The great entrepreneur, author, and speaker Jim Rohn remarked, “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
Normally, I agree with nearly everything Jim Rohn says. But, in this case, I believe that someone who is working for a Great Leader may be able to take exception to this quote.
Great Leaders have the unique ability to implement their plans for the attainment of their goals in ways that promote the growth and advancement of their followers. They recognize that with the privilege of leadership comes the responsibility to nurture the talents of those that they lead and to help the individuals on their teams grow both personally and professionally.
A Great Leader of my acquaintance used a method he called “Demonstrate/Alternate” to nurture and cultivate the skills of those he lead. He would first demonstrate how to handle a situation, encouraging the person that he was training to ask questions when they later reviewed the situation and how it was handled. Then, he would have the person he had trained deal with that situation the next time it arose. When he critiqued how the person had dealt with the situation, he would begin by asking “what do you feel you did well?”; “what would you do differently if you could do it all over again?” Only then would he offer his comments of what went well and what might be done differently.
If you want to be a Great Leader, seek out opportunities to help the members of your team grow. Provide those who choose to follow your lead with opportunities to learn by doing and promote their achievements to others who can help them grow and advance.
If you are one who follows the lead of another, you are not absolved of responsibility for your own career growth and advancement. Help your leader become a Great Leader by asking for chances to learn; first, by watching and then by doing. Take the initiative, set your goals, and create a plan that will help you reach those goals. If you do … and if you help your leader become a Great Leader … you just might find that, together, you accomplish far more than either of you thought possible.
Tom Hoisington is a speaker, trainer, and author whose goal is to provide leaders and potential leaders with tools that empower them to build teams that are creative and cost effective along with a clearer understanding of how personality types interact within those teams. He can be contacted at tom.hoisington@eagleoneresources.com