• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

Young leaders sometimes do not know where to start in developing their leadership skills. Too often, though, they do not have enough skills to seize the leadership opportunities that come their way.

At times, young people need to be pushed, even forced into leadership positions in order to develop their skills. When they are “forced” to solve problems and look for ways to implement plans and achieve goals, young leaders can discover their potential for leadership!

According to John Maxwell, there are five levels of leadership. The 1^st level is Position; the 2^nd is Permission; 3^rd Production; followed by People Development and Pinnacle. These levels of leadership are illustrated below.

Position. This is the most basic level of leadership. In this level, titles and hierarchies matter a lot. People will follow you because you occupy a position and they feel that they have no choice but to follow you. They may not necessarily want to follow you but they have to. They may disagree with what you want to do, but they still have to follow you. In this level of leadership, you do not have much leverage on your followers—they are simply that—followers.

Permission. When you establish good working relationships, people will want to follow you because they want to. You have rapport. You do things together. They love being with you and following you. In this level of leadership, charisma is the driving factor of the leader. This type of leadership may be easily found among groups of friends and family.

Production. If you are a performer and deliver results, then people will know that you are not just dallying around. You are serious about what you do and what you can give to the organization. And if you have consistently proven your mettle as a leader in the organization, then people will follow you, even revere you, because of what you have done for the organization. In the case of Lee Iacocca, he managed to turn Chrysler around when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. For that reason, employees were willing to follow his lead until his retirement.

People Development. From a focus on results in the organization, a leader on this level invests on people and helps them develop themselves while furthering the interests of the organization. People follow the leader then because of what the leader has done for them. While on the surface, this may seem that people only want to follow a leader who can give them their whims and wants.

Pinnacle. When people recognize a leader’s identity and what he stands for, then it means that the leader is on the pinnacle of his career. They recognize the leader as somebody who embodies principles and values. It means that the organizational values have been aligned with that of the leader’s and that of the followers and optimum results can be achieved without compromising any aspect of the organization and the relationships of the leader and the followers.

While I sometimes feel that John Maxwell repeats himself too often in his books. Sometimes, the concepts of leadership he espouses appear repeatedly in his books. In the case of the five levels of leadership, though, he has developed them further and they would be presented in a book, which will be released on the Fall of 2011. I want to read the book further and find ways for young people to use the principles in the book.

Related posts:

1. Leadership Styles and Leadership Theories for Young People
2. How John Wood Left Microsoft to Change the World