Would you like to master the timeless leadership laws modeled by the great leaders? Would it be helpful to learn what it takes to leave a legitimate leadership legacy? Dick has been a business owner since 1982, so he understands leadership. He's a past president of four volunteer groups, including the National Speakers Association-Georgia. Leadership Lessons Learned As A Leatherneck, one of his most requested programs, is based on 12 core principles he learned as a Marine sergeant. Marines were often called leathernecks because, in the early days, they wore leather bands around their necks to protect against bayonet thrusts. With the proper modification to your organization’s culture, these principles will enable you to face the “bayonet thrusts” in your work environment with greater courage.

Dr. John C. Maxwell is one of the nation's top leadership experts. He's written more than 30 books, including a New York Times best-seller--The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership. John is also a friend and one of Dick's mentors. Leadership Wired, John's ezine, called recently to talk to Dick about leadership. Here's that interview with the permission of Maximum Impact:

Leadership Wired: Let's start off by talking about what you discovered about leadership during your years in the Marines and your stint as an AP sportswriter.

Richard Biggs: One thing about the Marine Corps is that they teach leadership to everybody. Obviously, there's a chain of command from the generals all the way down to the privates. But in combat, you can lose your top leaders in a heartbeat, so you have to be ready to step up to leadership at a moment's notice. People say, "What's that have to do with the business world? People aren't dying in the business world." That's true, but you lose people all the time. You lose them to competitors, to illness and to retirement. So I think it's very important that everybody be exposed to leadership in an organization. One of the best ways I've found to do that is through mentoring, which I define as one-on-one leadership. It's nothing more than an experienced person sharing with a less experienced person. So often, when you ask company leaders if they have a mentor program, they say yes, but really, when you get underneath the surface, all it is is two people meeting. There's no structure, no content, no action, no accountability. That's one thing that the Marine Corps was very good at—that one-on-one leadership.

As far as journalism, when I came back to work at the Associated Press, I was very fortunate to have an editor named Lamar Matthews. The entire year I worked there, he would critique my work the day after my evening shift. I learned a lot about leadership from the guy because here's the way he would do it. He had a three-part formula. He would always start off telling me what I did right. Early on, there wasn't a whole lot for him to talk about—I was making a lot of mistakes. But he'd find something. Then he'd proceed to part two of his critique, and that was suggestions for improvement. Now as the boss, they weren't suggestions—they were commandments. But he did it in such a way that I wanted to take his advice. Then he would always end his letters by giving me hope and encouragement: "Now son, if you just keep on doing what I say, you're going to become one of the all-time great sportswriters." And because of how he led, I believed him. So often with feedback from leaders, they just rip your heart out. But he sandwiched the good on both sides by telling me what I did right and giving me encouragement, and then he put the bad stuff in the middle. He would always finish on a positive note.

LW: Most people couldn't dream of completing one marathon; you have finished seven. And you run 15-20 miles every week. What has this sport/hobby taught you about leadership that could benefit leaders who might not be so athletically inclined?

Biggs: What it has taught me more than anything is self- discipline. I define self-discipline as the ability to change bad habits into good habits. If a leader isn't disciplined, what kind of example does this set for the followers? On the other hand, if a leader is disciplined, they're modeling by example. I've kept a running log for nearly 30 years now. It's a disciplinary tool, because I don't want to look at an empty log at the end of the week. And except for a couple of bouts with the flu, a layoff due to some torn ligaments in my foot from playing basketball and a three-year stretch in the early seventies when I got kind of lazy (I was working 70 hours a week in sales back then), I've run every week since I started getting ready for Marine boot camp in 1964. That good habit of disciplining myself has carried over to all the other facets of my life.

LW: Since you've written a book called Burn Brightly Without Burning Out, I'm guessing you have some personal experience in this area. Why does burnout occur, and what are some steps leaders can take to avoid it?

Biggs: I burned out in 1982 so badly that after a 13-year career in sales, I quit and didn't work for five months. It ended up being the greatest turning point in my life, because after that five months, I started my own business, which is now 23 years old, and I met a lady two months after I started my business who became my wife two years later. So what looked like a terrible time in my life ended up being by far the biggest turning point. I've found that people burn out generally for two reasons. No. 1, they let one area of their life become their life. The most common is workaholism. That was me. I worked 60-, 70-, sometimes 80-hour weeks, Monday through Saturday. I probably would have worked on Sunday but in those days, we weren't open on Sunday. My value system changed from the way I was taught, and all I was doing was chasing money and winning awards. But after 13 years of that, I was just worn out. So that's the first way—they let one area of their life take over.

Then, after I got more in balance in 1982, I started trying to live a perfectly balanced life every day. I had seven areas of my life—what I call dominant interests—that I tried to touch. When you're trying to do that on a daily basis, it's fairly impossible. There are days when work just takes over. There are days when family takes over—you have a tragedy or a death or an illness and that becomes your focus. There is no such thing as perfect balance every day. But I was trying to do that, so by the late 1980s, I almost burned out again. I was trying to be all things to all people and my circuits were overloaded. So I eliminated a lot of the things that I could eliminate right then. I started cutting back on my running and I started getting out of groups that I didn't have the time for. Over about a six-month period, I was able to phase out of that, and I avoided burnout that way.

That's generally what happens with burnout—either people have one area that just takes over, or they start trying to be perfectly balanced and then they get too committed. Just because you have five or six areas of your life that you think are important doesn't mean you spend equal time in each of them. For example, I spend about three hours exercising out of a week, and I spend one hour a week mentoring a little boy in the school system. I've had him since the first grade, he's now a sixth grader. It's only one hour of community service, but it's had a big impact on Scottie's life.

LW: So what are some steps that people can take to avoid burnout?

Biggs: You have to look at personal management and time management. Personal management is the areas where you spend your time—those dominant interests I referred to. I think you should have somewhere between three and seven. If you have less than three, you're not in balance—you're like a workaholic. If you have more than seven, you're going to be completely stressed out. So be very careful about the number of areas where you say you're going to spend your time. And then become a good time manager. Realize that you may spend more time at work than you spend exercising. You may spend more time with your family than you spend doing something in the community or at your church. It doesn't have to be equal time; you just have to manage it. And one of the ways you can manage time better is to make sure that you don't have interests in your life that you don't need.

LW: In order to achieve balance in life, a person must be able to make good choices. The same skill is necessary for effective leadership. What are some steps leaders can take to ensure that they are making good decisions?

Biggs: In Burn Brightly Without Burning Out, I had a five-part model for making wise decisions. First, give careful consideration to all the facts and options. That's what I call the logical part of a decision. Also, that's a time when if you're not familiar with something—if you see something that's too good to be true or whatever—a lot of times, you can seek out the advice of more experienced people and they will say, "I've been down that road before and it's not what it looks like." Two, pay attention to your heart, intuition and gut feeling. That's more of the emotional side. The emotion is the heart and the logic is the head, and you need both of those when you're making a decision. Three, once you make a decision, don't second-guess yourself. You simply make too many important decisions in life to waste valuable time lamenting past choices. You make them, sometimes they don't turn out, you learn from them and you move on. Live in the present, be looking to the future, and don't let the past just completely paralyze you. Four, act with the knowledge that you'll probably make more good choices than bad ones in a lifetime. If you learn from your mistakes, I guarantee you that's true. You get smarter as you get older. So celebrate your good decisions, learn from your mistakes and over time, you'll make better decisions.

And finally, anticipate success but don't be afraid to fail. So many people are miserable in their jobs. And yet when you say, "Why don't you start your own thing?" they're too afraid to take risks. But if they get downsized or let go from their company, that's just as risky. There are three questions you can always ask yourself about this: What will happen if I don't act? What are the possibilities if I do act? And if for some reason I don't succeed, what's the worst thing that could happen and can I deal with the consequences? If you decide to leave a company and go out on your own, what's the worst thing that can happen? You don't make it. So you go back to work for somebody else. That's not the end of the world. At least you tried.

LW: Negativity in the workplace is a cancer that can hamper morale and hurt productivity. Are leaders responsible for rooting out this cancer? If so, how?

Biggs: One of John Maxwell's favorite quotes is that everything rises and falls on leadership. Sure, a leader's responsibility is to root out negativity in the workplace, but it's also his or her responsibility to set the example with a positive influence. If you're a negative leader, it's going to filter down all the way to the very bottom. In so many organizations now, it's so hard to get rid of a bad employee because we live in such a litigating society. A lot of employers are afraid to fire somebody that really ought to be let go. So what I teach people at my seminars is this: Leadership should be very careful to choose the right people in the first place.

Here's what I've found. Companies spend all this money to try to get the good people, the right people. They check out their education and their previous work experience. They can run credit and background checks and they can give them personality profiles and all this kind of stuff. But when I was a sales manager, there were four things I concentrated on. If you can find these four things in people, you're going to have a really good employee. No. 1, do they have a good value system? In other words, can you trust them? No. 2, are they lifelong learners? When I was a sales manager, I didn't want any salesman that was a know-it-all. I wanted salespeople that were continually growing and learning. No. 3, I wanted somebody with good work habits. Are they going to show up on time, are they going to be reliable, are they going to get the job done? And No. 4, and this gets back to the negativity issue, I want people with positive attitudes. It doesn't mean that you have to be positive every single minute of every single day—if you get some bad news about your mom dying or your dad being sick, you're not going to be real positive; you're going to have a bad day. But overall, when they show up for work, do they have a positive outlook on life? Because negative thinkers have a way of bringing everybody else down to their level. I've seen it over and over again.

LW: Any final thoughts about leadership before we close?

Biggs: One of the things I quote from Peter Drucker is, "There's no success without a successor." I think if leaders today would measure their success in terms of how many people they groom, like when Lamar Matthews was grooming me all those years ago at the Associated Press, if they would be more servant-leadership oriented, and measure their success by other leaders that they groom, we would have a lot better business world out there.

— Interview by Lois Flowers, INJOY consulting editor