Vishen Lakhiani argues that the strongest definition of leadership is helping others grow. He contrasts traditional notions of leadership (power, orchestration, intelligence) with a Mindvalley credo: leaders remind people they are as capable as the leader and help them develop. He cites Dwight Eisenhower’s quote about motivating people and Google’s Project Oxygen, which found coaching as a top trait of effective managers. The video closes by promoting a Mindvalley masterclass on coaching featuring Ajit Nawalka (founder of EverCoach).
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What is a leader to you? Is a leader someone who represents power is a leader. Someone who represents empathy is a leader. Someone who is intelligent is a leader. Someone who is like an orchestra conductor, someone who can coordinate things is a leader. Someone who protects you? All of us have a different definition of leader, but this definition is really important because everyone, to some degree, it's part of human nature, aspires to lead, to be seen as a leader. No matter where you are in your job. You know that as you move up the career ladder, as you gain in leadership, your career goes up, your power goes up, your significance goes up. All of us aspire to climb up the ladder towards greater and greater and greater movement towards being the ultimate leader we can be. But it is our definition of a leader that gets us tripped up. Because our religion, our media, our. Our culture, the left and right divide all cloud our mind on what a leader is. But what if I told you that there is one definition of a leader that seems to come up over and over and over and over again as one of the most powerful definitions? This is what we're going to talk about in this video. So when I was young, this is the quote on leadership that most resonated with me, and it came from the American president, Dwight Eisenhower. Now, I'm not that old. I wasn't growing up during the Eisenhower era. I read this quote, I don't know, in some book, I guess, but I was student council president. And this was the quote that I had stuck on my wall representing leadership. And it said this. A leader is someone who gets people to do things he wants done because they want to do it. And I thought, wow, what an amazing quote. A leader is someone who decides what gets to get done, and then he's able to persuade to move people to do exactly what he wants. Now, as I got older, as I started Mindvalley, I began to sort of evolve in different styles of leadership. But there was one that seemed to work best, and that was this. A leader is someone who helps other people grow. Now, as I started building up my business mindvalley, I started experimenting with different styles of leadership, and there was one that got me the best results. And this is what we call the mindvalley leadership credo. And this is what it says. Leadership is recognizing that everyone you lead is as brilliant as you, as great as you, and capable of the same impact. Your job is simply to remind them of this fact and help them grow. That's it. So I've used different phrasings of that to train my leaders in Mindvalley over the last decade or so and it's helped us build a company that has been able to attract so many much talent. And the number one thing that these people say is that they join mindvalley because they grow. So what if this is a clue on the next level of where leadership is going? Now, my personal opinion is just a personal opinion. But what happened was a few years later, Google did a study on its best managers and the results of this study were fascinating. Google came up with a list of the qualities of all its top managers. It was called Project Oxygen. And there was one quality that went all the way to the top and that was coaching. Google's best managers had the ability to coach other people on their team to rise up. Doesn't that remind you of that mindvalley management credo I mentioned earlier? Leadership is helping people grow. So what the Google studies suggest is that the best leaders are the best coaches. The best leaders help people grow. This is the topic we're going to be exploring this week on mindvalley is all about leadership as an act of helping other people grow. Join us on this special masterclass on coaching. And my special guest is Ajit Nawalka. He is the founder of EverCoach Mindvalley's coaching division. EverCoach is building one of the best coach training companies in the world and they provide incredible resources to coaches in every aspect of coaching. And in this masterclass, Arjun and I are going to teach you how to take all of the ideas you are learning in personal growth, everything that you've been covering, whether as a MindValley All Access member or as a MindValley subscriber, and how to take that channel that become a coach to the people in your team and in your company and help other people grow. And when you do that, you become the ultimate leader. So join us in this masterclass. Click on the link in bio or the link below this video and I'll see you there.
