The 5 Levels of Business Leadership
There may be many different leadership theories that business professionals support, but many rely on the “5 Levels of Leadership” outlined by John Maxwell to list the steps one can take to become an excellent leader. Every successive level builds on the previous one, so the person climbing the five levels can work toward more advanced leadership strategies as they gain experience. If you are interested in becoming a leader in your field, the following five levels of business leadership can help you achieve the success you desire.
Position
In the first stage of business leadership, you achieve your status by being given authority within your company. When appointed to a role, you exercise authority more through enforcing rules and regulations than through your personal influence. Learning to embody the key leadership qualities and maintaining a professional attitude is integral to developing within this stage.
Permission
At this level, leaders become more influential by creating and maintaining positive relationships. Leaders at this stage gain permission to lead others who willingly decide to follow them. When you build relationships as a leader, you anticipate the needs of others and listen to their opinions and concerns. When you can show team members you care about their success, you simultaneously build trust in your leadership capabilities.
Production
As leaders grow relationships within their position of authority, they start focusing on getting results. The production level of business leadership focuses on inspiring others to do great work. When you do this, you can increase your business team’s productivity and maximize employee output success. The responsibilities at this stage include overcoming challenges and encouraging others to solve problems that keep everyone moving toward greater success.
People Development
At this next level of leadership, you can start advancing your abilities by raising up other leaders after you through mentoring, encouragement, and delegation. You can mentor future leaders through purposeful and consistent relationship building. Developing others into leaders requires you to take time to guide them and assign tasks that help them develop their skills. At this stage, you may start gaining lifelong professional connections as you help others grow and reach their fullest potential.
Pinnacle
Pinnacle-level business leaders reach this top status by consistently building relationships and training future leaders. They can inspire productivity in others and improve their organizations by guiding others to excellent work. Pinnacle leaders embody qualities like determination, integrity, ingenuity, and encouragement. They grow beyond their company and industry as thought leaders who can inspire others regardless of their specific role.
As a pinnacle leader, you contain all lessons learned during the previous levels of business leadership. You can inspire others to produce excellent work, develop their leadership skills, and build lifelong professional connections.
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