those situations—drawing on your resilience, tenacity, and character to show your team you have the ability to lead them.
I wrote this book to guide you through the process of developing that resilience, tenacity, and character. And also to provide you with some background on the little-known, inside workings of our profession, the critical-thinking skills necessary to adapt to chaotic circumstances, and the wisdom to make right choices.
You’ll quickly notice I’m not starting the book with how you manage all the crisis, DEFCON 1 scenarios you are likely to face. Because the best way to handle an emergency is by preventing it from happening to begin with.
So the first chapters are about the principles you can follow, the culture you can create, and the behavior you can model that actually reduce the number of emergency situations requiring your leadership intervention. But of course, you’re still going to encounter some negative situations that are unpreventable. And the second part of this book will prepare you for resolving them in the best ways possible.
If you’re up for that, let’s get after it.
Randy Gage
—Miami Beach, Florida
February 2020
CHAPTER 1 It’s All on You
On the lovely island of Maui, with tall palm trees swaying in the breeze, I lounged poolside, working on my tan while my teammates engaged in a fierce water polo match. (And yes, literally drinking out of a coconut.) It was an incentive trip for top leaders to celebrate and reward us for another stellar year of performance. I was serenely reading a book when Jeremiah, one of the company VPs, interrupted my bliss with the news.
He relayed that he had just received a call telling him that my then-sponsor was about to jump to another company. At that very moment my sponsor—whom the company had flown to the island first class and lavished with swag, perks, excursions, and an oceanfront suite—was in that very oceanfront suite, dialing for dollars to take people to his next deal. And planning to tell me the following day.
I gazed at Jeremiah thoughtfully for a very long time. Then, sighing heavily, I said, “You know, some days I hate this goddamned job.”
I had every right to feel appalled, disappointed, and betrayed. It would have been easy for me to slip into martyr mode and seek commiseration for the injustice inflicted upon me. But here’s the reality…
The Person Most Responsible for This Turn of Events was Me
Because I had failed in my job as a leader to protect my people and create a safe environment for them. I had initially embraced this man and sponsored under him because I chose to believe that he had become the new person he assured me he was, not the person reflected by the track record he had of moving from company to company over the years.
But Here’s Where I Had Really Fallen Down
I had edified my sponsor, shared the platform with him, and facilitated his face being seen as a leader of our organization and company. By doing this, I had placed my team in a position of vulnerability. I had created a system and a culture that presented this person as a credible component of our support structure and a powerful resource for building their business.
Now team members would wake up the next day to discover that someone they had perceived as an asset had essentially become a threat. (Please don’t read this as my suggesting my sponsor was an evil, diabolical villain, looking to attack and hurt others; he wasn’t. He had simply made a decision he believed offered the best choice for his future success and security. One that now conflicted with the status to which I had played a part in elevating him.)
The whole sad scenario was no one’s fault but my own. Years earlier I had made an expedient choice without thinking about the long-term potential consequences, and now the bill was coming due.
How Behavior Is Changed
Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises is acknowledged as one of the leaders in praxeology, the study of human action. (And what could possibly be more relevant to leadership in our profession than the study of why humans act as they do?) Herr von Mises developed the concept that getting humans to make a change in behavior requires three steps:
1 They are dissatisfied with their current state.
2 They have a vision of a better state.
3 They can see a path to get there.
As a leader in Leveraged Sales, you must understand these three steps with every fiber of your being. The key step is your ability to show you know the right path to get people where they want to go.
Here’s the Hardest Part…
Applying the lesson to yourself. Meaning, instead of waiting for someone else to lead, you choose yourself to lead. Recognizing that you don’t like your current state, visualizing what your ideal state would be, and then mapping out a path to get there. Which is another way of stating that leading others always begins with leading yourself.
Another Example of Poor Decision-Making and Leadership on My Part
Since I’m in confession mode, let me share another story. A year or two before that Hawaiian holiday, one of my top leaders left to try his luck with another company. The reason he left is that he felt like he was a failure. He couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong and thought maybe a change of scenery or sponsor would help him discover what he was missing.
Here’s the Thing
He had a large, growing team and was earning more than $50,000 a month. Yet he felt he wasn’t measuring up. Why? Because I was earning about $120,000 a month and that’s the standard he was using to measure his own success.
Once again, it would have been easy for me to slip into victim mode and lament as to why he would leave me. But there’s no doubt in my mind that I lost him because I wasn’t a strong enough leader. It’s apparent that I had created a culture where someone earning 50K a month didn’t feel recognized, valued, or successful.
That’s totally on me. And when these kinds of dramatic developments happen in your organization— the good ones and the bad ones—they are totally on you.
Own the Problem
This is the stunning truth about leadership: Whatever the problem is, it is always your problem, even when the situation is not your fault nor created by you. As a leader, you have to be the first and last line of defense for your team, protecting them from anything that will distract, weaken, or harm them. That doesn’t mean this is fair, because often it’s not. But that’s why we get the big bucks. If you’re not willing to work through this reality, then leadership in Leveraged Sales is certainly not for you.
