One of the most common challenges faced by business people is their difficulty to find and retain good people.
I believe the key to overcoming this challenge is a renewed focus on specific leadership development.
The fact is, leaders do not just emerge because they get to a certain age, or because they serve for a certain length of time in a technical or managerial role.
When you find an organisation that keeps producing excellent leaders, you can guarantee one thing – that there is an empowering leader at the helm – a leader with the desire and ability to release those around them into their potential.
The 7 essential qualities of an empowering leader:
- The relationship skills to develop trust and connect well with people
- The capacity to see potential in people not just their mistakes (the gold not just the dirt around it)
- The heart to care enough to inspire people, to speak into their potential and enable them to rise to be their best
- The courage to appropriately be tough and confront people to deal with limiting beliefs, complacency or laziness
- The patience to train, encourage and correct people as they try and fail on the way to learning new skills
- The security to give opportunity for young leaders to grow and become successful within the organisation.
- The wisdom to be aware of the vital need for the next generation of leaders to emerge
I remember a friend of mine complaining to me about the lack of good people in his organisation. He was convinced that the quality of the people around him was poor. When I visited his organisation a few weeks later and met some of his team I became a little confused. I saw potential leaders everywhere. He had not trained himself to see the gold but had decided to focus on the dirt. He was not an empowering leader and his organisation never grew strong.
Do you wish you had strong emerging leaders in your business? The long term positive answer is far more about you learning to be a leader who can raise up others than about always trying to import someone who is already fully trained and ready to go. (Such people rarely exist and are often a disappointment if you do find them).
How do you rate on the 7 qualities above? Can I suggest you ask someone who knows you well enough to tell you the truth, and have the courage to get some coaching in the areas where you are weak.
I’d love to hear your feedback to this article. Let me know what you are thinking in the box below.
