Scaling your strengths

The secret to leadership success

Can I tell you about the greatest challenge I face in my work as a leadership coach? It’s not the big personalities of senior executives or even the intractable systems they operate within…

No, my biggest hurdle is the fact that most people don’t think about leadership at all.

By which I mean, they see leadership as a status conferred by a particular title, a reward for their proven technical skills—after all, most employers promote people to leadership roles based on their success in other functions. Few leaders (and fewer employers) consider leadership as a capability in itself, to be cultivated alongside the technical skills that got them the role in the first place.

It’s always a special moment when a leader I’m coaching begins to realize that their technical skills—which they are closely identified with—are not actually enough, and they begin looking for how to deliver success at scale. This is the moment they begin to explore who they are as a leader.

I had three of those moments this week, with leaders at three different stages of making this shift:

Leader 1 reflected on yet another instance where he had swooped in and saved the day for the team, wondering if he was inadvertently doing more harm than good.

Leader 2 took a risk delegating an important presentation to a young team member, which meant resisting the impulse for perfection and cultivating progress instead.

Leader 3 realized she has lost interest in the work she’s skilled in and sought-after for, and feels more fulfilled equipping and empowering others to do this work well.

In the comments: Can you relate to one of these leaders? Tell us about it.

Effective leaders know that success depends upon scaling their team—not in terms of size, but in strength. They don’t get mired in the work themselves, they mostly use their technical skills to develop and guide the people around them, and create the opportunities for them to rise to the occasion.

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This week

Consider that when you define your leadership in technical terms, it’s easy to end up in the weeds, making every decision or approving every draft, and that the time and energy you invest in these activities have an ROI of 1:1. One hour yields one unit of value. In other words, your value is equal to your own capacity, which is limited.

Now consider that when you invest your time and energy in developing your people’s strengths, guiding them as they step into new territories and capabilities, your ROI multiplies. Each hour of your time yields exponential value in the form of your team’s growth, collective capability and the progression of your work together.

Where are you ready to scale your impact this week? Where can you let go of the technical and tactical? How will this allow you to step up and lead?