Leading Leaders

Not everyone you lead will be a follower. Sometimes #beingaleader means you have to lead leaders. This is a different level of leadership and requires a different skill set, mindset and demeanor.

You cannot treat other leaders as followers but rather co-voyagers on a journey. They are already people of vision, inner strength and motivation. You may not even need to inspire them as they are already on your team to get a specific job or project done. They are all in. They just need the guidance that you can provide.

So how do you lead / guide high quality, high capacity, high throttle people with high expectations? My experience is that you just have to simply sharpen their focus and then let them run. But demand a lot from them. Challenge them. They already are high capacity people but they can easily go off the rails into non-focused activity. Your job is to just be the conductor. Someone who is steering this race car.

#Beingaleader of leaders means you can’t hold the bridle too tight. Leaders will chafe at the restraints. Sometimes you have to push them so that they achieve even more than they thought possible or even experienced before but they just need the challenge.

I’ve heard many times from leaders who don’t want to ask that person to join the team because that person is already very busy and doing a lot and/or leading other projects. My response is two-fold: you should never make that decision for other people. Instead, you should challenge them with the “big ask” if you need them on your team. Secondly, I tend to want busy people on my team because they are busy for a reason. I’m not convinced that I want non-busy on my teams. At least not if I need them to lead others. They are often not busy for a reason. Instead, I want to challenge and excite them to want to be a part of what is going on, helping them see the vision and burning with desire to be part of the team.

#Beingaleader of leaders comes with its own challenges but it provides you an opportunity to sharpen your skills while achieving goals that otherwise would seem impossible.