“Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight Eisenhower

Having practiced leadership for nearly twenty-five years, I don’t believe anyone has captured the essential difference between effective leadership and ineffective management in community building any better than Eisenhower did in his pithy statement above.  Building communities requires three steps: 1) Learn, 2) Do, and 3) Teach. For some unknown reason, managers believe they can skip the vital second step and move directly into teaching what they have never done. Predictably, the managers fail miserably in this endeavor, but then, even more bizarrely, some then blame the lack of results on the community building model versus their lack of leadership. 

For instance, I don’t care what community building business one is in, if a potential leader desires to build a big community he must do more than simply recommend the proper teaching CDs on contacting and showing the plan. He must also master contacting personally before he can effectively teach it to his community in business launches. Further, if he desires to teach how to show the plan and share the products with others, he must be doing it himself at least 15 times per month. Indeed, before he can run successful house plans, he must know his message inside and out and have encouraged through his example how others can do one on one’s as well to ensure new people are at his house plans. In other words, the leader learns before he does, and does before he teaches. If this process gets out of order, the person is managing, not leading, and his business flounders.

Successful house plans revolve around new people seeing a bigger vision for the company’s products and vision than the new member is capable of providing. As a result, if no new people are at the house plan, then the leader has most likely fallen into management mode. First, learn the skills of contacting by doing it over and over before presuming to teach it others. Second, learn how to show the plan and share the products by attending opens and then show it over and over again before presuming to teach others how to do so. Successful house plans only occur after the community is confident in showing the plan and sharing the product with others through numerous one on ones. The people who showed interest from the one on ones are then fed into house plans or open meeting to see a bigger picture. Top leaders will promote the next seminar to help the new people see the community in action that will help them get financially free. Miss any of these steps and the potential leader is competing for manager of the year, not leader of the year. 🙂

What are you waiting for? A person can dream all day long while listening to all the CDs, reading all the books, and attending all the seminars, but until he starts DOING the work, he is not qualified to teach. The future has never been bright for those who will act towards their dreams. Learn, Do, Teach works, the only question is will you work. 🙂 True education, in short, leads to ACTION! Quit pushing others strings. Instead, tie the communities strings to your leadership and move in the direction of financial freedom. Your team is sure to follow a person who leads. Plug into LIFE and start the process of learning by doing so one can eventually teach what one has learned to others. In the process, not only will you change your life, but the lives of many others who had no other way out of the Financial Matrix.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward: LIFE Chairman of the Board