Effective leaders are secure enough to admit that they may not be the smartest or most talented person in the room. That really should not matter. What is important is bringing out the best in people even if their best in a particular area is better than your best. The most effective leaders have learned to check their ego at the door!
In his classic work The Magic of Thinking Big, Dr. David J. Schwartz relates the following:
“One time Henry Ford was involved in a libel suit with the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune had called Ford an ignoramus, and Ford said, in effect, “Prove it.”
The Tribune asked him scores of simple questions such as “Who was Benedict Arnold?” “When was the Revolutionary War fought?” and others, most of which Ford, who had little formal education, could not answer.
Finally he became quite exasperated and said, “I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I could find a man in five minutes who does.”
Henry Ford was never interested in miscellaneous information. He knew what every major executive knows: that the ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.”
Ford never had to be the smartest man in the room. Ford was more interested in results and marshaled his resources to get them.
The most effective leader will take inventory of the human resources that are a part of the team, encourage their participation, and give away the credit when things go right and the goal is accomplished.
True leaders are more interested in results than credit!
Excerpt From: David J. Schwartz. “The Magic of Thinking Big.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-magic-of-thinking-big/id917780006
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