Leveraging Your Results Through People

SUMMARY

Delegation is something that a lot of leaders do poorly because they subconsciously are staying safe. It's not that they don't want to give away the work, because if you look at it logically, they are really busy.

What I want to do this week is help you by stepping you through some different ways of thinking and doing so that you can learn how to pass the baton to others.

People like to follow leaders who own up to their mistakes, capitalise on what they have learned from them, and pass those lessons on.

So, how do you become an influential leader?

1. Break free of the performance trap.

2. Go from performance management to performance coaching.

3. Be purposeful in your delegation.

So, it is being able to allow your team to build that muscle with you as their guide and getting to the point then when they're able to do it without your support. This is what releases energy for you to be able to do other things that you're currently not getting done.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you a leader who finds it hard to delegate things to people in your team? Do you hold on to them, yet you end up not having enough time to get everything done anyway, and you tell yourself that you are so flat out and busy?

Well, you're in the majority.

What I want to do this week is help you look at a totally different way of getting results.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to round off our conversation with the 9 crucial shifts that every leader needs to take by helping you to leverage your results through others.

As you move into the area of people leadership, you need to have a different set of skills to help others to work together. And that collective becomes what you are producing as a team.

To do this, you need to make a shift — from looking at how you get your results by doing things yourself to getting the results that you want through others.

How you look and feel about yourself — your abilities, insecurities, and uncertainties — has a major impact on your ability to delegate and lead others to get things done.

You fail to delegate to others because of a lack of trust. You think that if they don't do well enough, it's now going to be looked on as "you" not doing well.

Those three universal fears of not being enough, not belonging, and not being liked or loved pop up again. Therefore, when you are outsourcing the performance to others, you have the tendency of subconsciously thinking that this is watering down your ability to control whether people accept you or not.

Delegation is something that a lot of leaders do poorly because they subconsciously are staying safe.

What I want to do this week is help you by stepping you through some different ways of thinking and doing so that you can learn how to pass the baton to others.

During the earlier years of my career, when someone looked like they could do what I did, I didn't want to give them opportunities to do that because of the way I felt about myself and my low self-worth.

Nowadays, that's my goal: I want all the people that I work with — my team and clients — to become better than me. The reason I'm okay with that now is that I'm not threatened by it; I'm inspired by it.

So, as a leader, the first thing you can learn to do is to develop your powerful influencing skills.

I'm talking about becoming a leader that inspires others to want to do things. Becoming a leader that inspires others by lighting a fire within them, and not under them. A leader who can be vulnerable. A leader who is real and authentic.

Those are the kind of leaders that people want to follow.

So, how do you become an influential leader?

1. Break free of the performance trap.

You need to remember that you are not doing things to get approval. You're doing them for the benefit of all: for you, others, and the greater good.

2. Go from performance management to performance coaching.

You need to become a coach and a mentor as your methodology when dealing with people. There's nothing worse than your team members having to wait for a year to get in a room with you and just go through a tick-and-flick performance review. You need to have a relationship of mentoring with your team where it's okay for them to make mistakes.

3. Be purposeful in your delegation.

I teach a simple three-step process:

• Watch me do it.
• I'm going to watch you do it.
• You do it. Then, I will give you some feedback.

So, it is being able to allow your team to build that muscle with you as their guide and getting to the point then when they're able to do it without your support. This is what releases energy for you to be able to do other things that you're currently not getting done.

It's been said that "Leadership hasn't even taken place until you create another leader."

Doing these things and passing on the baton doesn't mean that you are now less than others. It means that you have been able to influence another person (or another group of people) to be able to work with you so that, collectively, you can do even more and have a greater impact on the world.

Well, that's it from me for this week. In fact, that's a wrap on the series on "The 9 Crucial Shifts".

I look forward to continuing this journey with you, whether it's here online or whether I'm actually working with you.

I look forward to being with you again next week.