Great leaders collect talent.
The more talent that exists on the team, the more potential there is to do great work. Like all good curators, good leaders not only select talent but also nurture and develop it.
They keep the collection of team members current and up to date by constantly reassessing what skills and expertise need to be added or deepened to achieve long-term success.
Just as art curators select, organize, and grow their collections, leaders do this with human and financial resources. But not all curation is equal. Because curation is the act of collecting value, it depends on the standards and insights of the curator.
Just as a museum curator must know and distinguish between the value of antiquities or a library curator must understand the importance and rarity of books for their special collection, a leader must use their experience and tacit knowledge to collect only the best and most valuable resources.
Accomplished curators carefully and thoughtfully choose what to incorporate into their collection against a standard of quality. The idea of what counts, what is best, what is rare, and what is valuable to others informs any curation.
But applying this idea doesn’t end with collecting talent for good leaders. The best leaders bring this metaphor to their everyday work as they curate models, experts, documents, places, best practices, messages, wisdom, and anything else that can maximize effectiveness and point others toward higher quality.
To help them lead others, they are constantly searching for new things to place inside their collections. Leaders are collectors of everything that people ask for and depend on in their work.
The best emails, proposals, presentations, white papers, code, and any other creation that team members produce repetitively. Leaders organize and develop their collections so others can find utility in them.
They share their collections so others can learn from them and know exactly where to go to find quality. Great leaders curate excellence.
What exemplars of excellence should you be curating?
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
