The Success Journey

A leader is often thought of as a successful person. Losers cannot lead people. People find it hard to define success. But if you don’t know what success is, how will you achieve it? That’s why we want to help you identify a definition of success that will work for you: Success is a journey. When you see success as a journey, you’ll never find yourself in a position where you have accomplished some final goal, only to discover that you’ll still unfulfilled and searching for something to do.

1.      The journey is more fun if you know where you’re going.

Success is…

knowing your purpose in life,

growing to reach your maximum potential, and

sowing seeds that benefit others.

Success is measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome trying to succeed.

Knowing Your Purpose

2.      Where would I like to go?

A blind man’s world is bounded by the limits of his touch; an ignorant man’s world by the limits of his knowledge; a great man’s world by the limits of his vision.

3.      How far can I go?

Your attitude – not intelligence, talent, education, technical ability, opportunity, or even hard work – is the main factor that determines whether you will live your dream.

4.      Where do I find the road map?

Goals draw out your sense of purpose.

50 percent of people don’t pay any attention to where they are going; 40 percent are undecided and will go in any direction. Only 10 percent know what they want, and even all of them don’t go toward it.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Growing to Your Maximum Potential

5.      What should I pack in my suitcase?

You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather is.

Irish proverb

In other words, nothing in your past guarantees that you will continue growing toward your potential in the future – not positions obtained, degrees earned, experience gained, awards received, or fortunes acquired. Planning your growth – and then following through on it – is the only thing that works.

6.      How do I handle detours?

Life is a one-way street. No matter how many detours you take, none of them leads you back.

7.      Are we there yet?

Competitive excellence requires 100 percent of all the time. If you doubt that, try maintaining excellence by setting your standards at 92 percent. Or even 95 percent. People figure they’re doing fine so long as they get somewhere near it. Excellence gets reduced to acceptable, and before long, acceptable doesn’t seem worth the sweat if you can get by with adequate. After that, mediocrity is only a breath away.

Sowing Seeds That Benefit Others

8.      Is it a family trip?

Few people have ever been truly successful without a positive, supportive family. No matter how great people’s accomplishments are. For most people, a good family helps to enjoy the journey along the way. And when it comes to sowing seeds that benefit others, who could possibly derive a greater benefit from you than your own family members?

9.      Who else should I take with me?

You will never be able to reach your maximum potential and go to the highest level if you take the journey alone. You need to attract other leaders. People who attract leaders influence many other people through their interaction. Their team can be incredible.

10.   What should we do along the way?

Like it or not, you can’t take everyone along with you on the success journey. As you begin to develop people, think of the journey as being similar to a trip in a small private plane. If you try to take too many people along, you’ll never get off the ground. Besides, your time is limited, and it makes more sense to help a few to fly and reach their potential rather than show a big group only enough to whet their appetites.

Even after teaching people to fly, providing them with fuel, and giving them permission to take the controls, some mentors don’t take the last step required to make their people successful. They don’t give them an unencumbered flight path.

After you’ve done everything you can to help your people, and they have taken off and are soaring, you may think you’re finished. But you’re not. There is still one more step you must take to complete the process. You have to help them learn to repeat the development process and teach others to fly. You see, there is no success without a successor. A great joy is to see how leaders you’ve developed and equipped have turned around and repeated the process with others. With each successive generation, the success continues.

By John C. Maxwell

Teamwork

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