Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
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| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 773 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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"TAKE ACTION WITH A CLEAR VISION OF LONG-TERM IMPACT."– DON GULLEY (PART TWO) Last week we looked at being solution-oriented through the experiences of Bob Cardella, Bernie Moreno and Harry Friedman. Their stories shared a common lesson: solving the immediate problem is not enough. A leader should also consider what the solution will create in the future.
Bestselling author, researcher and internationally recognized leadership expert, Liz Wiseman, in her book Multipliers, provides a useful process for doing that. She distinguishes between leaders (Multipliers) who increase the intelligence and capability of the people around them and leaders (Diminishers) who unintentionally create dependence. Her "Multipliers" do not measure their value by how many answers they personally provide. They develop people who can think, contribute and take responsibility.
The process can be viewed in five steps.
1. Listen before you solve.
Coach Wooden wrote, "In my opinion, being an effective leader – one who can build a winning organization – requires being an effective listener." Before supplying an answer, determine what the other person already understands, where help is needed and what capability may already exist. A leader cannot draw out someone else’s intelligence while doing all the talking.
Coach Wooden: "You must listen to others if you want others to listen to you."
2. Ask questions that require thinking.
Wiseman says Multipliers "ask the hard questions that need to be answered … but, most importantly, they don’t answer them." Instead of immediately becoming the Answer Man, ask: What caused the problem? What evidence supports that conclusion? What solutions have you considered? Which do you recommend, and why? What should change so the problem does not happen again?
Coach Wooden: "A leader is interested in finding the best way rather than having his own way."
3. Invest rather than take over.
Wiseman asks leaders, "When something is off the rails, do you take over or do you invest?" Sometimes a leader must step in. An urgent situation may require experience, authority or a quick decision. But intervention should include teaching and development, not simply rescue. The objective is not merely to get through today’s problem; it is to increase the person’s ability to handle tomorrow’s.
4. Return accountability.
This is a critical step. Wiseman writes that Multipliers may jump in to teach and share ideas, "but they always return accountability to the people they are leading." If the leader keeps ownership after the emergency has passed, the temporary rescue can become the normal operating system. People learn to bring problems upward instead of learning to solve them.
Coach Wooden: "A leader makes certain that his followers know they are working with him not for him."
5. Leave room for independent judgment.
Even a leader with a clear vision can become too prescriptive. Wiseman warns that when leaders provide too much of the thinking, people may begin "second-guessing what the boss wants rather than finding answers themselves." A clear vision should guide decisions, not eliminate the need for others to make them.
The long-term test of leadership is simple: What happens when the leader is not in the room?
Being solution-oriented still requires action. Coach Wooden warned, "The worst thing you can do when action is needed is to take no action at all." But the best action does two things at once: it addresses the problem and develops the person.
Take action with a clear vision of long-term impact. Solve today’s problem while preparing someone else to solve the next one.
Reflect on this idea of building Initiative in others. How are you doing? Write it down. Share it with someone on your team.
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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"What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?" H. G. Wells (1866–1946) "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome." Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." John Augustus Shedd (1859–1928) "We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided." Phillips Brooks (1835–1893)
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