In network marketing, we call our mentor ‘Upline’.The truth is, when we are new to the business, our upline comes to us, and we didn’t really realize how important it is for us to follow the right leader.
But if you have been in the industry for some time, you start to realize there are different types of leadership out there. And one of the most common reasons we heard people leaving the industry or keep jumping companies, is that they cannot work well with their uplines.
**So, how to justify the right leader for us to follow?**If you google this you may find lots of answers like ‘what’s their ranking and are they actively growing the business?’, ‘do they provide trainings and individual mentoring consistently?’, ‘how good is their presentation skill and how strong is their influencing power?’, and so on.Yes, I wouldn’t disagree that all these are not important; But for me, all these are just some technical skills that all leaders can improve along the way.
In my past 17 years journey in the industry, I’ve seen too many leaders and I’ve had few types of uplines as well. Here’re the 2 valuable lessons that I’ve learnt from my 001 upline, and I always remind myself when growing new leaders:
#1 Can your upline make the best out of you?
Sometimes, many top leaders tend to want their downlines to be just like them.I am sure you definitely heard this before from one of the top leaders,
“Do what I do, and get what I get.”
Yes Duplication is definitely important especially when you are new to the business. It will show short term results. Yet at the other end of the extreme, following blindly without having own thoughts is not something that we would want to see.
I always believe that we need to cultivate our downlines to find balance between duplication and being themselves. Everyone is born to be different.
A true leadership is to inspire someone, and make the best out of someone.
A true leader magnanimously allow people to have their own thoughts and own thinking.
With this, you’d find people come to you and stay with you because of your unique personality and leadership.
#2 Is your upline willing to let you be better than him/her?
Does your upline allow you to overtake him/her in income, ranking or network?
In the previous blog about choosing company, I’ve shared with you that the feeling should be like choosing your home and life partner.Now when it comes to choosing the right leaders to follow, the feeling should be like choosing the parents. We couldn’t choose parents, but what I meant is your uplines should be someone you feel like your parents.
The parents would definitely want the kids to grow to be better than them and outshine them.
Congrats if you have got someone like your parents!
But most of the successful leaders would tend to want their leaders just to follow them. Some selfish leaders might be even involved in sabotage as in trying to slow down their downlines from breaking away or overtaking them due to the blocking system in the traditional compensation plan. Some could even be afraid that they lose their role of Uplines if the downlines outshine them. Thus they suppress the downlines on new ideas and opinions to grow the group. As a downline, you may always feel pressured, cannot be yourself, cannot express freely, and cannot be the best of yourself. If that’s the case, you got to grow by yourself, you got to learn different type of leadership skills in order to become a better leader.
If one day, you become someone’s upline, do treat your downlines as your kids.Grow them, let them outshine you. Make the best out of them.Give them the stage, the honor, everything that they deserve.Because network marketing is not about building your own wealth,It’s about building people.
If your heart is big enough, you’d find lots of Great leaders come to you willingly.