Who vs. How
If your home-services business operates largely outdoors—as we do at Decra-Scape, and as all of the Rooted Leadership Board of Advisors members do—then you know what it’s like to lead a business that is heavily impacted by environmental factors. In Michigan, our business is highly seasonal, which means that at certain times, we are extremely busy and operating at an incredibly fast pace.
If you’re not careful, work environments like this can create
- Frustration
- Anxiety
- Stress
- Exhaustion
- Burnout
Plenty of companies and/or leaders consider the pandemonium of their seasonal industry to be “business as usual,” and they muscle their way through it. No thank you.
I’m for learning from what doesn’t work and adjusting our course of action as needed.
Today, we’re looking at one such adjustment that can have a huge impact. It’s a shift in your way of thinking as a leader:
It is not about how you lead, but rather who you lead.
The Importance of Who
In my years-long pursuit of continuous learning for myself and my company, I’ve discovered many great lessons. This one was inspired by a cocktail hour that my wife, Shannon, and I attended with Stan Van Gundy, past president and head coach of the Detroit Pistons. He emphasized that who you lead is of utmost importance—even more essential than how you lead.
I love this concept. And over the years, it has helped me grow as a leader. Here are 2 key tips for prioritizing the who:
Developing People
One of the most important roles of a leader is to develop people. To do this, we must:
- Cultivate a mindset of encouragement toward the team
- Continuously work to help team members achieve their goals
Teamwork is a powerful tool here, so nurture it!
Think of yourself as the person behind the curtain. With the right team out front and a great leader backstage, incredible things can be accomplished.
Taking the Load
Many leaders, including yours truly, are highly responsible people. On the positive side, responsible leaders tend to take ownership of needs, and they get things done. But on the other hand, they have a tendency to take the load off of their team members’ shoulders.
Prioritizing who over how means that before you focus on checking boxes or figuring out how needs get handled, you focus on who will be handling those needs—and on helping them do so to the best of their ability.
In order to grow your business—and grow yourself as a leader and manager—you will need to learn to delegate. If you, too, are a leader who tends to take the load, stop. Learn to entrust more to your team.
One important note here:
Responsible leaders tend to demand a Iot of themselves. So it’s not uncommon for them to expect the same from their team members. If you want a strong team, you can’t always do that. If you push too hard, too often, you will end up pushing people away.
It is okay to push—needed at times, of course. But it’s more important to understand people’s limits, as well as what makes them tick.
What Makes Them Tick?
If you’re leading a company, I sincerely hope that you have spent some time learning about your strongest character traits. It’s important to know what makes you tick! And it is also important to know what makes others on your team tick.
I’ll provide personal context in order to illustrate why this is important:
Two of my strongest character traits are reflected in the thoughts above: Responsible and Developer. But there are also weaknesses that come along with those strengths, and if I’m not careful, those weaknesses can cause me to do more damage than good.
As a Responsible, if I focus on how, I can inadvertently prevent peoples’ growth by removing their consequences. When you are the responsible person that has no problem taking the load, you don’t give people the opportunity to grow and learn from their own mistakes.
I am certain we have all made plenty of mistakes in our day, and I would like to believe that helped you get where you are in life today! Isn’t it time to let others start making mistakes?
As a Developer, if I focus on how, I may find that I invest in the wrong people for far too long. Part of prioritizing who over how means that we don’t allow ourselves to become trapped into waiting endlessly for a person to improve. That person might just need to be in a different role!
For years, I was the guy who took the duck to eagle school. Let the duck be a duck.
Checkout Bill Munn and his teaching on the power of attributes to learn more about these character traits, as well as identifying those of your team, and learning more about yourself.
Conclusion
When you are confident with who you are, it truly should not be about how you lead, but rather who you lead. Find the right people for the right roles, and build a great team around them.
When you lead based on the how, the business will live and die based on you. How scaleable of a business is that?
When it is more about the who, you will work around people’s strengths and plug others in place where they are weak. Make it a point today to begin focusing on who.
