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Empowering Others
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Empowering Others

Written by Frank Morgan www.xoomablog.com

just finished reading a great article from John Maxwell (www.JohnMaxwell.com) and wanted to share a few lines from the article:

“A leader is great not because of his or her power, but because of his ability to empower others. When our goal is to empower others, we work purposefully to add-value to their lives.”

Wow, this statement is so true... especially in our industry!

Adding value to another person’s life is ultimately what Xooma is all about. We add value to one’s physical life by sharing X2O water (not Zooma water) with them, and we can add value to someone’s financial life by sharing the Xooma business opportunity with them.

EVERYONE has their own greatness and sometimes we need to help each other dig down and find it within ourselves. I’ve found that the most effective way to add value to another person’s life is thru empowerment... letting that particular person unlock their OWN greatness (i.e. – pushing them out of the nest so they can spread their own wings and fly).

Conversely, the greatest disservice we can do for another person in this business is to create co-dependency by constantly doing things for them that they could do for themselves with a little struggle and effort. Our very best lessons come from struggle and applied effort.

I’m sure we can all look back over our lives to times when we learned our best lessons by struggling to accomplish certain activities. In the end, this struggle actually helped us.

In my life, one simple example would be how I learned to type. Back when I was in school I did not know how to type. I had absolutely no interest in learning to type and hated the thought of sitting a keyboard pecking away. My mother had a different idea… she knew computers were the future and that typing is actually a very valuable skill that I would need in college and in the future (interesting how the older I get, the smarter she gets). So, one day, after one of my rants about the formatting or errors in the typing she did for me, mom decided that she would no longer type my papers. This totally incensed and angered me! I literally could not believe that my mom was doing this to me (poor me – notice the victim mentality). I felt like she had totally let me down (more victim mentality). So of course I struggled all night to finish that paper. After all night of pecking at the keyboard, I knew that “I” needed to take responsibility for my papers by learning to type. Thank God my mother had the foresight to “push me out of the nest” which forced me to learn this valuable skill that I now use EVERY DAY! I can not fathom how difficult it would have been trying to make it through college relying on others to type my papers for me. I can’t imagine what it would be like today not knowing how to type e-mails, letters or articles.

Think back over your own life to the times when someone "pushed you out of the nest." You may have hated it at the time, but now you are totally, completely thankful that person actually cared enough about your future to do so.

One of the greatest disservices we can do to one of our Xooma partners is to coddle them, hand hold them and make them co-dependent on us for the things they can do for themselves. This is poor leadership!

If you do something for someone today that they are totally capable of doing for themselves (like doing all of their follow up calls for them, calling the company for them when they have a simple shipping problem, etc.), you will ALWAYS be doing these things for this person. That is a poor use of your time and skills and a disservice to that person. This person will NEVER "learn" and build THEIR skill set and discover their own talents.

When someone joins Xooma, our goal should be to make them INDEPENDENT and self sufficient as soon as possible! Our job as leaders should be to help them unlock THEIR own greatness and self sufficiency so they too can help others do the same. Helping someone else unlock their own greatness is the ultimate service to others!

Remember, this business is not about a product, it’s about people... BUILDING people!