CHAPTER 1
It's All on You

On the lovely island of Maui, with tall palm trees swaying in the breeze, I lounged poolside, working on my tan while my teammates engaged in a fierce water polo match. (And yes, literally drinking out of a coconut.) It was an incentive trip for top leaders to celebrate and reward us for another stellar year of performance. I was serenely reading a book when Jeremiah, one of the company VPs, interrupted my bliss with the news.

He relayed that he had just received a call telling him that my then-sponsor was about to jump to another company. At that very moment my sponsor-whom the company had flown to the island first class and lavished with swag, perks, excursions, and an oceanfront suite-was in that very oceanfront suite, dialing for dollars to take people to his next deal. And planning to tell me the following day.

I gazed at Jeremiah thoughtfully for a very long time. Then, sighing heavily, I said, "You know, some days I hate this goddamned job."

I had every right to feel appalled, disappointed, and betrayed. It would have been easy for me to slip into martyr mode and seek commiseration for the injustice inflicted upon me. But here's the reality.

The Person Most Responsible for This Turn of Events was Me

Because I had failed in my job as a leader to protect my people and create a safe environment for them. I had initially embraced this man and sponsored under him because I chose to believe that he had become the new person he assured me he was, not the person reflected by the track record he had of moving from company to company over the years.

But Here's Where I Had Really Fallen Down

I had edified my sponsor, shared the platform with him, and facilitated his face being seen as a leader of our organization and company. By doing this, I had placed my team in a position of vulnerability. I had created a system and a culture that presented this person as a credible component of our support structure and a powerful resource for building their business.

Now team members would wake up the next day to discover that someone they had perceived as an asset had essentially become a threat. (Please don't read this as my suggesting my sponsor was an evil, diabolical villain, looking to attack and hurt others; he wasn't. He had simply made a decision he believed offered the best choice for his future success and security. One that now conflicted with the status to which I had played a part in elevating him.)

The whole sad scenario was no one's fault but my own. Years earlier I had made an expedient choice without thinking about the long-term potential consequences, and now the bill was coming due.

How Behavior Is Changed

Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises is acknowledged as one of the leaders in praxeology, the study of human action. (And what could possibly be more relevant to leadership in our profession than the study of why humans act as they do?) Herr von Mises developed the concept that getting humans to make a change in behavior requires three steps:

1. They are dissatisfied with their current state.
2. They have a vision of a better state.
3. They can see a path to get there.

As a leader in Leveraged Sales, you must understand these three steps with every fiber of your being. The key step is your ability to show you know the right path to get people where they want to go.

Here's the Hardest Part.

Applying the lesson to yourself. Meaning, instead of waiting for someone else to lead, you choose yourself to lead. Recognizing that you don't like your current state, visualizing what your ideal state would be, and then mapping out a path to get there. Which is another way of stating that leading others always begins with leading yourself.

Another Example of Poor Decision-Making and Leadership on My Part

Since I'm in confession mode, let me share another story. A year or two before that Hawaiian holiday, one of my top leaders left to try his luck with another company. The reason he left is that he felt like he was a failure. He couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong and thought maybe a change of scenery or sponsor would help him discover what he was missing.

Here's the Thing

He had a large, growing team and was earning more than $50,000 a month. Yet he felt he wasn't measuring up. Why? Because I was earning about $120,000 a month and that's the standard he was using to measure his own success.

Once again, it would have been easy for me to slip into victim mode and lament as to why he would leave me. But there's no doubt in my mind that I lost him because I wasn't a strong enough leader. It's apparent that I had created a culture where someone earning 50K a month didn't feel recognized, valued, or successful.

That's totally on me. And when these kinds of dramatic developments happen in your organization- the good ones and the bad ones-they are totally on you.

Own the Problem

This is the stunning truth about leadership: Whatever the problem is, it is always your problem, even when the situation is not your fault nor created by you. As a leader, you have to be the first and last line of defense for your team, protecting them from anything that will distract, weaken, or harm them. That doesn't mean this is fair, because often it's not. But that's why we get the big bucks. If you're not willing to work through this reality, then leadership in Leveraged Sales is certainly not for you.

Think of your role this way: You must be the buffer between your team and everyone and everything that comes between them and their potential success.

Your team has the ability to rise to strong levels of resilience, tenacity, and effort. But these traits will only be made manifest if the team is led in the proper manner.

Five Frequent Mistakes

Here are five of the most frequent mistakes I see being made in leadership strategy when leaders face a DEFCON 1 scenario:

1) Let's Pretend This Isn't Happening

This is simply a case of wishful, delusional thinking. The premise of this line of thought (delusion) is that maybe the field won't realize something bad is going down. Something horrible happens, whether it's a scandal with the CEO or a logistical breakdown, and the leadership thinks that if they don't talk about it, no one will notice.

I flew on the Concorde a couple times, traveling Mach 2.2, and I can assure you that it didn't travel as fast as gossip does in your organization. The very bleak news you're hoping many people don't know about has probably already been shared on Instagram 459 times. (Or soon will be.) And when you don't acknowledge this problem reality, people get very suspicious, very quickly. The result becomes the team believing you don't have sufficient intelligence and awareness to understand what really goes on. Not a very inspiring way to lead a team.

2) Let's Keep This a Secret

This is an even worse alternative to mistake number one. There's a cliché in politics that was coined during the Watergate scandal: the coverup is worse than the crime. And it is just as appropriate in Leveraged Sales.

Why this mistake is even worse than mistake number one is because now duplicity is apparent. Secrets always get out. And the fact that you knew about this secret and tried to cover it up is extremely damaging, because most likely you lose credibility with your team and they no longer trust you. This is one of the quickest ways to kill team morale and forward momentum. (Or even kill a team.)

3) Let's Launch a "Distract Attack"

They say the best defense is a good offense. And sometimes that's true. And a lot of the time it's not. This is an old ruse long used by governments. Companies frequently attempt to employ this technique as well. Example: Sales are tanking, recruiting is dying, and a large number of distributors are quitting. Instead of identifying the cause and working to correct it, the company starts a campaign to attack a competitor company, hoping to distract the field from the issues at hand. Distractions work temporarily, but when focus returns to the real issues, you'll be worse off than when you started.

4) Let's Rewrite History

Here's a frequent scenario I've seen played out. Joel is a high-level leader with the company. He's edified by both the team and the company, serves on committees or councils, and is featured prominently at events and online broadcasts. Then Joel decides to leave and join another company. Suddenly the story turns to, "Well, we didn't really want to say anything, but Joel is actually a womanizing bank robber who was caught stealing money from the Pope."

Trying to demonize and discredit someone after the fact always backfires on you. Because team members rightfully think, "If he really was such an evil person, why were they edifying him when it was convenient for them?"

5) Let's Spin This as a Victory

The craziest example of this I've seen was a...