You don’t have to be the smartest in your team to lead
Many of us often feel that we have to be the best and smartest in our team to lead our team. But we often fail to recognise this: The smartest person might not be the best leader.
No one can be the best at everything. The best companies in the world are not built by a single individual, but by a team of smart people with different expertise that complement each other.
Why then are we so concerned that we can’t take on leadership positions simply because we feel that we are not as skilled as other teammates?
Often, as leaders, some of us might have Imposter Syndrome. We feel that we are not as capable as our colleagues make us out to be. We feel that we need to be the best at what we do to be qualified to lead.
That is the wrong definition of what makes a good leader.
Good leaders are not the most capable nor are they the best planners — but one key trait they possess is that they genuinely care for people.
When things go wrong, they don’t just ask, “Why did it go wrong?” or get down to fix the issue right away, but they focus on caring for the employees, asking questions like, “I saw that something was amiss. Are you ok? How can I help?”
Good leaders are often the best supporters and listeners. They know how to guide, inspire and support their teammates so that everyone can reach their best potential.
Retired US Air Force colonel, leadership consultant and author Lee Ellis wrote that “leaders need to be listening to the ideas and insights from people at the lower levels”, which “requires time and patience and a positive belief in the power and capacity of others”.
According to Harvard Business Review, employees who feel personally and consistently supported and listened to are more likely to pay individual attention to not only their customers and colleagues but also the work they do. It actually empowers them to want to do their work better because we show that we value their expertise.
Great leaders care about their team’s well-being as much as their progress. They motivate the team by being lavish with their praises — just like how fuel primes the engine before they run for miles.
Once you can do this, you will have the smartest and the best people working for you.
Hire people smarter than you to build the best team.
Steve Jobs once said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Visionary automaker Lee Iacocca also had similar sentiments. “I hire people brighter than me and get out of their way.”
In the age of the knowledge worker — people whose main capability is to think for a living, so that they can plan, analyse and contribute to the knowledge economy — the top-down hierarchical management style would no longer work, especially when your employees know much more than you do.
Management expert Peter Drucker has this advice for managers: “Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.”
Empower your employees to make decisions because they often know best. At our online travel magazine TripCanvas, which I co-founded, our various country editors guide, train and empower our writers to make editorial decisions, such as choosing feature images, titles, and the nitty-gritty information in the articles.
Most of the time, our writers know best as they are the ones on the ground, observing our readers’ needs, researching the necessary information and putting them together. They would then be able to let our editors know what works best, and our editors, in turn, trust our writers to make the decisions. And if mistakes are made, writers would also have the sense of ownership to correct the mistakes on their own.
Giving team members autonomy and asking them for their opinions also show that we value their input and expertise.
Former editor of Harvard Business Review, Karen Dillon, wrote, “When I finally focused on being a real leader, instead of a nervous new manager, I started asking my colleagues how we could best get the work done rather than simply figuring it out by myself. I think it signaled to them that I cared about their opinion and expertise, and that I was not assuming I was a one-man band.”
Empowering our writers to make decisions also enables our editors to be able to spend more time on planning strategic editorial direction and mentoring to-be editors, instead of spending excessive time on making minor day-to-day decisions, which are often reversible.
Decision fatigue can be crippling for leaders and can lead to the downfall of the organisation.
Empower your leaders to delegate minor decision-making tasks, so that they can spend more energy on more strategic decisions — they are hired to be leaders, not micromanagers.
And if you are holding a key leadership position, remember this — those that you promote to leadership positions should not be those that are most capable of getting their job done, but those that are best at making sure their team members get their jobs done.
And if you are a team leader, remember that you are in your position not because you are the most skilled in the team, but because you have the heart and the ability to support and care for your team to bring them to greater heights.
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Co-written and edited by Candice Neo.
