How To Bring Out The Best In Those You Lead
The success of a leader will always be dependent of the success of those they lead. The performance of your team is a reflection of your leadership skills. If they are performing well, this is a sign that you are doing a great job.
If they are performing poorly, this is a sign that you must have areas where you need to improve. I want you to notice in the last sentence how I placed responsibility on the leader instead of the team. Many leaders make the mistake of blaming those beneath them when something goes wrong. If you do this, you are displaying a weakness that you must overcome. The leader is the one responsible for the success or failure of those they lead.
If you want to succeed, you must be able to bring out the best of those that follow you. As a leader, you will not want to force someone to do something that is beyond their capabilities. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and you must be able to help them maximize their strengths while reducing their weaknesses. For example, if you are the leader of a software development team, you wouldn’t want to take the person who has a natural gift for design and put them in a position where they are forced to do programming, something that they may not excel at. In contrast, you wouldn’t want to put a gifted programmer in a position where they have to design the software.
A good leader will place those beneath them in a position where they can showcase their natural talent. As a leader, you will want to show your followers the door, but it is only they who can choose to open it. When you lead people, you will find that a number of them don’t know what their strengths are. If you want them to be a part of your team, you will want to help them search for their strengths. Once you have discovered their strengths, you can put them in a position where they can succeed. The goal of a great leader should always be to work with, not against those that are members of their team.
A house that is divided will not be able to stand. If you want to lead an organization, everyone must work together. The difference between an average leader and a great leader is that people who are under a great leader will discover things about themselves that they never knew existed. This doesn’t mean that you need to have a degree in psychology. However, a great leader is someone who understands people. They know how to bring out the best in those they lead. To bring out the best in those you lead, you will want to become familiar with an old psychological concept called the Enneagram.
The Enneagram basically states that most humans have one of nine personality types. When you understand these personality types, you will be able to understand the thought process of many people. While some people are highly energetic, others will be calm and laid back. Some people will be sociable, while others will be loners. Some people are determined to win, while winning isn’t important to others. Understanding the Enneagram can help you avoid the personality clashes that are so prevalent in many teams and organizations. This system is very old, and has existed for thousands of years.
Despite this, it is a timeless system that continues to work. Once you understand the different personalities of those you lead, you will be able to place them in positions where you can maximize their capabilities. If you know that two people have personality types that would probably cause them to clash, you can find a way to separate them from each other so that they do not disrupt the flow of your group. While the Enneagram is sufficient for small groups, it is not so easy to use when you lead a large number of people. An example of this would be someone who is the CEO of a large company. It is impossible for them to know the personality types of everyone that works for them. However, this doesn’t stop them from having the Enneagram used by their supervisors or middle managers in different departments.
