Be the Leader to Create More Leaders
Photo by Ian Parker on Unsplash
The term “leader” can be problematic. Some of us hear the word a lot but we don’t necessarily know what it means. As a leadership coach, I help people find their strengths and unique voice to perform better at work, develop stronger relationships, and amplify their growth + impact at the organization. Yet I also hear from many people that they’re not leaders because:
I don’t manage people. I’m not the boss.
I do manage people, but I’m not good at it.
I don’t have the skills or training to be a good leader.
One of the most important parts of leadership is the relationships you cultivate. The most important one being the relationship with yourself. In context of relationships, leadership is:
The self awareness to know what lights you up. This is an ever-changing cauldron of ingredients that includes your values, what you’re good at, your long term purpose, and what gives you energy. Always start with this piece of knowing what lights you up.
If you manage a team, know what lights up each one of your people. And do whatever it takes, balanced against the business needs, to empower them to spend the most time on what lights them up.
In a corporation, there is an even bigger group of people who you don’t manage. Steven Covey talks about our Circle of Concern, things we care about over which we have little or no control, and our Circle of Influence, the things we do have some control over. Regardless of your role, there are key people within your Circle of Influence. These include your manager, your peers, partners, and collaborators who you work with frequently. For these people in your tight Circle of Influence, know what lights them up.
If you’re not sure what lights you up or what constitutes a good leader, think about the bosses you’ve had in your life. Which one of them was a fantastic boss? What part of their leadership would you like to incorporate into yours?
It may be more common to remember bad bosses. Can you think of all your terrible, micromanaging bosses and the things you hated about them? What parts of their leadership do you want to stay away from? You can use these examples from your life, and more importantly, your reaction to these bosses to define your leadership values and what lights you up.
One of the best bosses I ever had gave me two pieces of leadership advice:
1. Hire people smarter than you and who think differently than you.
2. Create more leaders around you to work yourself out of a job.
You want a smart, diverse team to be able to see your way around problems and find innovative, creative solutions. You want to work yourself out of a job so that you develop your team and create other leaders. This allows you to go on vacation without worries, remove yourself from being the bottleneck, and also start succession planning. Working yourself out of a job eventually opens up enough space for you to find different activities and scope that light you up and then… you’re on the path of working yourself into a new job.
There are two key ways to start creating more leaders: Delegation and Asking for Help.
Delegation
We often become leaders because we get very good at accomplishing things, whether it’s executing on projects/processes, working with people, or contributing to the organization at some larger level. Over time, as highly performant people, we get to a stage where if we hold on to every single thing, we get overwhelmed and overworked—there is always more work to do. Yes, there is the process of prioritization which we all try to do. And sometimes there is still too much very important work to get done.
This is where delegation comes in.
As a leader, you know what lights you up and you know what lights up the people around you. Be a matchmaker and stop doing the things that don’t light you up. Instead, give them to the people who want more opportunity, especially if it lines up with what lights them up.
It’s hard to delegate. You have to give up your control and your one right way of doing things. And it’s this process of letting go, of eliminating the certainty of doing it yourself, that provides autonomy and creates more leaders. You can put in guardrails. You can help the person with defining the goals/outcomes and teach them how you’ve done the thing. However, give them some autonomy to do it in their own way and provide both the support to let them succeed and the space to let them make mistakes and learn.
Part of the leadership process is to SEE/DO/TEACH. You first observe someone else doing it, or do your own third party research to figure out an unknown thing. Next you do it yourself. Figure out what works for you, learn from your mistakes and from others around you. Finally, teach it to someone else. See what resonates for them and what confuses them. Try telling them another way until it clicks. Watch them as they do it themselves, and provide the support they ask for. SEE/DO/TEACH cements the continuous learning process.
Asking for Help
For many people who follow the servant leadership philosophy and who exist to support their teams and others around them, asking for help can be difficult. Yet, can you think of the last couple of times when someone asked you for help and you were so excited and eager to say YES because the help was easy for you to do, it was something that lights you up, and it genuinely felt good to help someone else?
Asking someone else for help is offering them a gift.
If you know what lights them up, you will always strengthen the relationship. Asking for help shows your vulnerability, acknowledges their expertise, and overall builds more trust in the relationship.
Leaders can stop doing everything themselves and create more leaders around them by asking for help.
Bottom-Line
We may not always think of ourselves as a leader, and that’s OK. We can continue to do the work to become more of a leader both personally and professionally. Start delegating and asking for help to be the leader who creates more leaders.