Management Mess to Leadership Success Challenge 21: Allow Others To Be Smart

Do you need to be the smartest person in the room?

What’s it like being in a professional relationship with you? Consider how your colleagues and team members would answer these questions:

• Do you feel better and more encouraged after being with me?
• Are you lifted or diminished from talking to me?
• Can you tell stories without me “one-upping” you?
• Can you share new ideas with me?
• Can you win, or even survive a debate with me, or do I fatigue you to the point of surrender?
• Do I always have to be right, have the final word, and the winning idea?
• Can you feel smart in my presence?
• Do I leave time for others to speak, challenge, or brainstorm?

Ask a peer, a direct report, your leader, your spouse or partner, or a fellow committee member what it’s like to know you. Consider their answers in light of this leadership challenge — do you encourage and allow others to be smart? During the early days of leading the marketing department, I was comfortable with the way we conducted business — direct mail, email, phone calls, face-to-face meetings, a decent website, live preview events, etc. But as time passed, our buyers and influencers were increasingly savvy about sourcing our industry’s solutions through digital channels. It was way past time for me to onboard significant talent to grow our digital capabilities.

We needed to recruit associates from outside the firm to augment our expertise in new strategies like SEO, UX, marketing automation, video production, social media, and the ever-changing landscape that is B2B marketing. I needed to hire specialists who on Day One knew more about their roles than I ever would. We hired some very talented industry professionals with deep expertise in narrow but vital areas and I felt myself becoming less relevant by the day. Or at least that was my perception.

In Liz Wiseman’s profound leadership book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, she invites leaders to assess several key questions: Are you the genius, or the genius maker? Are you a Multiplier (someone who uses their intelligence to bring out the best in others), or a Diminisher (the “smartest person in the room” who shuts everyone else down)?

Dr. Covey endorsed few books in his lifetime and wrote the foreword to even fewer. I’m proud of him for penning Liz’s foreword. This book is a masterpiece on understanding our natural tendency as leaders to always have the answers. I can honestly attribute changing my leadership style to her book. I chose to step back and empower this team of geniuses to run with their strengths. As a result, they grew our digital presence to best- of-class (all while I confused Instagram and Pinterest and tried in vain to understand why a buyer would look for us on either). It wasn’t easy to move from being respected as one of the most creative and forward-thinking leaders to just trying to keep up with these new minds, all much younger and, truthfully, much smarter in their areas of expertise.

Plainly stated, before my Multiplier “aha” moment, I didn’t always do a stellar job of empowering my team to lead out, craft strategy, and allocate resources. I maintained my authority and stature by serving as the gatekeeper for who spoke to the CEO and executive team and who didn’t. In hindsight, I probably stifled some creativity and skill development in others and didn’t ignite the level of progress that could have happened, had I been more secure in my own contributions. I learned that my job was not to know everything, but to identify, attract and, most importantly, engage those who did, and take us to the next level. Some will think I succeeded; others will think I failed. Welcome to leadership.

Leaders who struggle with allowing others to be smart are often driven by their ego, insecurities, or a desire to jump in and top any idea. The Marketing Division at FranklinCovey used to have a saying: “The best idea wins — as long as it’s Scott’s.” (It was a joke, I hope, and I’d like to keep it that way.) Here are three skills you can use to empower and engage others to showcase their creativity, experience, and perspectives:

• Consider the percentage of time you spend talking versus listening. This means more than just “hearing” the other person — more than the physics and mechanism of absorbing, interpreting, and making meaning from sound. I’m talking about really listening — applying focused attention to the other person and what they’re saying. Listening is not just hearing, but understanding and caring about what is said.

• Decide when to be the expert with the “right” answer, and when to allow your team to work through the process of coming up with it themselves. Many leaders assume their job is to provide the right answer as quickly as possible. Often that’s the case. But sometimes it’s more important that your team struggle with the process of getting there themselves so their capacity to do it again is increased.

Step back from being the driver of the discussion. Ask someone on your team to take the lead.

Excerpted with permission from Mango Publishing from “Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow” by Scott Miller (Mango Publishing).