Stop Looking for Leaders

Hey, welcome to leadership insider. Today I want to speak to you about this idea that I articulated years ago now and spoke about around the world at different times that leaders don't come assembled as a leader. You didn't come assembled. I know now you are assembled. You forget the unassembled version of you which I don't want you to remember that when you started in leadership, you were a mess. I was a mess and someone saw potential in us. Leaders don't come assembled. And I think when we see leaders who are assembled, someone accomplished at what they do, someone brilliant at what they do, we think, what's the point in trying? Um, or we say, as people often say to me, I'm short of those people. I'm short of leaders. I don't have people like that. Nobody does. Nobody has people like that. If they have people like that, then they either grew them or they bought them in. [laughter] But if you don't have the budget to buy them in, you have to grow your own, which is really what I want to talk to you about here. Because all the leaders that you see that are at the accomplished assembled level were grown somewhere by somebody. You were, I was. But that's not how we started. And this this episode today is about appealing to you as leaders to remember where you came from. to remember that when you look at your team and your staff and you're looking for leaders, you won't see any. What you'll see are the unassembled component parts of a leader that by themselves don't look like they're a leadership ingredient because they're not assembled. And so what we do is we look for leaders, meaning we look for the completed thing. you're not going to find it. You're going to see component parts of the complete thing. And if you don't see the potential in the part, you won't see the whole that's in process in that person. You'll see a piece of, I suppose, a jigsaw, but you won't see the box lid that it belongs to. And great leaders are able like great master chefs are able to see an ingredient or two or three ingredients and in those two or three ingredients that to you and I would look no good at all for a end result of a meal. We think well this isn't a meal. It's just a few bits on a table. But a master chef can see six or seven possible options of a dish, a meal in those ingredients because in their mind they've taught themselves that a complete meal doesn't arrive assembled. It arrives in ingredient form. And their gift is to be able to see potential of a complete outcome in unassembled pieces. That's what great leaders do. They are the assemblers of unassembled people. They are the they are the masters of bringing together the unassembled fragments of potential in people around them. Great leaders see an initiative taking person for instance as leadership potential rather than a loose cannon as some may see them because you can see that two ways. Great leaders are not threatened by people taking initiative even though the initiative that's been taken may be unfocused and sometimes unhelpful and unpermitted. But I would rather have as a leader someone that takes initiative and gets on with stuff and is actionoriented than someone that takes no initiative at all and only operates when permission is given and to the level and limit of that permission. So as a leader you see the initiative taking as something to pay attention to because you think wow this person does not need constantly being told what to do. They take initiative. And I need people in this business that take initiative that just get on and do stuff because you can't steer a parked car. And some of you people are a parked car waiting for directions. And you look at and think, well, this person that's moving didn't have direction other than the big idea of what we're trying to do and the values that we have and what we're trying to achieve or trying to deliver to our customers. That's all they know. They've only been here a month compared to the people waiting for instructions that have been here a year. So you see that that initiative taking new staff member isn't a loose cannon which the management may tell you, oh you know they're going to be a problem because you know last week they did this and this and I didn't tell them to. As a leader that's music to your ears. You're like what? Keep an eye on that person. Managers are threatened often by initiative taking that's outside of their management permissions. Leaders see that's a potential ingredient of a Michelin star dish. You may see um I don't know someone's honesty, someone's flatout honesty as a beautiful quality. Others see it as a threat. Others feel their honesty um is too uncomfortable, uh is rude, is disrespectful, and that's what's reported back to you. But when you experience it and when you hear what they said, you think, "Wow, well, what they said is true. I've been telling you that for the last six months. But this staff member that's saying what you're saying is being framed as a nuisance, as rude, as disrespectful, as rebellious, as a leader, as a master chef. You see that honesty as an unassembled part of leadership potential because what you want in your leaders is honesty, not people bullshitting you, telling you what you want to hear. You don't want yes people around you. You want people that are have autonomy in their thinking, are independent thinkers, but are on your side and tell you the truth. So you see what others see as a threat as huge potential. And your job as a leader is to bring that person closer, to empower that honesty, to let them know how much you value their honesty. That's your job as a leader is to feed and water and nurture the unassembled ingredient that you see value in and see what happens next. Because when you give attention to something that's an ingredient on its own and you water and you nourish that, the other things attached to it then grow with it that you don't see in that person. So with the honesty that you water comes greater insight from that person who now sees the honesty is celebrated instead of seen as a threat. When you celebrate and you encourage the honesty now this person comes to work every day with all these insights they have that they've kept quiet about because their honesty has been punished. So when you water and encourage and celebrate the honesty, now something else that was attached to it starts to emerge or their insights. Now they feel permitted to be honest about all these things they see that they were keeping quiet about because the honesty was getting in trouble. You understand what I'm saying? So your celebration and assembling of one thing starts to awaken the other things attached to it and suddenly you start to assemble something that looks like a leader. [clears throat] Someone in your team for instance let's give another example that is the person that always spots the lack of morale in the team. that always seems to be tuned into how people don't feel emotionally safe and they're seen as someone that's an oversensitive person. That's a bit of um a snowflake or a or or a crybaby, especially in a you know macho male ego-driven work environment. This is a guy that's occasionally raised his voice and said, "Hey, you know, I I think how you spoke to me yesterday made me feel this way." Or how I saw you speak to my colleague colleague, I think, was really unkind and it made them feel not safe at work from then on and very intimidated around you. that can be seen as I just said in a negative way or a leader may see it as this person has a real good sense of emotional intelligence not just about themselves but they seem to be mindful of how this stuff affects their work colleagues and they keep pointing it out and if you see that as an irritation or as hey we're not therapists here this is the job to do get on with your job and that's committ dedicated some way to them, then you're missing a quality. Maybe you're missing an unassembled emotional intelligence strength that you desperately need in your team, but instead you allow the people close to them or the people you listen to about them who are threatened by them to put a bad angle on it. Great leaders don't do that. Great leaders see that as an unassembled quality. Emotional intelligence is huge in business today and becoming more and more important because we have too many businesses led by people that have great IQ but no EQ. And this is why people love their jobs but hate who they do it for and with. They hate their boss because their boss can't get on with people. They have no emotional intelligence. They're good at the profit margins and increasing the business, but people don't like them. So, the best people leave all the time because the boss is rude and unkind and misogynistic and unhelpful and doesn't listen and so on. So, if you have someone in your business that has good EQ, celebrate that, feed it, water it, because that's going to be a gamecher for staff retention, for a safe working environment. But if people are putting it to you as what's the point of that? We don't need that around here. You listen to the wrong people. Great leaders, great master chefs see that random kicking about the fringes ingredient of emotional intelligence as hugely valuable to our business because no one else is doing it. It's rare. No one else is doing it. Everybody else is is is dis discarding it and not seeing value in it. And so it's not growing in your business. He doesn't grow because where he is is punished and devalued. And so I'm saying to you again through these multiple practical analogies. Great leaders understand that leaders don't come assembled. So I'm not looking I'm not coming to work today looking for an assembled leader. I'm looking for bits, looking for ingredients, looking for parts that no one sees value in, but I am going to assemble them like an IKEA flatpack. I'm going to see the flat pack potential while it's still in the box. I can see that that is going to be a door of a cupboard. I can see that that is going to be a top of a countertop that that person just did. I can see that that is going to be a supporting leg of a piece of furniture that I'm going to need in my business six months from now. That's how you look at people. You see what they're doing as a piece of furniture you see assembled. If you will celebrate the bit that's unassembled, you know you have the gift and the strength in your culture you're building to bring that into its own by attaching it to other things, other people, other qualities in them and others that together become an assembled leadership person and team. But if you keep looking around for complete people, you're going to believe and say like I hear all the time, we're short of leaders. We don't have leaders. We need more leaders. But we can't afford to employ the best people. You don't need to be able to afford to employ the best people. Grow your own. Some of the greatest football players in the world start. I'm thinking of in I'm in England so I'm thinking of you know Wayne Rooney and David Beckham uh and these guys uh all these team players that were that were teenagers together when Alex Ferguson Alex Ferguson brought them in scouted them when they were kids brought them into Manchester United and trained them and groomed them and built them and believed in them to become the worldclass players that they became. He didn't buy them in. He was known for being a leadership, I suppose, worldclass football player. Um, factory assembly place. That's what he did at Man United. I've always been inspired by that and companies and leaders that do versions of that. Is that you? Or are you thinking every day, I'm stuck because I don't have the leaders. I don't have the money to buy in the best people. Look around. Stop looking for leaders. Look at the people you have. Start looking for the qualities that you didn't think were qualities. These things that are that are diamonds in the dirt. These things that are tiny seeds of possibility. That's how to train yourself. Look for the ingredients. I was in um an airport a while back in Portugal and I wanted a latte and I went to this lady at the coffee shop. I said, "Can I?" She said, "What would you like?" I said in her broken English. And she I said, "I'd like a latte." She said she didn't understand the word latte. I kept saying, "Latte, latte, latte." Like, "What part of latte don't you understand?" She said to me eventually, "Do you mean you want hot milk and coffee and water?" I said, "No, I want a latte." And this went on for ages till I realized what she said to me was a latte. But she described it to me in ingredient form. And because she mentioned the ingredients of a latte, I didn't know it was one. So I said, "Yes, I want one of those." Sometimes people present in ingredient form. And you don't know about I need a latte, a latte, I need a liter, a liter, and you've got one. Train your mind, train your eyes to spot the complete thing in ingredient form. then work backwards from the complete thing to assemble the incomplete thing. Do you do that? Go to work tomorrow. Go to work today and start looking at people differently. Start seeing what they just did, how she just behaved, what that guy just initiated. I think that's something I should pay attention to. I think that is an unassembled leadership ingredient that I'm going to celebrate. Going to bring it closer. I'm going to protect it. I'm not going to let it be spoken ill of by insecure people that's between me and them. Going to bring those people closer. Bring them around the leadership table with you. Bring unassembled leaders to an assembled leaders meeting. put unassembled people around assembled people and let them see what their assembled version looks like. I did that all the time in leadership. I brought people into leadership rooms who weren't leaders. And the leaders in the room with me were thinking, "Why the hell are they here? Why are they here? They've already been working here two months." I said, 'I know, but I see something in them that I think will grow better if they're around people that have what they've got in a more assembled form. Reminds me of a funny story I heard years ago of a farmer. Um, it's a joke. It's a story, a metaphor, but a farmer that took his old meal from his farm to the Kenduki, the Kentuki Derby, one of the famous races in America. All countries have their famous prestige races where all the thoroughbreds race and the farmer gets his meal off the truck and walks it towards the thoroughbred area where all the raceh horses are. People are laughing at the farmer saying, "What the hell are you doing with that here? Not trying to race it, are you? That's got no chance in hell of winning." And the farmer looked at them and said,"I know that this mule can't win, but I thought the company would do it good. Is that a bit weak?" That's it. It's bringing the mule type people that others see no value in into the thoroughbred rooms, into the boardrooms, into leadership rooms. Put them in the room. What you got to lose? And see what wakes up in them. If you can see, and this was you and me that that's doing what you're doing because you saw someone doing it and you thought, "Wow, I can do that." You saw someone doing what you now do and you thought, "I think I can do that." When you see your unassembled potential assembled in someone, you start to think, "What? I could do that. That's what I think what I have in ingredient form. That's what I think it looks like assembled. I think the complete version of this looks like that. I didn't know it could become that. So, bring people in your business, in your company. Bring people closer because you see potential. You don't see the complete thing. bring their unassembled ingredient into the kitchen into the restaurant and let them see why what they have matters when you put it into a complete picture because they don't think it matters. They see no value at all in what they just did because it's not assembled. It's a screw. It's a leg. Um it's a supporting bracket. Um it's a side piece of a cupboard. They see no cupboard, no table, no countertop, no complete kitchen, no assembled sofa. They they see they don't see that. Your job is to see that and see that theirs is a piece of that. Bring them around the assembled thing. Then they'll stop thinking of themselves as a useless piece of flatpack and they'll see themselves as a beautiful piece of finished furniture serving a home somewhere, serving a business somewhere. Why not serving your business? Why not being one of your next most important people in your business, your next leader, your next great person in a department that's gamechanging because you train them in your training camp. Your business is a leadership assembly factory rather than a leadership repelling factory because you're looking for the assembled thing, you know, celebrating ingredients. All right, I'm going to stop. Hope that helps and makes sense. Let me know in the comments. Again, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening and watching. Thanks for what you do in your leadership space. And I'll see you next time. Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow. Ch.