Adam Sand, CEO of a roofing business partner, breaks down John Maxwell's five levels of leadership and how to move from being a boss to developing leaders who develop other leaders. The framework shows how to scale a roofing business by building leadership capacity at each level.
There are five levels of leadership and most people get stuck at the very first one. Because holding a title doesn't automatically mean you're leading. I'm Adam San, CEO of the roofing business partner. In this video, we're breaking down the real path from being the boss to becoming the kind of leader who builds other leaders and why mastering this is the only way to scale your roofing business past $8 million and beyond.
So the five levels leadership start with position as a position based leader sums up to you're the CEO or you're the manager, you're the sales manager, you're the production manager. You have the position. So, so therefore you are given that level of respect. You're the boss. Therefore I have to listen to you. You told me to jump, I have to jump. That's the lowest level of leadership that you can have. This is why leadership is not a reward, it's a responsibility. The people who look at leadership as a reward, like, oh, I got promoted to this position and therefore now I'm rewarded. You'll only ever get to position leadership if that's the way you're thinking. The second level is permission. This is where you start to understand the personal, professional and financial goals of your team. So it's hard to get them to share those things with you. There's a certain amount of leadership and TR that you have to earn from your people for them to actually share their goals. Because it's always going to be the same surface level stuff. Lose 20 pounds, go on vacation, earn more money, buy a house, get a new car, you know, get promoted, do what I have to do to get promoted. You know, like they'll, they'll feed you the things that they think you want to hear, not the stuff that they actually want to do. But if you can actually get them to share their personal, professional, financial goals and you can align them with the needs of the business such that they can achieve them at a rate that excites them. And they know that that's the hardest thing about leadership is you don't get to determine what which level you're at. Other people determine what level you're at. Just because you got to permission level with somebody doesn't mean that everybody gives you permission to lead them. A person who starts tomorrow, right, you're just a position level with them at that point and then you have to earn the permission to lead them. This is why you have to build core leadership at around 8 to 15 million. Because at 8 million it becomes very difficult to actually earn the right to get permission to lead people. When you start to get that many people, this is why you have to start installing some core leadership in the business. People who go from ME leadership to WE leadership, such that they're now helping others achieve their personal, professional, financial goals at a rate that excites them by aligning with the needs of the business. But when you get permission to lead the people, you have a chance to get to level three, which is production. And again, you don't get to define this. Other people do, which is where people find that they produce more at whatever their job is. If it's sales, if it's writing blog posts, if it's doing a great job at being a site supervisor, it doesn't matter what it is, but they produce more as a result of your leadership. People development is when you teach others to be as good of a leader as you learn. A lot of leaders are afraid to do that because they don't want someone else to ever potentially replace them. Like, they don't want the next person above them. So there's people in the middle that sometimes don't want to develop other leaders. You, as an owner, probably don't find this to be the problem. You're not really worried about getting replaced. You might be worried about people being willing to leave. And this is where Richard Branson says people worry about, what if we train people so well that they leave? And he says, what if we don't train people enough and they stay? There's a seed of that that you might have, which is like, you don't want to show people the secret sauce because you're afraid they might leave. But great leaders develop other leaders. They build people up to be as good as. That's what it looks like, right? As you develop other leaders in your business, this is really what you got to be getting ready for. Around 6, 7 million is, you know that around 8, when you get to, like, consistent $8 million run rate over a period of time, you're going to have to start installing core leadership to hold that. And core leadership means that you have to be developing other leaders. That's you have to be ready for. And the fifth one is the pinnacle of leadership. And this one can take you all the way to becoming president. The pinnacle of leadership is when you can train leaders that build more leaders. So you can basically be a person who trains level fours. And so you can check the box that we've learned something about leaders.
