The Disciplined Leader by John Manning

Author:John Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2015-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Surround Yourself with Great Talent

There’s no question about it: your ability to lead people starts with you. The reality is your team’s performance will ultimately determine the level of your success. Yet many leaders get caught up in mistakenly thinking great leadership is all about their personal talent and abilities. Worse, they sometimes let their insecurities or egos get in the way of working with people who can do things better than they can. Those are the very types of leaders who ultimately fail because today’s very best leaders are purposefully and strategically surrounding themselves with talented teams of people. These carefully chosen individuals possess skills and innate gifts that surpass those of their leaders. These employees are working alongside their leaders and behind the scenes, driving productivity, profitability, and overall success.

Part of your responsibility to lead your team requires finding the very best personnel and helping them achieve their full potential. You must also choose those who have the capacity to deliver according to job requirements and exude openness to learning and growth when asked or required.

Over the years, it’s been amazing how often leaders have told me their greatest reward has been enabling people to succeed. That has become their legacy. For you, that legacy starts to become possible when you take that first step to surround yourself with the right people. This includes those who have great talent, those you can believe in, those you can trust, and those you really get excited about inspiring because it’s simply an extraordinary experience to watch them grow and achieve professionally.

If surrounding yourself with great talent is a crucial component to Disciplined Leadership, then you’ve got to scrutinize whom you’re adding to your team. When you’ve got the right talent, you must further discipline yourself to find the best ways to motivate these individuals and maximize each and every team member’s potential. Here are several key habits around doing just that:

Leverage what you’ve got. One way to maximize talent is to put your efforts into aligning your employees’ strengths to their responsibilities. You’ll not only cultivate a happier, more satisfied team but a more loyal, productive one, too, the benefits of which are greater performance, productivity, and, hopefully, revenue and profit.

For example, let’s say a sales manager has a business-development employee who excels at working on large opportunities, and the more complex the better. When the manager looks at the numbers, he realizes that this individual outperforms everybody on these prospects. To maximize this employee’s strengths, the manager starts assigning him these types of sales opportunities. Almost immediately, sales increase, and the bottom line improves.

In this situation, the manager wisely matched talent to opportunity through a high-performing employee. It’s a simple strategy, really, but one that only worked because the manager decided to do it. He took initiative when he spotted an opportunity, and this became a successful strategy for driving performance, productivity, and results.

Showcase your people’s talents. Disciplined Leaders recognize that their role isn’t to be perceived as the smartest, most talented person in the business.

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