(Photo cred to Tuskey Dressage)
Why is it we always want to jump to the end of everything! We don’t allow ourselves OR our teams to learn. This is something that has been causing quite a bit of conversation in our family lately. We are meeting with alot of young people who are struggling because they don’t know what they want to be an so many companies are requiring them to be an expert before they start!
Most of us who are in our 40’s and older started at companies and were taught the skills we needed to do the jobs. We didn’t ‘know’ everything when we started, fewer and fewer organizations are allowing people to grow into jobs. This can be both good and bad as it often means that you are missing out on someone who might be really good at the job if you gave them a few months to learn!
As leaders we often follow this mentality as well with our teams, we expect people to be instantly good leaders and forget that we didn’t start off knowing what we know. We had to learn and grow into our positions!
What IF (stay with me here), what if we found someone who seemed to have some skills and we invested in them? Taught them how to be a good leader, how to lead a team, how to handle conflicts? Taught them the skills they needed to be good leaders and then allowed them to expand their leadership skills in small but impact-full ways? Mentoring another member of the team or leading a small project? Not only could we guide but they would have the chance to learn!
Today your exercise is to find someone on your team who you think might make a good leader. Setup a meeting with them and then help them find small ways they can lead within your organization. Allow them to fail, allow them to succeed and guide them along the way! I promise you, you won’t be disappointed!
Leadership Simplified 