How to Develop People

If you want to understand what is leadership essentially about, reading these 3 powerful sentences by Dr. John C. Maxwell sums it all:

"Only leaders can develop other people to become leaders. A well-intentioned person with no leadership knowledge and experience cannot train another person to lead. Theorist who study leadership without practicing it cannot equip someone to lead, any more than a cookbook reader who has no experience in the kitchen would be able to teach someone how to cook."

If you're in Leadership Level 4 developing other people in your team to become leaders, you may find these few tips useful:

#1 - Recruiting - find the best people possible

• Have a clear picture of who you are looking for. Recruiting a nonleader to be developed in leadership is like asking a horse to climb a tree.
• Use the 4 C's when looking for potential leaders:
• Chemistry - If you don't like the person, you won't be an effective mentor to him or her.
• Character - You won't be able to develop someone whose character you do not trust.
• Capacity - You need to assess a potential leader's capacity in stress management, skill, thinking, leadership and attitude.
• Contribution - Recruit winners who contribute beyond their job responsibilities and lift the performance of everyone on their team.

#2 - Positioning - placing the right people in the right position

• Identify each person's strengths and weaknesses, see how they can fit the needs of the team.
• Help them discover and build upon their strengths, that's where they have the most potential to grow.

#3 - Modeling - showing other how to lead

• As a leader, you will reproduce who you are.
• Have your mentee beside you as often as possible so that they can learn how you think and act in various situations.

#4 - Equipping - helping others do their jobs well

• The five-step equipping process:
• I do it.
• I do it and you are with me.
• You do it and I am with you.
• You do it.
• You do it and someone is with you.

#5 - Developing - teaching them to do life well

• When you're leading and developing someone, assess the person's weaknesses and wrong thinking to strengthen and help him to succeed.
• Challenge them in the areas of their lives where you see that they need improvement.
• Support and help them navigate through life's difficulties.

#6 - Empowering - enabling people to succeed

• Help people to see what they can do without your help, and releasing them to do it.
• When you believe in people, you motivate them.
• Hold people accountable with goals and deadlines. Without accountability, people drift.

#7 - Measuring - evaluating those whom you develop to maximize their efforts

• Games aren't won according to what the coach knows, but what the players have learned.
• Measure people's learning based on how independently they are able to function without your inputs.

Being good at developing people will increase the growth of your organization as more leaders are born within. If you don't develop people, you'll be the only one carrying the burden of growing your organization.