Is your dream to attain a position, or is it to leave a lasting legacy?  In Robert’s debut podcast, he gives an overview of The Big Six Leadership Principles® and what it means to be a ‘Level Five’ leader.

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Podcast Episode 1: The Leadership Journey is Not a Destination  

Robert Mixon:  

Hello, I’m Robert Mixon and welcome to the Level 5 Associates podcast with today’s topic being, ‘The Leadership Journey is Not a Destination.’ 

You know, it’s kind of interesting to consider what we want to be in our journey, what we want to be when we grow up as leaders. 

I’ve asked a lot of leaders throughout the course of my experiences: 

“What’s your dream? What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

“Are you looking to achieve a position or a legacy?” 

And I find that a lot of leaders I’ve dealt with really haven’t been asked that question or they haven’t thought about it — or both. 

And when they do think about it, they tend to think more in the construct of a position than a legacy. And yet, I think if you look at the leaders you admire the most, there are qualities about those leaders that you respect, right? So, in reality, the opportunity to achieve a legacy is probably far more enduring. 

And the leaders that I know you and I probably admire the most were ones who left a legacy — regardless of their position. 

So, then I’d ask you to consider: what’s the legacy you’d like to have? And how can a set of principles, such as the Big Six principles, help guide your actions to bring your leadership dreams to life? 

Let’s talk about the Big Six just as an overview. 

The first of the Big Six is called ‘Set the Azimuth.’ And I know for many of you an azimuth is kind of a strange term. I took it from the military, but we’ll talk about it some more and I think give it some clarity as we go on in our journey. 

The second principle is ‘Listen.’ 

The third, ‘Trust and Empower.’ 

The fourth, ‘Do the Right Thing When No One is Looking.’ 

The fifth, ‘When in Charge, Take Charge.’ 

And the sixth is ‘Balance the Personal and Professional.’ 

So these six principles are enablers. And through our work together, we’ll talk about how the journey, your leadership journey, can be part of a process where you take the Big Six enablers and you bring them to life.  

Second, we’ll talk about what does it take to be a servant leader? And why is the concept of servant leadership so important in the employment of these Big Six principles? In achieving the legacy that I think most of us really want. 

John C. Maxwell and other authors that I respect very much have really defined five levels of leadership. And in our journey, I think we should consider where we are in those five levels, and perhaps where we can go. 

The level one leader he talks about is a ‘positional’ leader. People follow you as a level one leader because they have to, because the name tag says so. 

The level two leader, in Maxwell’s view, is a ‘permissional’ leader. People follow you because they want to. 

The third level in Maxwell’s model is a ‘production’ leader. People follow you because of what you’ve done for the organization. 

Level four is ‘people development’ leader. And here he says people follow you because of what you’ve done for them. 

And then the ultimate level, level five, he uses the term ‘personhood,’ which I like very much. At this level, Maxwell says people follow you because of who you are and what you represent. 

So for us, I think as leaders, we need to consider, do we want to have a legacy? What should that legacy be? What’s our dream? Can we use the Big Six principles as enablers to help us in that journey? 

Can we adopt and employ the concept of being a servant leader? 

And then — of the five levels of leader, where are we now? Where would we like to be? 

I think we’d all like to be level five leaders. But as Maxwell says in his book on level five leadership, very few of us ever get there. 

And again, it’s a journey, not a destination. 

He uses coach John Wooten of UCLA as his example of a level five leader. Having that personhood. 

I had the privilege of being around General Colin Powell for a period of time when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

And I think he was and is a level five leader who embodied that ‘personhood.’ 

You know, Coach Wooten and General Powell are people that we followed because of who they are and what they represent. 

So as you establish your dreams of who you want to be as a leader, if you’re willing to accept the fact of that legacy, what you leave behind you, if you will — then you have an opportunity in the course of your journey to achieve far more than you would if you simply sought a position. 

With the Big Six, a servant leader mentality, and the five levels of leadership, how do you embark on your journey? How are you going to do this? 

I think first and foremost, you’ve got to set your own leadership azimuth. 

Here we go again, back to that term. So what is an azimuth? 

Well, azimuth has four components in our leadership conversation. 

The first element of the azimuth is the mission. And I’d ask you to consider: what is your mission? One or two sentences. 

Some of the most elegant mission statements I have seen are: “I want to enable leaders that work with and for me to become better leaders than I am, to create an environment where the organizations that we serve are more successful, and that I’m able to help enrich people’s lives in the process.” I think that’s a pretty good mission statement. But the key is to develop your own. 

Think about it. It’s not something you just sit down and write. You’ve got to do it a few times. 

The second element of your leadership azimuth is what’s my intent? Intent is another term I took from the military because I thought it was useful. And it has some key components in it. 

For example, what’s my end state in my leadership career? 

Second is, what are the key tasks I have to perform to get to that end state? 

Starting from the end state and coming back to now. You know, it’s easy to go from here to there. But I think that’s an incremental approach. And you tend to achieve more if you go from starting with the end in mind and coming back to now. 

But those two components, the end state and the key tasks that you have to achieve to get there, are what capture the intent. And the intent really is sort of a foundational element of the mission. 

When you write that mission statement out, then you can see what the intent is inside that mission. 

The third component of azimuth is, what are my values? What are my personal beliefs? What do I believe in? 

And then the fourth element of the azimuth is, what’s my code of conduct? I call it your personal culture. How am I going to behave to bring the beliefs that I have into practice? 

So setting your leadership azimuth is the first element, I think, in establishing your journey of achieving that legacy. 

Next, I’d say get an assessment of your current leadership level from Maxwell’s levels of one to five. 

Why are people following you now? There’s several ways to do this. Start with asking your direct reports where they would place you in those five levels. Do it anonymously. Then ask your peers and colleagues. 

We at Level Five Associates can help if you need us to. 

I would start keeping this very simple, very simple direct question. And the best way to ask the question, like I said, is anonymously. And then have them submit the feedback so that you can read it that way, and they’re not in a group dynamic session. You’re going to get a lot more, I think, honest feedback of where are you in those levels of one to five from ‘positional’ up to ‘personhood.’ And then think about that. 

When you get that input from your direct reports and your colleagues, think about it and say, “okay, is this reasonable?” And if it’s reasonable, then I would say, you know, be honest, confront the facts, and say, “all right, where do I go from here? What do I need to do next?” 

And that’s where I think developing a personal leadership philosophy really takes hold. Most leaders I’ve had the privilege of being with in my journey have not been familiar with the personal leadership philosophy idea, which is really writing out a statement of who am I and what do I represent? Sort of codifying your personal azimuth, if you will. 

But once you sit down, write out this personal leadership philosophy, share it with some people that you trust… I think in the course of three to four iterations, you’ll end up with a one-page document that really does capture, okay, who am I? And what do I represent? 

Now, some of it can be practical as to who you are today. Some of it can be aspirational as who you want to be. 

But when you write it out as a personal leadership philosophy and you sign it and date it, you have now made a commitment to everyone that this is the person, the leader, that I am going to behave as… Who I believe I am and how I’m going to behave. 

And then there’s some expectations I would capture in this personal leadership philosophy. What do I expect of myself? And what do I expect of you? And what can you expect of me then? 

So there’s some several formats out there for doing a personal leadership philosophy. 

I like the one where you state this is their mission statement up front. These are my values. These are my expectations and behaviors and what you can expect of me. 

Sign it and date it. And after some careful consideration, I think you’ll find that it has real meaning for you. And it will evolve over time. 

But what you’re doing is you’re starting your journey with a renewed enthusiasm for being all you could be, to use the famous Army term or PR phrase they used in the Army, which I really think was cool. Once you’ve written the personal leadership philosophy, the next stage in your journey will be to develop a personal action plan. To bring that personal leadership philosophy to reality in measured ways. 

And that’s going to be another, I think, diligent effort on your part. But you can see here that persistence will pay. As you identify, what do I want my legacy to be? 

What are the steps I should take within the Big Six principles to get there? And then capturing your personal leadership philosophy, who you are and what you represent, then your action plan can be the vehicle that takes you forward. 

I don’t think it’s easy to become even a level three or four leader for most of us. 

It’s much easier for us to default back to the ‘positional’ style. 

I grew up in a world where a lot of the leadership was directive in nature. You know, “do this.” The ‘why’ conversation really didn’t take place. We didn’t talk about intent very often, or at least not as often as we needed to in terms of the ‘why.’ 

I think it’s important now, as leaders in our journey, to establish who we are and what we represent, to be the best we can be, to establish the ‘why’ when we’re communicating with people. 

I don’t think we can be directive leaders in the way ahead. I think we have to create more of a culture of commitment in our organizations where we strive to achieve the level of ‘personhood’ that John C. Maxwell talks about. 

And we work very diligently to serve others as leaders and enable them to grow, to become better leaders than we are. 

But it’s a very deliberate effort. This is not something you can do for a day or a week or a month. 

It’s a journey. And it’s without a destination because I don’t think we’ll ever get to the ‘summit’ of leadership. We’ll never be the ultimate leader. 

But I think we can be a heck of a lot better leaders than we would be if we just kind of rolled with it, if we stayed in the day-to-day, if we just did as we were told and told other people to do and didn’t help develop them and nurture them as leaders. Because, first of all, we weren’t really leading ourselves very well. So how can we lead them? 

And what we’ve been talking about so far today is leading yourself, seeing yourself as others see you and in a realistic way, how you think you are in your five levels of leadership where you are now, level two, level three, why you’re there, what you aspire to be in terms of writing your mission statement and your personal leadership philosophy and then translating that into a personal action plan as a leader where you’re going to stay with it. You’re going to have the persistence to grow. You’re going to be sometimes when you take your lumps. 

And this is not a linear progression, by the way. You’re simply not just going to go from level one to two to three to four to five. There’ll be times that you change positions or your environment changes, personal or professional, where you may move up to level three and then come back to level two for a while. 

You can’t expect that everything will be a cause and effect journey that goes linearly. 

It’s more like actual mountain climbers do where they sometimes go sideways for a while, sometimes come back down and then, you know, incrementally and through learning, find their way closer to the summit. In our leadership journey, as I said, I don’t think we’ll ever get there. 

So as you look at yourself and what you want to be when you grow up in your legacy, you know, today is the first day of the rest of your life. So take advantage of the opportunity. Sit down and think about what do I want to be? 

What is my mission statement? How am I going to bring the Big Six to life to help enable me in my journey? (And I’m going to use it to enable others. But we’ll get to that in further conversations.) 

But going back to review them, think about what those big six principles are.

First, set the azimuth. 

Second, listen.

Third, trust and empower.

Four, do the right thing when no one’s looking. 

Five, when in charge, take charge. 

And six, balance the personal and professional. 

As we go forward in our discussions, we’re going to work and hone in on each of those six principles to dive deeper into what they mean and what practical tools you can bring to bear to use them yourself in your own journey and, perhaps more importantly, bring them to life in others so that they become truly better than you because they are master practitioners of those big six principles and those enablers. 

And they understand inside all of it, at the core of the big six, are the values that we hold dear. Having the right values. It’s a privilege to lead, not a right. 

And those of us that have been privileged to lead should never take it for granted. We should always seek to develop others in the course of our journey so that they truly do grow. And in that context, I think we will grow too. 

Growth is a wonderful feeling. And when you see it in others and feel it in yourself, it’s probably one of the most rewarding emotions I think we can have as leaders. 

So what happens next for us?  

Well, I say in our Level 5 podcast, you’re going to see that we’ll home in on one of the Big Six on a regular basis to give you some tools for your toolbox. 

We will have some interviews with prominent business leaders in various communities to ask them about their journey, how they have employed some of the Big Six tools to enable them to grow and particularly to grow others. I think that’ll be helpful to you as you build your leadership toolkit. 

I’d encourage you to start today on developing your mission statement. The initial elements of your personal leadership philosophy. Share those with some others and then start that assessment process of asking others where they think you are in those five levels that I mentioned from John C. Maxwell. Not only those are direct reports, but some of your colleagues. 

Remember that the five levels are positional, permissional, production, people development, and personhood. 

On our website, we publish a blog every other week where I talk about some of these topics, usually in a one-page or two-minute video format. 

But I’d encourage you as you build your leadership library and you start this personal journey in a more intensified way… do some research and think about some of the principles and techniques we’ve talked about thus far today and see how you can bring them to life in yourself and in your organization.  

We’ll continue going in the future so that you’ll have a chance to reflect, to implement some of the tools as you build out your toolbox. And I think you’ll find that there’s a real opportunity here, as I mentioned, to bring to your leadership team a new level of energy and opportunity as you grow and they grow. And I certainly look forward to our work together. 

Thanks very much.

Enjoy the journey!   

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