Most organizations strive to cultivate stronger leadership within their ranks, but the most effective executives take a different approach. They focus on constructing a team comprised of individuals who aren’t just capable, but who actually surpass their own abilities in specific areas. This strategy is the cornerstone of high-performance organizational growth.
To build a truly elite team, you must learn how to attract and develop talent that challenges your own expertise. This means seeking out communicators who are more gifted than you, team members who are smarter than you, and leaders who are more extensively connected than you. It requires a commitment to finding strategists who possess a sharper analytical edge than your own.
Assembling such a powerhouse requires a deep understanding of the traits of great leaders. By staying informed on current leadership-focused staffing trends, you can better position your organization to recruit the high-level talent necessary to sustain long-term success.
That’s a big deal.
If you truly want to have the best team, that means you need to figure out how to attract and develop:
• Communicators who are more gifted than you are.
• Team members who are smarter than you are.
• Leaders who are more connected than you are.
• Strategists who are more strategic than you are.
Small-minded leaders want to be the star of the show. The best leaders let other leaders be the star.
They’re not only not threatened by that—they encourage it.
The question is how do you do that?
After all, if you build a team of all-stars, everybody else could be working somewhere else and be making a huge impact there.
1. Deal With Your Insecurities.
Insecure leaders will always feel threatened by people they think are “better” than they are.
Get counseling. Get coaching. Do what you need to do.
And think about this: Leaders who can build a great team always have a higher value to an organization than leaders who want to be the greatest on the team.
Don’t cap your organization’s growth or mission because you’re insecure. Push others into the spotlight.
2. Give Away Responsibilities, Not Just Tasks.
If you want to repel high-capacity leaders, give them tasks, not responsibilities.
When you trust your team, it ushers in the opportunity for greatness.
If everything has to cross your desk, you will only ever lead a small organization (because your desk isn’t that big).
You’ll have a hard time delegating responsibilities—not tasks—if you’re …
• Fearful
• Controlling
• Insecure
• Egotistical
• Unclear
Want to get started on handing off more responsibility?
Make fewer decisions this month. And hire and recruit people who make better decisions than you do.
3. Share the Spotlight.
If you have to be front and center all the time, you create a whole host of problems, chief of which is that you’ll demotivate your team because you steal all the airtime, the attention or the credit.
Smart leaders will leave or never join your team in the first place.
Pushing other people into the spotlight is the hallmark of great leadership.
There’s a weird irony here.
Leaders who hog the spotlight often do it because they want to be known. But you can (ironically) become well known and respected because you give away the spotlight.
Case in point.
I host a leadership podcast on which I interview some of the top people in leadership today.
It can be hard when you’re interviewing guests to not jump in and offer your own insights. But I made it a rule of thumb early on that I would try to be quiet and let the guest talk 90–95% of the time (sometimes I make an episode a roundtable, but most episodes, I follow this rule).
So when I’m on my game, I say very little. Other than to occasionally make a comment or ask the next question. I really want the guest and the listener to be the heroes.
Here’s the surprise: the thing I’ve probably become best known for is my podcast where I hardly talk during an interview.
4. Make It Your Job to Help Others Succeed.
Sometimes the best way to win is to stop trying to help yourself succeed and start spending your time trying to help other people succeed.
The longer I’ve led, the more I realize that as a leader, I have a very small lane in which to exercise my gifts, and mostly my job is to clarify the mission, vision and strategy and clear obstacles for everyone else.
In other words, I’m not focused on me, but rather on something bigger than me (the mission) and on the team, trying to make sure they soar.
Worried you might lose out on what you want in the process?
As Zig Ziglar said, if you help enough people get what they want, you’ll eventually get what you want.
Helping others succeed will ultimately be your greatest success.
5. Create a Culture of Freedom
For years I struggled with control as a leader.
Then I realized that as much as I hate being controlled, so do almost all real leaders.
So I motivate myself with this thought: If you want great leaders to flee your organization, control them. They’ll leave.
If you want to attract great leaders, release them with a clear mission, vision and strategy (and give them input to shape it). As long as you micromanage everything, you will only have doers in your organization, not leaders.
Enough said.
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This article originally appeared on CareyNieuwhof.com and is reposted here by permission.