The Five Levels Of Leadership - Level 3: Production

Written By Admin Thursday, February 2, 2023 Add Comment Edit

Image: pexels.com/andrea-piacquadio

Receive a position and develop permission with little or no innate leadership ability. It’s a fact that if you care about people and are willing to learn how to work with them, you can start to gain influence.

But that influence will only go so far. To really get things going, you need to win the Production level. On Level 3, people get things done. And they help the members of their team get things done.

Together they produce results. That’s when good things really begin to happen for the organization. Productivity goes up. People reach goals. Profit increases. Morale becomes high.

Turnover becomes low. Team loyalty increases. Organizations with leaders who are effective in leading on the first three levels of leadership become highly successful. They start winning.

And when they do, they start to benefit from what I call “the Big Mo” - momentum. They grow. They solve problems more easily. Winning becomes normal. Leading becomes easier. Following becomes more fun.

The work environment becomes high-energy. Be aware that most people naturally gravitate to either the Permission or the Production level of leadership, based on whether they tend to be relationship people or results people.

If people naturally build relationships, they may enjoy getting together, but they do it with the sole objective of being together and enjoying one another.

If you’ve ever worked in an environment where meetings are pleasant and everyone gets along-but nothing gets accomplished-then you may have worked with someone who gets Level 2 but not Level 3.

(And if you’ve worked where meetings are productive but relationally miserable, you may have worked with someone who gets Level 3 but not Level 2!)

However, as a leader, if you can add results to relationships and develop a team of people who like each other and get things done, you have created a powerful combination.

When you lead a productive team of people who like working together, you give others a reason to want to work with you, to follow you.

For example, if you and a friend were picking players for a basketball game, and you could choose between me and LeBron James, it’s clear who you’d pick:

The guy who wins championships, not the guy who played basketball in high school more than fifty years ago! You want the guy who can produce and inspire his teammates to produce right along with him.