Leadership on a team and the talent a leader attracts go hand-in-hand.
Highly talented team members seek to work under the guidance of an experienced, confident, and strategic leader who puts the team above their own self-interests.
A leader worth their salt spends an enormous amount of time investing in team members, coaching them up, and enabling their success.
As team members develop and grow as contributors and leaders in their own right, they often develop strengths, skills, and experience far above those of the team leader. Good leaders view this as a tribute to their coaching skills and not as a threat to their self-security.
Some of those team members will be promoted to elevated roles in the organization, while others will go on to find themselves in similar organizations playing the role of team leader.
Interestingly, the possibility that the current team leader will someday report to a former report increases with their own skills at developing others.
Good leaders relish developing and nurturing a team member to such a high level of skill and polish that they get promoted above them. This is among the highest accolades of development.
But, of course, this reality is hard to accept for some leaders, largely because their egos and vanity can’t handle it.
Those who find this possibility insulting, threatening, or highly unattractive often view their seniority and experience as irreplaceable. They lose sight of the big picture and focus only on the perceptions of others who don’t value the qualities of great leadership.
The best leaders don’t think this way or allow self-identity issues to cloud their thinking. The very job of leadership is to attract, retain, and develop talent to such a high level as to make the leader superfluous.
A healthy exercise recommended for every team leader is an honest assessment of the current team with an eye toward maturity and leadership development.
Who on the current team can you envision working for one day? For those not on the list, what are they missing that perhaps can be developed over time?
If the list is empty, a leader must look in the mirror and ask why. Do they need to coach and develop their team members more aggressively, or is their own self-worth overwhelming their obligation as a leader?
Self-importance can be debilitating for anyone, but especially for leaders. True learning and leadership require people to suffer an injury to their self-esteem at times. Leadership is not a trumpet call to self-importance. It is a rallying cry to help make people the best they can be.
In the best scenarios, team members rise far above their leader. That’s a great thing.
