The First Two Rules of Leadership

Winning with Class

Leadership is demanding. If you want to lead a great team, you have to be great. If you want great, long-term leadership success you have to win with great class.

The good news is that the rewards for being a great, rather than average, leader are heavily skewed. People want to work for the best, buy from the best, and deal with the best in almost every situation in our society. The best-selling books sell millions more copies than average books. The best movies generate millions more dollars than 50 average movies. Likewise, the rewards for being a great leader are enormous. People flock to winners.

To become great—or continue to be great—you will need more knowledge than you have right now. Someone once advised me that, “The more you learn, the more you earn.” At the time, I probably discounted it as an attempt to be clever. But over the years, I've found that was great wisdom.

I have also discovered that learning is contagious. The more I learned, the more people around me wanted to learn. My team's professional growth was a direct correlation to my professional growth.

The joy of leadership is in the gift of knowledge that you give, not in what you receive in return. The purpose of giving is not to receive back in full measure. If you give solely with the expectation of receiving something in return, you are really not giving—you're swapping. If you receive something in return of your gift, what you receive is a bonus—not a repayment of debt.

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