. Internally and externally. When times are tough, find ways to add value (it doesn’t have to cost you anything.) When times are good, add value.

By building and serving other people you’ll grow as a leader. Your growth will be successful and sustainable.

If you are struggling, ask yourself:

• How can I best provide the value my customers (and employees) are looking for?
• How can I provide it to more people (or more consistently?)

As you work out your answers to those two simple questions – you’ll find that your success will grow as well.

Take good care,

Christian

PS If you’d like to talk to me about how you can build value by helping other people get what they want, contact me at 907 522-7200 or christian@vantageconsulting.org.