I’ve spent years being part of, and at times leading, high performance leadership teams. In fact, my favorite part of leadership is raising up leaders, giving them a platform and letting them run. When you pick the right leaders, the results are nothing less than magical. The right leaders on a team will always accomplish more than what you could on your own.
Here’s a secret to lasting leadership: Your greatest impact as a leader is through raising up other leaders.
Tip #1: Start with Why
Leading and developing a leadership team is more than increasing your company or ministry’s productivity, it’s about developing people who can develop people. People are the mission, and if we mistake productivity for the mission, we’ll make premature and poorly executed choices for the sake of just getting more done. A Leadership Team must first start with a commitment to the leaders on that team, that will transfer down to the leaders they lead, and will affect the guests and members that your organization serves.
A Leadership Team exists to create leaders and expand influence in unimaginable ways, far and exceedingly above what a single leader could accomplish.
Tip #2: Trust is essential
Overlook this truth, and you’ll be setting yourself up for months, maybe years, of leadership frustration. You simply cannot elevate leaders to a platform of influence unless you trust them. I’m mean trust them. This means you’ve seen them be faithful in the small things, have a natural following, and have been effective in their current areas of leadership. Trust cannot be overstated. Do not pass this step. Do not promote based on need but passion. Value character over competency. Skills can be taught, character takes much longer to develop.
Tip #3: Find people you really like being around
Character is essential, competency is important, but chemistry falls somewhere in between. If you’ve ever worked for or with someone you didn’t really enjoy (who hasn’t?), then you can imagine the challenges that would come from bringing that kind of person into your inner circle No amount of competency can offset an unlikeable personality or simply an individual you regularly collide with.
You don’t have to be best friends with everyone on your leadership team, but you need to be confident that you’d be willing to go to war with these people. You’ll spend a lot of time in the trenches together, making likability an important factor.
This article originally appeared here.
