Are You Looking For Leaders or Followers For Your Network Marketing Business?

I had some interesting comments on a thread on Facebook which inspired me to blog about this today.

I put the question out there, ‘what’s the biggest challenge in your business,’ and someone commented that it is finding people that possess leadership qualities.

That got me to thinking to when I started out in the business. Was I already a leader?

Surely if leaders are born then that must be the case. Hmmm well I had lots of jobs and always did quite well in them.

I was promoted to roles such as ‘Supervisor,’ so I suppose that makes for some leadership qualities but and this is a big BUT, there were quite a few supervisor types I’ve met along the way who just followed the company system but would never dream of starting up their own company.

They weren’t showing much in the way of leadership skills. To be a good Supervisor you need to be able to get on with people and to be able to take a little heat when things go wrong.

So is that leadership then? I’m not sure. It sounds more like being a good employee to me. What do you think?

In Network Marketing we talk a lot about leaders. ‘Looking for leaders,’ is the way we often approach our prospecting.

The thing is this. To be successful in Network Marketing you need to follow the ‘system.’ This means that even if you have amazing leadership skills you need to use them to inspire your people to follow a system that is already in place.

Let’s say you find a leader. He or she has huge influence and effortlessly enrols people into the organisation. If they are a typical leader the chances are that they will start to question everything immediately! With leadership often comes big ego.

Now you have a leader but also a headache. Lots of leaders don’t want to follow other people’s systems. They want to make their own.

Now if they are highly intelligent and have the skills to do so then they will learn the business and create their own system (which to be successful will anyway need to closely resemble the systems already working in the business!)

If they don’t take time to learn the business and try to create their own system then they will probably fail and say ‘this doesn’t work.’

So it seems to me that unless we’re talking about someone who already has a record of success in the business, we’re probably better to focus on prospecting people who have good people skills and have a desire to be independent but are willing to learn the system.

So don’t despair if you don’t know loads of ‘leaders,’ yet. As you become one you will attract more of them. It’s just the way it is. In the meantime focus on people who are ready to make a change and have some good energy and enthusiasm about them. In this business you also need to be a good follower and when you start you have no one to lead but yourself anyway!

Next time we’ll talk about why following a system is a must and why being a creative entrepreneur is not enough to be successful in Network Marketing no matter what you might be reading on the internet!

Check in with your comments below and let me know what you think.

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