“The basic task of leadership is to increase the standard of living and the quality of life for all stakeholders.” – Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
No matter how you define leadership, the truth is most of us find it hard to acknowledge ourselves as leaders. Despite your level of leadership, you have experiences which prompt others to view you as a leader. You have information, skill, and innovative thoughts, which can benefit someone else.
Strategically developing leaders around you isn’t succession planning-lite. It’s having a leadership continuation strategy which flows into the daily rhythms of your organization. Here are some thoughts to help you better develop leaders around you.
1. See Every Team Member as a Potential Leader
It is easier to develop leaders whom you imagine working as leaders. Everyone has the potential to lead at some level. Leaders who develop others are responsible to leverage people’s unique leadership skills and gifts. No matter the experience; or inexperience a person possesses, he can grow as a leader. Think about it, you were not always the skilled person you are, but someone took time to pour into you; to guide you and to pull the best out of you. Hopefully, that’s still true for you as you continually mentor and lead others.
2. Act Like a Leader
Leadership is not a fancy title, a plaque on the wall, or some grand thought in our minds. Leadership is a responsibility; so, as we grow as leaders we learn how to act more like leaders. Leaders don’t throw temper tantrums. Leaders don’t run and hide. Leaders don’t give up at the first sign of trouble. Leaders presume the opportunities are greater than the obstacles. Leaders use leadership language consistently. So carefully choose your words and manage your emotions because they will define your leadership. Speak the language of a leader and face adversity with strength and accolades with humility. You can find more on this topic at one of my recent blogs on “Leadership Language” to see my thoughts on how leaders communicate.
3. Explain Leadership and Your Leadership Philosophy
Developing leaders around you means teaching those you are mentoring about strategic messaging, motivating others, and how to measure organizational progress. Help your team understand how to craft messages. Share with them when to share messages and what messages they should be sending. Also, a key in leadership trait is learning how to motivate people based on their individual style. Different people respond in different ways: leaders work to find the sweet spot for each person or group they lead. Another unpopular fact of leadership is the need to measure for results. Some people find this difficult while for others it comes naturally. Despite where a person is on the spectrum, there’s a need to decide how the organization is measuring up to its goals.
A final point about leadership philosophy is how you move the organization forward. True leadership is not managing what’s in front of you but it’s visioning and implementing new strategies that move the work forward. Helping people to understand your philosophy for messaging, motivating, managing, measuring and moving is important. But to do that you must be clear about your leadership philosophy.
4. Show People Leadership in Action by Allowing them to Shadow You
Let people spend a workday with you to learn how you move through leading your organization. To help advance the leaders around you, it would be helpful to teach them your leadership philosophy. We all have a unique style and approach to leadership. Share with emerging leaders your decision-making checklist. That may help them to understand your approach in decision-making. Help them discover how leaders look towards long-term strategy sometimes counter-balancing that against short-term benefits. It’s not that you want to create clones of yourself; instead, you want to share a broader understanding of what it takes to lead.
5. Share Bite-Sized Leadership in Action or Shadowing Opportunities
Allowing people to shadow you, gives them the chance to see the difficulties of leadership first-hand. Leading an organization is a dynamic, fully engaged sport. It requires so much more than we can boil down into a five-page memorandum or two-page checklist. Leading an organization requires flexibility for changes that occur throughout the day based upon situations which spring up by surprise.
6. Share Short-Term, Project Based Opportunities
Learning by doing has always been an effective method for me to learn. I believe it holds true for others. You can develop others around you by giving them portions of your work responsibilities or a short-term project to lead.
7. Seek to Develop People with Sincerity
Developing emerging leaders requires sincerity of heart. Leadership development isn’t a checklist based on the strategic plan or evaluation sheet given by the Board of Directors. You should view developing other leaders as an opportunity to make the organization and others better than when you started, realizing you won’t be around forever. Too many people refuse to develop other leaders, fearing it will make them obsolete or that the people they develop will stage a coup to take their job. That’s a poor attitude towards leadership. You should want those surrounding you to be so well-equipped that if you were to walk away from the organization today, you are confident it would move forward and not miss a beat.
I encourage you to find someone in your organization today whom you can encourage, develop and mentor. They, you and the organization you lead will be made better.
Please contact us directly, so we may help you develop the leaders around you, or any other organizational support and training. You may reach us at info@adrianstaylor.com.
317306: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 25th Anniversary Edition – unabridged audio book on CD The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 25th Anniversary Edition – unabridged audio book on CD
By Stephen R. Covey (author reader) & Jim Collins (foreword)
