As a leader, the impact that you can personally have is limited. You can effectively devote your time to only so many people. Beyond that, you’re effectiveness will dwindle. The key here is to spot the leaders with great potential and reproduce yourself by teaching them everything that you know. This gives you the opportunity to multiply and maximize your leadership. Here are a few tips on how to achieve this:
Learn to Identify People who Have Natural Leadership Ability
As you lead your teams, it’s important to be able to identify which of them carry natural leadership. These are the people who naturally have influence within the team or organization. This skill is not determined by a position or title. It’s a natural gift and will be in effect regardless of whether or not the individual has a high or low position on the team. Another way to spot these individuals is by the results they deliver and the rapport they carry with other team members. These people naturally gain the respect of others because of their ability to deliver well. They’re also very relationally skilled and quickly earn trust. Learning to identify this potential is a very key first step.
Learn to Value Those Natural Leaders
If you’re going to be the best leader you can be and duplicate yourself, you have to decide to not be threatened by the promising leaders that are rising up underneath you. Once you’ve spotted individuals with naturally leadership capacity, it’s your job to raise them up and let them shine. Unfortunately many leaders end up becoming threatened by the talent underneath them and try to suffocate it in an attempt to keep themselves on top. This is very poor leadership. Good leaders value and invest in those that have leadership potential. After all, how are you going to reproduce yourself and maximize your effectiveness if you’re not valuing and investing in those that come after you?
Test Their Character
So, a few people on your team show signs of natural leadership. How can you tell if they are ready to be elevated? Well, the best thing to do is to test the waters without even mentioning what type of role you’ve considered moving them into. Delegate a few responsibilities to them and see how they deliver when they don’t have a clue you’re planning to elevate them. You don’t want them to do a good job just because they think they’ll be promoted, you want them to do a good job based on their drive to deliver good results no matter what. The results of this test will give you a great picture of who your true leadership candidates are.
