Effective leaders are team builders. They have the ability to identify and recruit talent and then maximize that talent to move the organization ahead. In his landmark study Good to Great, that looked at what made good companies great, Jim Collins has famously observed that the most successful leaders got the right people on the bus and then got them in the right seats. The leader started with assembling the 'right' team, placed each team member in a position that maximized their talent, and then headed in the direction of success.
Unfortunately, many people in leadership positions either don't take the time or don't have the talent to identify the best people. This can happen for a variety of reasons: cronyism, expediency, reactive and desperate hiring, a lack of insight and/or training, and a variety of other reasons. The bottom line is that for an organization to move forward, to make the jump to great, it MUST have a leader that has the skill and the courage to surround themselves with the people that will enhance each other's efforts. In the end, it is all about how the team functions as a single unit.
When he was assembling the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team, Coach Herb Brooks famously stated that he was not looking for the best players, he was looking for the right players. The rest is history: the team upset the Soviet National team in the semi-finals and went on to win the Gold Medal with a collection of (at the time) no name college hockey players. Brooks understood that he needed to assemble a team, not just a collection of super stars. Contrast this with the 2004 US Olympic Basketball team that was a who's who of NBA stars at he time and finished a very disappointing third place (Bronze Medal). The group never gelled as a team and played throughout the Olympics as a group of individuals.
The effective leader is a team builder, talent scout, and orchestra conductor who can assemble talent, accentuate each individual's talent, and move the organization from good to great!
No comments:
Post a Comment