Developing the Leaders Around You Ch 4

Nurturing Potential Leaders

• Organizations often fail to develop leadership potential due to solely focusing on compensation. Successful organizations nurture employees beyond just pay, transforming lives.

Identifying and Building Potential Leaders

• BEST strategy (Believe, Encourage, Share, Trust): Crucial for initial development, this framework helps leaders guide their employees' growth, promoting a strong foundation.
• Nurturing creates a strong emotional and professional foundation within potential workers, laying the groundwork for future leadership training.

Modeling Leadership

• Modeling: A leader's actions demonstrate ethical behavior and work ethic. Critical component in development process.
• Modeling leadership: Involves demonstrating leadership qualities, including strong work ethic, responsibility, character, openness, consistency, communication, and trust in individuals.
• Emulating models: Picking leaders to emulate is crucial.
• Finding appropriate models: Leaders must choose models whose character and credibility align with their aspirations.

Choosing a Leadership Model

• Does the model's life deserve emulation? Focuses on character.
• Does the model's life have credibility in the specific field? Focuses on the possibility the individual has gained recognition in the field of leadership.
• Identifying the model's key strengths: What about the model's life exemplifies a worthy model?
• Does the model foster the growth of other leaders? Consider their values and leadership priorities.
• Is the model's strength reproducible? Leaders must consider if their own characteristics match the strengths of the model.
• Developing and demonstrating the strength: Having a plan to implement or adapt the strength into one's life.

Mentoring Relationships

• Strategic questioning: Asking planned questions for personal growth, prior to meetings.
• Realistic expectations: Mentoring is focused on improvement, not perfection.
• Humble learner: Adopting a subordinate position when learning new skills from the mentor.
• Respectful distance: Respecting the mentor while maintaining critical thinking ability.
• Immediate assimilation: Implementing new knowledge into daily life as soon as possible,
• Organized sessions: Maintaining disciplined communication and topic focus between mentor and mentee during sessions.
• Mutual reward: Mentor's reward is the mentee's growth and progress.

Building Trust

• Importance of trust: Trust is the foundation of any strong personal or professional relationship, critical to leadership.
• Maintaining trust: Leaders can damage trust through actions like broken promises, gossip, information withholding, and dishonesty. Requires consistent action and reinforcement.
• Building trust elements: Trust is built through specific actions, such as taking time to listen and provide feedback. Leaders must be respectful, demonstrate unconditional positive regard for the person, show sensitivity, offer encouragement, and maintain a consistency of action.

Show Transparency

• Admitting mistakes: Successful leaders admit mistakes and handle consequences. Transparency fosters trust.
• Taking responsibility: Leaders who take responsibility for their actions inspire admiration, respect, and trust.
• Avoiding blame: Transparency and honesty is valued over blaming others.

Offering Time

• Investing time: Providing planned time is essential for nurturing, not just sporadic interactions.
• Investing in training/mentoring: Scheduling time for training sessions, one-on-one mentoring, and focused meetings are vital.

Believing in People

• Motivational impact: Believing in people motivates them and unlocks their potential.
• Promoting growth: Encourage growth and success based on expectations, not criticism.
• Hiring vs. connecting: Leaders must win people over, not simply hire them.

Giving Encouragement

• Vitality of encouragement: Leaders must provide outside encouragement for individuals to propel themselves forward.
• Praise and recognition: Acknowledge and reward efforts, especially those demonstrating potential improvement.
• Personalized approach: Tailoring encouragement to each individual's unique needs and motivators.

Exhibiting Consistency

• Establishing trust: Consistent actions build individuals' confidence in leaders.
• Predictability: Consistency allows others to foresee how the leader will respond in different situations.

Holding Hope High

• Essential role of hope: Hope fosters morale and self-image, encouraging individuals to keep trying.
• Leader's responsibility: Leaders must cultivate and maintain hope in their teams.
• **Positive attitude:**Maintaining a hopeful attitude allows the leader to instill hope in those under them.

Adding Significance

• Importance of meaning: Individuals value their work's significance and impact.
• Identifying personal dreams: Inspiring others to identify and pursue their dreams is a vital leadership activity.
• Connecting contributions to the larger organization's impact: Demonstrating the significance of each individual's contribution.

Providing Security

• Removing fear and anxiety: Nurturing leaders create a developmentally safe and secure environment, encouraging risk-taking.
• Fostering confidence: The result of cultivating security among potential leaders is an improvement in confidence among the team.
• Enhancing performance: Encouraging potential increases productivity.

Rewarding Production

• Affirming effort: Rewarding production encourages positive work ethic and motivates higher achievements.

Establishing a Support System

• Providing necessities: A supportive environment offers vital emotional, skill, financial, equipment, and personnel support.
• Prioritizing high performers: Focus especially on the individuals producing the most, supporting them more heavily.

Discerning Potential

• Identifying needs: Recognizing strengths and weaknesses allows leaders to match each person with appropriate assignments and environments.
• Matching personality to opportunity: Selecting potential leaders whose values and aspirations align with the leader's vision.
• Developing growth plans: Providing individualized support to individuals to facilitate maximum personal and professional growth.
• Evaluating progress: Feedback and course correction measures are essential for developing individuals.