Recently I had a Dealer tell me that he needed to find a leader who could do the work of 10 people. My reply was; that is a sad statement because I feel instead you should be looking for a leader who can develop 10 people into greatness. In other words, the law of multiplication; Multiply your leaders and you multiple your dealership growth.
The Multiplication Theory:
One of the greatest gifts a leader can give others is to lift them up to a higher level of achievement and personal growth. The problem with too many people in leadership positions is that they want to lift themselves up above their people.
What is your leadership agenda? To lift up yourself or lift up your people? It’s a great question. In fact, when I conduct leadership workshops we, as a team, work through this process and identify two kinds of leaders – leaders who have followers and leaders who develop leaders.
Leaders who only have followers have a problem because history shows us that this will wear out quickly. In fact, if you’re a leader and all you have is followers, your business can only grow to a certain level because you’re the one that’s doing everything. But if you begin to develop leaders on your team and they begin to help you, many hands make light work; and all of a sudden the work cannot only grow beyond you, as far as your own gifts and abilities as a leader, but it can grow beyond you when you leave that position to bigger one, and that’s what we’re really striving for.
True leaders grow people. However, the caveat in this is that it requires a “growing” leader in order to actually grow others. Ask yourself this question; when was the last time your managers actively participated in a leadership workshop in order to equip them with proper leadership knowledge tools showing them the techniques required to lead and grow their people? If your answer is “not for a long time” or worse, “never”, then you are stifling your corporate growth and inhibiting the growth of your people.
If you are interested in a few ideas on this subject for the preparation of the growth of your team members – send me an email and I will send you a couple of directives.
Keep Growing Yourself and Your Team!!!