When my first child started to stumble around the house making her valiant attempts to walk I would hold my hands close to protect her from any potential pitfalls that might harm her. Fear for her safety kept me close by as she worked her way through this new stage of life.
Imagine if I still did that as a parent. At 30 years old she would still be stumbling around the house trying to walk on her own. My daughter and her husband have recently created a new stage of life for me – grandparenthood. I love how they choose to include us in their lives and share their hopes and dreams as well as our granddaughter. It gives me peace to understand that our children no longer need us but they want us. I consider this a true testament to love and successful parenting.
Leaders can learn wonderful lessons from parenting. Leaders can measure their greatest success when their people no longer need them but they want them. Letting go continues to be the number one coaching challenge leaders face. I find fear tends to be the prominent reason for not letting go and entrusting others to successfully do the work. Can they do it as well as I can? Can I trust they can do it successfully if I don’t stand over them and watch? Maybe most importantly, what if they don’t need me anymore?
The greatest measure of a leaders success is when they don’t need you anymore. It’s not how many followers you develop; it’s how many leaders you develop that carries the trophy for successful leadership. Without ‘Letting Go’ a leader will sit in the over laden heap of people occupying the throne of leadership strictly by position only.
When we coach leaders to be more coach-like we ask them to consider the great leaders that impacted them over the years and the qualities these leaders possessed. We continually hear about how they trusted, challenged, coached and offered insights that motivated them to excel, many times beyond their own expectations. We call this the Unseen Road. Great leaders will often see something in us that we can’t even see in ourselves. What are you doing to be one of the names that quickly surfaces when others think of great leaders they have had the pleasure of knowing? If we were to conduct a survey of your people what would they’re honest view be about you?
We once worked with an exciting oil and gas company coaching most of their top leaders. Developing future leadership capability was a key initiative for this client. With aging Baby Boomers occupying most of the top leadership spots they wanted to incent executive leaders to define and develop their eventual successors. The Chief Operating Officer created a program for each member of the executive team that allowed them to take a 60 day paid sabbatical. The only requirement for this option was they had to have identified and developed their successor to a point where the executive could leave and the business run successfully without them. And the COO was the first one to take advantage of the offer. Now that’s a great way to know if you have developed your people to the point that they no longer need you but they want you! A great testament to being a sage leader sits in our actions not our words.
Are your people ready? Are you?
