Scott Eblin is an executive coach, a speaker, a blogger and the author of “The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success.” You can learn more about him and read his blog at Eblin Group. Or follow him on Twitter: @scotteblin.
This is the second post in a series exploring how to improve your leadership presence in 2012. Read the first post on how to get your New Year’s leadership resolutions back on track. To assess the state of your leadership skills, check out Eblin’s free leadership self-assessment, based on his book “The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success.”
A big part of my work as a coach involves working with high-potential leaders in workshops, keynotes and webinars. One of my favorite questions to ask these audiences is, “How many of you think of yourselves or have been referred to by others as the ‘go-to person?’ ” Usually, about every hand in the room goes up. I asked that question as a flash poll in a webinar recently, and 98% of the 400-plus managers and executives on the line affirmed that they are the go-to people.
It’s not surprising, really. Most people who end up in leadership roles have built a reputation for being go-to people.
So what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all when you’re on your way up. Being the person who’s known for getting stuff done is a great way to build your reputation and career. Chances are, though, that you’re eventually going to reach the point at which operating as the go-to person is simply no longer sustainable. The scope of work gets too broad and complex for one go-to person to take things over and heroically save the day.
To grow as a leader, you have to let go of being the go-to person and pick up the profile of being the person who builds a team of go-to people.
How do you do that? Here are some ideas.
- Allow and encourage your team to become an expert in the things in which you’ve been an expert.
- Raise your comfort level for letting go of what you’ve been doing and your team’s for picking up responsibilities by establishing regular check points. (For more ideas on how to do that, read this post.)
- Coach your team to come up with its own way of doing things rather than giving your team the answers.
Need more ideas on how to make the shift from go-to person to builder of a team of go-to people? Watch this video.
Want more information? Don’t forget to take Eblin’s free leadership self-assessment, which takes about five minutes and gives you a picture of how you stack up on three key components of leadership presence: personal, team and organizational.
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While I understand the distinction that is being made here but I think the question used to establish this idea is misleading. My organization develops transformational leadership programs by assembling a group of "positive deviant" leaders and conducting a short group interview that "discovers" their secret sauce. All of these folks are great leaders in the sense meant in the post of being able to delegate. If you asked them if they are the "go to" people in the organization, they would universally say "yes" though they would mean that they are the Go To Leaders in that they get things done quickly and well by leading others into high performance. Maybe the question should be: "Are you the Go To LEADERS of your organization?" I think everyone would raise their hand, but not mean they did the work.
Also, leaders can't delegate until a good foundation has been established. In our experience, leadership is much more about building a compelling sense of purpose for their teams so everyone is aligned, and a clear path to mastery so everyone is good at their jobs. Once everyone on the team is going in the same direction and can be trusted to get the work done, delegation is a natural and easy function. However, these aren't trivial capabilities that a simple prescription for more delegation suggests. Our programs typically take about 6 months, but at the end of them, every leadership candidate is a great "go to" transformational leader including delegating, but much more as well.
[...] smartblogs.com, Scott Eblin recently explored how to improve your leadership presence by honestly assessing your own skills. Mr. Eblin, an [...]
[...] Want to grow as a leader? Let go of being the “go-to person” (Scott Eblin, SmartBlog on Leadership) [...]
To 'let go', you need to delegate effectively; here's my blog post on effective delegation: http://bit.ly/Koc82D