Browsing the sites of other bloggers I occasionally come across a good point that should get emphasized. In this case, it has to do with "leadership". What kind of leader are you for your group?

Do you keep in touch with both your upline and downline? Are you willing to explore new marketing methods and share them with your group? Do you keep an open channel of communication?

As a leader, you will a lot of things that maybe others in your group aren't ready to do yet, but by doing them yourself you show that it can be done. But what makes others willing to follow what you do?

Before we go to much further, I want to give credit to Butch Scott and his post on "How Do You Show Da Love?". That sparked the idea for this topic here.

Now, back to the idea of encouraging others to follow what you do. Part of that is leading in the general direction that you group is open to following. That may seem like weak leadership, to only go where people are willing to follow, but it makes progress much easier if you know ahead of time that the group your leading is already oriented in the same direction.

Think of it this way: let's say a military commander is given the job of turning peace corps volunteers into Marine commandos. Now matter how strong of a leader the commander may be, he is likely to lose most of those volunteers as they go find something else more in tune with who they are and what they want to do.

The choice then becomes a tough one. If the military commander had the option to choose between making that group better peace corps volunteers, even though that process would make him miserable, or to bring along the ones who actually wanted to become commandos, which would be the better long term choice?

Ignoring the political considerations, the commander would likely produce better soldiers than activists since that's where his own interests and expertise lay.

If you are making the transition in your business from an "OnGround" model to an online model, take into consideration how many people will be willing to follow you. It may turn out that you will need to start from scratch and find new people who are aligned the same direction you are. But if your desire is to grow and train a group to effectively use the internet in the business, then your personal and group growth will be much greater than trying to lead in a direction that you are not in love with.

In fact, here's another stretch: what if you find that people in your group want to learn more about to do in home meetings? The is online MLM training going to be the right thing for them? Would it be better for them to work with one of your colleagues that is an expert in that, if you have no intention of marketing that way?

These are some hard choices to make, but that's part of the role of leader. Sometimes you have to do encourage people to go in a direction that may not directly help your own business, but will allow them to grow in their own direction.