“A Genius With a Thousand Helpers”
"Are you a genius with a thousand helpers?" I have to give credit to Jim Collins for the title of this blog. It is such a good description, I have found myself using it a lot with people lately. I come across many leaders like this in my coaching experience.
One of my first bosses was like this. I wondered why he didn't deal with substandard performance from his team. He had some great people. He had some people who were just not contributing. He didn't seem to be doing anything about it. Frustrated one day, I asked him about it. He answered, "I don't see a big risk. I can fix anything they might not get right." Interesting answer.
I'm guessing that you are already thinking about the risks of being "a genius with a thousand helpers": sustainability of your business, really being able to manage through the complexity and size of today's organizations, lack of successors for your role. I'm not going to focus on the risks here.
I want to address two questions, How does this happen? How do you know if you have fallen into this trap?""
How does it happen? These are my thoughts from what I have observed. I think there are two main reasons.
Many leaders are quite bright. Many have gotten to where they are on their own capabilities. It takes a different set of skills to leverage other people's capabilities. They have not spent much time thinking about or developing these skills. (They didn't need to).
Many leaders are quite competitive. (That's what got them to leadership.) Competitive people can at times be difficult to challenge and can have some habits that limit their ability to build a team-- they can be aggressive in meetings, they can be condescending in tone when frustrated and they can be dismissive when they feel people don't measure up. (See Marsall Goldsmith's book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" for more detail on these habits.) These habits discourage dissent and encourage political maneuvering, creating a team of "yes people". Effective teams are able to engage in healthy debate. Healthy debate is difficult if you need to carefully manage how you say things.
How do you know if you are a "genius with a thousand followers"?
There is one simple test. How many true successors do you have? If you have two or three people who can fairly easily take your job, you are building a team. If you have no real successors there is a good chance you are a highly effective "one man band". If you are, start thinking about the risks of that to your business.
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