Xpand Leadership

What the heck is even a leader? Are leaders born or are they made? Ever since I was a kid I’ve been told, “Sam you are such a natural leader” what does that even mean? I had to get really curious why people would want to follow me. What was it that I had developed, what skills, qualities, and traits did I possess that made people say that to me? 

“Leadership is influence, nothing more – nothing less” John Maxwell 

What creates influence? 

In the article “7 Factors that Influence Influence,” Maxwell says:

1. Character – Who they are
2. Relationships – Who they know
3. Knowledge – What they Know
4. Intuition – What they feel 
5. Experience – Where they’ve been 
6. Past Success – What they’ve done
7. Ability – What they can do 

Over the years, my interpretation  of leadership has become this: to see the greatness in someone they yet to see in themselves. Then to guide them on pulling it out of them and rising to the occasion. 

“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” Goethe

Obviously your goal is to work on improving these 7 things and Xpand app has all of these to help you Xpand your life. You have to be a person of influence to be in a leadership role. But I also think that people that have accomplished a lot can make crappy leaders. People with lots of great connections can make crappy leaders. People that have so much ability can make crappy leaders. In my experience, I found promoting the top sales reps was always a bad idea because they didn’t make great managers. Why?  

Another article, “What makes a good manager?”  lays out a list of 5 key qualities:

1. Know your people 
2. Commit to communicating
3. Make time to meet
4. Create a healthy workplace culture
5. Focus on performance development 

What makes a good manager comes down to the actions and relationships they have with their team, vs. the experience and personality advantages that creates influence.

One element of leadership is inspiring your people to perform, but as a coach or consultant it takes more than just inspiring your clients to get them results.. You have to know how to actually manage your client. Just because you were good at something in the past doesn’t make you automatically good at replicating those results for others.

I came to find out that I made a great leader – but not a great manager. I was so scatterbrained, ADhD, and just thought a bunch of ra-ras would get my clients and people the results they were looking for. Shocker – it didn’t. It wasn’t until I started tracking, taking notes, keeping score, and putting a system in place that I got killer results. Save yourself some dummy tax and just take my word for it. Over 80% of leaders aren’t even trained in management.. If you start taking this stuff seriously you will watch yourself stand out miles ahead of the pack. 

For the rest of the gushy stuff on how to have more influence, go read some more leadership books. Now is where we walk through how to be a great manager or coach, which is much more meaty and tactical. When you can combine leadership skills and manager skills, you become an ultimate powerhouse in the workforce, coaching realm, and business world. 

What I’ve found is the better I got at implementing systems and frameworks the more I created “free energy.” You will see me reference this quite a bit, because I am going to be teaching you hacks on how to let the Xpand app, Xpand framework, Xpand culture, Xpand environment, ego drive “free energy” for you, instead of you having to always push the people you lead to accomplish things. Xpand Systems will pull it out for you!

I have created my own framework that makes a combination which we will call a Managerial Leader. A Coach – this falls into its own spot in leadership. Managers make sure projects get done, leaders inspire and create vision, a coach is someone that does them both. And I believe everyone in life needs a coach. 

1. Goal Clarity 
2. Design program 
3. Train to create confidence 
4. Assignments 
5. Accountability 
6. Environment 
7. Realign and repeat

With all of these 7 categories in the Xpand app, start Xpanding your life today!