Are You Willing to Pay the Price, Again?

Through the last several blogs, we’ve taken a look at some of the things we need to be prepared to do as leaders in order to develop and empower our team members to reach their full potential and help us carry the load as our organizations grow. That requires a significant degree of trust, confidence, patience, and investment on our part. Before I share something with you that John Maxwell and Mark Cole challenged me to consider recently, there’s one quick thing I’d like to call your attention to…

On Friday, October 9, we get to host the first ever live, virtual LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg experience! In addition to the world class content from John, Steve Harvey, Kat Cole, Alan Mulally, and Craig Groeschel, there’s a TON of bonuses. This includes a full 72 hours to access the 2020 content, access to content from all of the 2019 Live2Lead speakers, a lesson that Cindy and I are building just for this year’s event, and complimentary access to one of our new digital courses call Build a Reputation as a Servant Leader! And all of this is available for just $79 per person!!! Holy cow!

Now, what did John and Mark challenge me on?

Consider this… Each of us, regardless of our current title or tenure, have clearly invested a tremendous amount of our lives - our time, our energy, and our finances - to get to where we are today. As leaders, we’ve worked stinking hard to earn the influence with the folks who depend on us and follow us.

I can’t imagine anyone reading these words and not nodding in agreement. And if, by chance, someone does stumble onto this and just doesn’t relate to that I can only guess they’re not doing much leading…

In a lesson John and Mark did together for the small, select group of folks around the world who have made the necessary investment of time, energy, and money to become Executive Directors with The John Maxwell Team, they acknowledged the price we all paid to develop ourselves to that point. Then they punched us in the nose! Well, not literally - but certainly figuratively! They asked, “Are you willing to pay that price AGAIN?”

Mark shared how he sees John, at 73 years old, continue to pay the price of growing and developing himself so he can continue to be valuable to everyone he reaches. Mark went on to explain how watching John pay such a price inspires him to invest in continually developing himself - especially now that he’s purchased a large stake in all of John’s businesses and is charged with carrying that torch moving forward.

In complete transparency, there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind taking a break now and then. But when I hear two of my mentors share how they’re continuing to invest in themselves, I realize how much more room I have to grow…

Let’s put that investment in ourselves aside now though. Here’s my challenge for you… The last few blogs have dug into steps we can take to invest in developing those ever-so-critical soft skills in our team members. There’s often a desire to do it just once and call it done. There are also times where we invest in someone and they jump ship. And there’s never an ideal time for any of those investments into training and development; there’s always something else that some time, energy, and money could be used for…

But reflecting on the number we looked at in the last blog regarding the tangible impact that intentional development can have, are YOU willing to pay the price AGAIN?

In The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John shared this about the power of growing ourselves: “The sooner you make the transition to becoming intentional about your personal growth, the better it will be for you, because growth compounds and accelerates IF you remain intentional about it.” That statement applies just as much to growing our team members! When a stock guarantees us compounding interest, we jump at the opportunity to invest. Should we treat developing our team members any differently?