Recognize greatness within others and build safe spaces that allow others to cultivate the courage to lead.
To say the COVID-19 pandemic delivered cataclysmic amounts of disruption is somewhat of an understatement. Four years out and we're still not yet in a place to evaluate the transformative impact the pandemic has had on the lives of people, but it’s clear that the working world will never be the same.
Whether business leaders are cognizant of it or not, every organization has endured a transformative moment; one driven by fundamental shifts in the employee/employer relationship and one underpinned by accelerated new ways of working. While leaders ponder how nascent megatrends including hybrid work (in-home/on-the-jobsite mix) and augmented amounts of technology will influence their workforce, employees can prepare now for the future of work. One that is more human, borderless and defined by teaming.
Work as a concept is fundamentally changing. Defined by increased complexity, fast-moving change and the rise of the intra-connected organization, the likelihood that one single individual can effectively solve challenges and deliver value in a vacuum is next to nothing. The new imperative is the ideal team multiplier – the individual that unleashes greatness within others, connects people with ideas and in the process, realizes exponential satisfaction. So, regardless of title or function, we can all transform our mindset to focus away from high-performer to highest-performing team.
Recognize greatness within others
In Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, we see how true leaders use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. Multipliers work to elevate people’s strengths and are great people leaders because they’ve cleared out their own agenda and are true team players.
It’s time to take this concept a step further – we should not only see strengths, but we should seek and draw out greatness in each other. When we pause to take the time to learn about others, their stories, their struggles and their celebrations – we can begin to see people for who they are, not who we want them to be, or who they should be in context of a role/position. When we see greatness in each other – we will see how such greatness can flow into a team’s algorithm.
Create safety for all
In The Fearless Organization, we learn that the best teams are those that have high levels of psychological safety. Too often we overlook the business value of “safe spaces,” these are environments where everyone feels comfortable to share their perspective, ideas and thoughts. But, the highest performing teams don’t draw the line around such inputs to work – to get to the highest levels of psychological safety, we must be open, empathetic and cognizant of the fact that people are…people; and not robots. The concept of “leave that at home,” is beyond old-school at this point, it’s bad for business.
There’s nothing stopping each of us from becoming a transformative leader. Even the most progressive organizations can fail to recognize and celebrate leadership in each and every team member as it tends to imply a false equivalency to senior roles. There’s nothing stopping us from speaking up to recognize a team member in a middle of a call, or in fact, recognizing something great about all team members in a middle of a call.
