Great Leaders Play to Their Strengths
Andy Stanley, author of Making Vision Stick which we’ve previously reviewed in this vlog, writes frequently on leadership. He recently commented on how to deliver more impact as a leader. Key takeaway: Great leaders cut away from their jobs the things at which they’re just average. This provides them with the bandwidth to pursue only activities at which they are truly exceptional.
Please tune in this week as Wayne reviews Stanley’s article and shares his four points for maximizing leadership potential. What do you think? Can you actually have a greater impact by doing LESS? Doesn’t his fly in the face of the typical 80-hour construction work week? Please share your thoughts at [email protected].
Great leaders invest in the people who will lead next. The Contractor Business Boot Camp is a unique leadership program that gives your next-generation, high-potential leaders the skills they need to run a successful construction business. Participants learn from industry experts and peers alike, gaining insight and connections they can use for years. For senior leaders, there is no better investment in your company’s leadership future, so sign up your rising stars today. Our next new class begins in February in Denver, CO. Contact Charlotte at [email protected] to find out more.
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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi, everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about Great Leaders Play to Their Strengths. This is from an article by Andy Stanley via Arlin. And let me just start off how Stanley characterizes the article. "Bottom line, great leadership is about identifying where you create the most value, narrowing your focus around those strengths, and empowering other people to do the same." Beautiful. Love that. I couldn't improve on it at all if I wanted to. So what does Stanley say then? How do great leaders play to their strengths?
Number one, reject the myth of the well-rounded leader. Sure, you can be well-rounded, but are you really good at all the things that you undertake in your business? And really what you should be focusing on, again, getting back to the genius Dan Sullivan all these years ago, you need to be doing the things in the business in which you uniquely are great. What is your unique ability? What is your highest and best use? What are the things specifically that have the biggest impact on your business? And do only those things, eliminating all the others. It's just proven that the more time you spend working in your unique ability talent, the more successful you and your company are going to be.
Stanley says that a fully utilized strength is much greater than a marginally improved weakness. There's the Mickey Rivers and Billy Martin story from the New York Yankees in the 1970s. They had a big fight because Mickey Rivers said he was at spring training to improve his strengths. And Billy Martin said, "No, no, you're here to improve your weaknesses." Turns out that Mickey Rivers was right.
According to the business gurus, the business experts, the writers, the thinkers, Mickey Rivers was right. We are much better focusing, much better off focusing on our strengths versus trying to improve, cover for our weaknesses. Other people have unique abilities where you're weak and that's what you should be looking for in your team. Where this person has unique ability in X, you want to find somebody to compliment that person with unique ability in Y, so they become the perfect team, the perfect functioning unit, if you will. To be a great leader, do only what you can do in your unique ability. You'll be happier too, by the way.
Number two, the less you do, the more you accomplish. Stanley says, "Great leaders narrow their scope of work to focus on the one or two areas at which they are truly exceptional." And to be able to do that, you absolutely have to focus. Think about during the course of the work week, just keep a list sometime. We've talked about a time log. I don't know how many of you have actually done that, but it's really worth doing. Keep a list sometime of all the various things you do during the week and it'll be 100 things or 200 or 500 things. And then go through the list with a highlighter and just figure out among those tasks, among those things, among those activities, where were you truly engaging your highest and best use or your unique ability? And you'll be shocked because 95% of the things you do at work are things that are not utilizing your unique abilities. That's where you want your focus. And again, to have the best team possible, that's where you want your other people to focus as well. What is their unique ability? Stanley says, review your calendar and your calendar will tell you if you're... He said actually your calendar will reveal if you're using your highest and best use and your talents in the right way. Tend to agree with that.
Number three, in order to do what only you can do, you have to be willing to let go. To me, the hardest part about this is you have to learn to say no. None of us in business likes to say no. Somebody says, "Wayne, can you help me with this? Wayne, what are your thoughts on that?" And if I'm really fired up and working in my unique ability, I probably need to say no to a lot of these requests. And you don't have to say no forever. You can say, "No, can we do that Friday? I can't get to that right now, but I'll tell you what, if you talk to John Mayes, Mayes's an expert on that and he can really help you." So there are lots of ways to say no without hurting people's feelings or disappointing them.
Stanley says that leadership requires proactivity, thinking ahead, which requires margin. And if you're go, go, go, go, calendars, jam-packed meeting, "Oh, I'm late for the next meeting. I got to jump in my truck and drive across town," you don't have any margin. And so the only way to have margin in your life is to say no so that you can say yes to the correct things. Instead of saying no to the wrong things, yes to the right things.
And finally, Stanley says that he believes in Maxwell's law of respect. Leaders are attracted to leaders they perceive to be better and more capable than themselves. I think Bundy said this ages ago, "Like attracts like. A players attract A players." That's why McDevitt & Street was so insanely popular. The talent they had in that organization was off-the-charts amazing. Like attracts like.
So, now, how do you determine your unique ability if you haven't undertaken that yet? How do you do it? Well, buy the book Unique Ability by Dan Sullivan and I forget who else, but it's a really simple exercise you can do to let other people help you determine your unique ability. Also, I recommend, of course, joining a peer group. Being in a peer group is so revealing because the people in that room are your intellectual equals. They're your status equals in their companies, in their cities. They're your financial equals in the sense that they too are quite successful. Iron sharpens iron and that's the beauty of the peer group program. There's no secrets. There's no tales untold. It's all on the table for everybody to see. And to the degree that your peers observe that you're not working your unique ability, you're not at your happiest, you're not at your best, you're not at your most productive, they're going to help you understand that and how to say no and how to create space so that you can work more and more in your unique ability.
What do you think? Is Andy Stanley and Wayne Rivers nutty? I mean, are we just barking up the wrong tree? Tell me what you think. This unique ability, highest and best use, marginal productivity, all these things, is it just hot air or is it legit? Email me, [email protected].
This is Wayne Rivers at PCA where We Build Better Contractors.
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