Indepent Leaders vs Dependent Team Member

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for joining my blog. Just a brief bio prior to discussing today’s subject matter. I am happily married to my best friend, Corrine, and we have four wonderful adult children. At the time of this initial blog we are expecting our 8^th Grand Baby. Most importantly, I am a Christian and believe in the concept of ‘Servant Leadership’. As a senior Police Officer with the 3^rd largest Police Service in Canada I have demonstrated my belief in ‘Servant Leadership’ through ‘Leading by Example’. I am a National recognized subject matter lecturer on specialized investigative strategies and was a regular presenter at the Canadian Police College in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.

Currently, I am pursuing another career that will evidentially allow me the opportunity to leave policing and pursue my dream of “Making a Living – Living”. I am a firm believer in the business concept of Network Marketing, which I will speak upon in future blogs. However, today’s subject matter will focus on the importance of ‘Developing Independent Leaders Not Dependent Team Members’, I had a ‘chit chat’ with a friend who is quite knowledgeable in MLM. We spoke about some of the reasons we are involved in MLM. We agreed that making money is important but it is not the main focus of doing this business. I believe the main focus is creating more time and freedom. However, since being involved in an MLM business it appears to me that things haven’t changed. To some degree our time is being taken by team members who unknowingly are not respecting our time. From my personal perspective I will assume some of the blame since I have not properly established certain ‘ground rules’. Case in point – I have had team members contact me regarding certain challenges they are experiencing having an expectation that I would deal with their issues. I now realize that I did not establish expectations whereupon the onus is on them to become self-sufficient. From a personal perspective I took the initiative to learn about this ‘business’ via research (videos, books, listening to tapes), attending national and regional training events, exploring my websites, getting to know the products etc. Being a “Yellow-Red” personality I have done an injustice with my team since I have not been teaching others to become self-sufficient. I have not created Independent Leaders but Dependent Team Members. Thus, it is my goal to inspire rather than motivate. Inspire is ‘Leading by Example’ such as actively recruiting, publicly recognizing people’s achievements, participating in weekly Team Calls, scheduling weekly Business Opportunity Presentations, attending Regional and National Events. Through inspiration the ‘Natural Leaders’ will rise above the rest. We have to remember not everyone will share in our vision of creating a full-time career with this business concept. We have to respect the fact many people just want to be a part of something special – creating a sense of family for them – being around positive people while attaining personal growth.