Jeb Blount - People Follow You: The Real Secret to What Matters Most in Leadership

Praise for People Follow You

Leaders earn success by helping others get what they want out of life. Jeb Blounts People Follow You is all about bringing out the best in your workforce. Jeb is right on top of the indisputable fact that happy, committed employees give their best when they respect their leaders.

Tom Ziglar
CEO of Ziglar, Inc., and proud son of Zig Ziglar

Jeb Blounts expertise in mending broken sales teams is very much in evidence in his new book, People Follow You . Companies of all sizes would do well to adopt the leadership principles he spells out so clearly.

Jon Gordon
Best-selling author of The Energy Bus and Training Camp

Jeb Blount has done it againa practical book that provides insight and ideas into how to be a better leader. As a leader, its imperative to remember that your personal successyour paycheck, your promotions, and ultimately your careeris 100 percent tied to how well your people perform. Its not about you; its about them. Jeb shares insights into how to motivate and how to ensure youre putting the people on your team in places where they can succeed. A must read for all bosses!

Sam Richter
CEO and founder of Know More!;
Author of Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling

Your relationship with your employees is the key pivot point that makes or breaks your companys development. Jeb Blount commendably has made it his mission to provide you with a framework for leading people that relies on principles, basic truths, morals, and ethical standards. He succeeds admirably in People Follow You .

Tony Jeary
The RESULTS Guy TM ;
Author of Strategic Acceleration: Success at the Speed of Life

All good leadership is personal. From Billy Beane in professional baseball to Steve Jobs in business, the most successful organizations are those with the best leaders. Jeb Blount shows you how to become a better manager so you can build a team that delivers success.

David Meerman Scott
Author of Real-Time Marketing & PR

I have had the pleasure of working closely with Jeb Blount. He is a master at changing human behavior and helping people deliver exceptional results in a very short period of time. Pay attention; People Follow You will change who you are as a leader.

Patrick Albus
CEO of kgbdeals.com

Copyright 2012 by Jeb Blount. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Blount, Jeb.
People follow you : the real secret to what matters most in leadership / Jeb Blount. 1
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-09401-3 (hardback : acid-free paper); ISBN 978-1-118-17389-3 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-17390-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-17388-6 (ebk)
1. Leadership. 2. Management. 3. Supervisors. 4. Interpersonal relations. I. Title.
HD57.7.B575 2011
658.4092dc23
2011032203

For Carrie

Foreword

If in 1999 you had lain down for a long, 10-year nap, upon awakening there is no way you could have connected the dots and rationalized the difference between the world you went to sleep in and the one you woke up in.

Among other things, the period witnessed terrorism visiting the United States in a big way, wars, political strife, near-meltdown of the global financial system, severe economic recession, and institutional shenanigans of epic proportion. Harvard lecturer and former Medtronic CEO Bill George put it well when he said that the primary cause of these events was not subprime mortgages, but subprime leadership (Rebooting Leadership, CornerStone Leadership Institute, 2010).

As a result of this period, those of us who occupy leadership roles find ourselves very much involved with the process of rebooting revisiting, and relaunching time-honored methods. Thats what makes this book exceptionally relevant and timely.

Leadership can be loosely defined as a process of organizing, inspiring, focusing, and enabling others to follow you in the interest of getting something done. Heretofore, the operative words in that definition might have been solely the ones ending in ing. But that was then. More so today, the you is of increasing importance, not because leadership is about you (its not) but because people have lost faith in so many of the institutions around them, certainly including their employers. As they disengage from the institution, they are choosing instead to align with and follow individual leaders, at work, in churches, and in their communities. In short, people follow you. And you means you .

Regardless of the level or setting, if you have accepted leadership responsibility, then you can be quite certain that others are counting on you to do what is right each time, every time. Oh, they will tolerate our foibles and mistakes, just as they always have, but they will not excuse or forget those who mishandle the special trust placed in them by their followers. No more. At a minimum, were expected to listen (really listen), to be truthful, principled, and authentic; to be who we say we are, and do what weve said we will do.

Few understand that special trust better than Jeb Blount. For two decades, Jeb has led successful sales and operations teams inside large organizations and his own firm. I initially met Jeb at Aramark Uniforms, where he was a sales exec on a team that was deeply enmeshed in a business turnaround. Charged with helping that group become a team, my partners and I saw Jeb and his cohorts at their best, and occasionally, their worst.