At the heart of it, all organizations want the same thing – to reach their goals and mission. The goals might be profit or purpose-related (or both), but they want leaders who can get them more of whatever “that” is; that is, more results. To that end, enlightened organizations look for ways to develop their leaders to get more of those desired results. It makes sense.
And most don’t start in the right place.
In my book Remarkable Leadership, I wrote that as we become better leaders, we become better human beings – and vice versa. As organizations, we need to focus on the vice versa of leadership development. We must develop people, not just leaders.
Leaders can only lead with what they have and who they are. Yes, they need skills, but they bring themselves to the role and the work, and that fact is inescapable but underappreciated.
If I got anything wrong in my quote from years ago, it is that I wrote it backward. As we become better human beings, we can become better leaders.
I am more convinced of this than I have ever been. Here are some examples…
They can’t listen if they can’t quiet their minds.
They can’t expect balance if they are off-kilter.
They can’t get innovation if they aren’t open-minded.
They can’t get collaboration if they are self-focused.
They can’t give positive feedback if they don’t notice what’s going well and it pleases them.
They can’t help others with their mental fitness if they aren’t caring for themselves.
To flip all of these (and a hundred other examples around), they can only lead as effectively as they are effective.
What Can an Organization Do?
- Make sure people want to lead. When was the last time you asked your leaders if they still wanted to be in a leadership role, and why or why not? If your leaders don’t (or no longer) want the former role, how well can they possibly be doing it?
- Spend time on mindset discussion and development. When mindsets are more conducive to learning and development, other investments of time and training will have greater returns.
- Urge personal growth, not just new leadership skills. When your leaders see you care about them, not just their ability to get you more results, you change the conversation, expectations, and relationship with your leaders.
- Provide forums for best-practice sharing and relationship development. Leadership can be a very lonely role. Find ways to get leaders together for conversation, relationship building and support. The return on this investment can be surprising.
- Support new leadership habits. Yes, helping leaders build a coaching habit is a great idea. But here I am talking about something more fundamental. How can you support a reading habit, a planning habit, a gratitude habit, an exercise habit, to name a few examples?
So true. The question so few managers/leaders ask is “what do you want to do?” I asked my team once and got responses like “I’ve never been asked before” or “I have a choice?” If I want the best for my team, I need to give them at least 50% of what they enjoy, let’s assume 25% is plain old drudgery, and 25% to “stretching” and professional development. No one performs well in a role they dislike for very long.
Neither can you assume someone is grade X therefore they should be able to do Y…most specialists in the medical world would be Majors or above in the military world. But funnily enough I don’t want an infantry major treating my back injury!