Create A Path For Everyone To Contribute

An Article By Brandyn Jacob: People First Leadership Strategist

Listen, I want to win as much as the next person. Often those that perform at the highest level are moved into leadership roles, and as long as they are prepared and equally have the skill to lead as they do at completing the work, then by all means. They should be moved into a leadership role. What I have found over the years is that organizations continue to struggle at the middle management level, by promoting great doer's into leadership roles without the leadership experience, training or education. They cannot come to terms with understanding why a strong individual performer is challenged by leading a team to strong performance.

This level of leadership is so accustomed to doing the work and often lacks the experience to develop a team, gets easily frustrated by shortcomings of their constituents, or is set on doing things the same way it has always been done.

New leaders struggle to create space for their team to contribute in their own way. Identifying their strengths and aligning the right people to perform each of the necessary functions. In part because these new leaders have a hard time separating themselves from the tasks to lead the group.

Leaders mindsets need to shift, it is no longer about their individual success but rather creating value for the organization by helping their whole team achieve success, collectively as well as each individual on the team. If they can learn to adopt a "you matter" approach to each individual, everyone has a path to contribute, and as the new leader, you need to find a way to unlock each individuals potential.

These new leaders have to contribute to the organization but how they do it will change indefinitely. Albert Einstein once said, "Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value". The value a new leader brings to their team is sharing their expertise, developing their team, and guiding the team to overall greater contributions to the organization.

Organizations also need to adjust expectations, create a path for leaders to be less focused on their own throughput but rather the growth and development of the collective unit as a measure of that leaders success. If the whole team can establish a path of incremental growth as a collective and each individual on the team has shown development, the outcome will undoubtedly be greater for the organization.

A quick example for you, earlier in my career I led a small sales org. I took it upon myself to build and deliver a training plan for each new member on my team. Spending a couple of weeks with a new rep, took away from my contributions as an individual, but also sacrificed my ability to support the entire team. Something had to change. Creating a space for each member of the team to contribute to the training allowed new hires to learn from each of their peers strengths, extending that strength to each of the new team members. This also created a space for each member of my team to sharpen their own skills by training others, and creating a path for them to grow in their contribution to the organization. At the end of the day, the greatest strengths from each individual were shared throughout the team creating a strong more cohesive team that collectively delivered better results for the organization. The lesson for me, get out of the way and let the team contribute.