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Chapter One

the three essentials

my friend, being the obsessive mother that she is, asked me for a favor. She and her husband have two boys, who at the time were nineteen and twenty-one, and at that point in life where they were staring adulthood right in the face. I think she wanted to make sure that it was not they who blinked, so she asked me to perform that kind of end-around move whereby you parent your kids secretly through someone else without their knowing what hit them.

We were having dinner one night when she said, "Would you take the boys out for lunch and talk to them about success? They have been asking a lot of questions about how some people become so successful, and how they make it 'big.' I thought you could help give them some guidance while they were in the asking mode."

"Hmm," I said, "probably not. That's really not my field, success. I don't know much about it, so I wouldn't really know what to say. Why don't you call Zig Ziglar?" I was thinking about all of that literature with principles of success, how to make it big, how to reach the top, etc., and that was just not an area where I spent a lot of time. So, I politely declined, hoping a little humor would get her off this track.

"Oh, come on," she protested. "They are twenty years old. You know enough to give them some things to think about. You have done a lot of things and worked with a lot of successful people. How hard can this be? Just take them out and tell them something. It doesn't have to be that perfect, just give them some things to think about. Push them a little in the right direction."

Feeling that I had been a little dismissive of the idea, I relented. "OK, I'll take them out and tell them something."

"Great! What will you tell them?" she immediately asked.

"I don't know. I'll have to think about it and come up with something."

"Yeah, but what do you think that will be?"

"I don't know," I repeated. "I'll think about it and give them something that will at least get them thinking."

"Yeah, but when you do think about it, what do you think it will be?"

I could see that this was a mother on a mission, and I was not getting off the hook. So, I thought for a moment about some really successful people that I know or have worked with and, off the top of my head, gave her an instant formulation for becoming a successful person or leader, while trying to remain true to my area of expertise as she was trying to morph me into a motivational speaker.

"OK, here is what I will tell them," I said. "People who become leaders, or really successful, tend to have three qualities. Number one, they have some set of competencies. In other words, they know their field, their industry, their discipline, or whatever. If you are Bill Gates, it helps to know something about the computer industry. If you are going to be a leading surgeon, you have to know what you are doing. In other words, you can only fake it for so long, boys. So, get yourself in the library or wherever and master your craft. Get good at what you do. A CEO has mastered a set of competencies in the same way. You just have to get good at what you do, period. There are no shortcuts.

"But," I continued in my miniseminar, "there are a lot of people who are competent and good at what they do who don't get to be leaders or 'hugely' successful. They do a good job, are happy and fulfilled, but they are not the ones that are catching your boys' attention. For someone to get to the level of accomplishment that they are asking about, he or she must possess the second ability. They have to be what I would call an alliance builder. In other words, they have to take their competencies and what they do well and build alliances with others who have competencies and resources and form relationships that are mutually beneficial. As a result, they leverage what they do well to much greater heights than just being 'good' at their job. They create alliances that make things a lot bigger. They forge relationships and partnerships with people like investors, regulators, distribution channels, their boards, city governments, Wall Street, or whoever it is that has the capacity to make what they are doing bigger.

"Even within a company, they have to form alliances with other parts of the company to be successful and move their agenda forward. Otherwise, they are just moving their little piece. There is nothing wrong with that, but again, people who make their 'piece' bigger always multiply it with things outside of themselves. They have to learn to build these alliances if they are going to be 'successful' in the way that they are talking about. If a person who leads sales can forge an alliance with the production group, he can get what he needs on time to satisfy the market. And, the production group can feel like their interests are met at the same time. Alliance building is key to success and leadership. It is more than 'networking,' which is often just a synonym for leeching. Alliances are about creating leverage to take what you do to a multiple.

"Now, having said that, let's get to the real issue that I would want to talk to them about. I would tell them that the people who possess the first two abilities are a dime a dozen. There is no shortage of talented, brainy people who are very, very good at what they do and are able to work the system and schmooze other people to get things done. . . .

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Excerpted from Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality by Henry Cloud, H. Cloud
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.