Why Leadership Development is Important Especially In Uncertain Times – Behind The Scenes
You know that investing in your people is important. Given the uncertainty that you are facing you may not want to focus on leadership development right now. I get it. If you are scrambling to save clients and preserve your cash, you can’t even think about it. However, if you want to come out of COVID-19 stronger than ever before, leadership development is one of the best strategies that will allow your people to contribute to the stability of the company now. Leadership development will also be what pulls you out of today’s uncertainty.
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Why Leadership Development is Important Especially In Uncertain Times: The Transcript
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Are your front line leaders able to lead in a crisis like today? It’s a big question. You know, as a leader of this company, you’ve got to develop those around you, but there’s a problem. We’re so busy thinking about the problems, the challenges, even growth, that we rarely take the time to develop those front line leaders. I really think there’s an opportunity here. If ever there was a need for your leaders to have resilience, confidence, and courage to step up as a leader, it’s now. It’s in the face of this coronavirus. It’s seeing new opportunities. It’s developing new strategies. All of those are critical today.
I’m holding a Saints helmet. This particular helmet has been signed by Drew Brees. The reason I’m holding this helmet up is that I recognize Drew Brees as one of the greatest quarterbacks that I’ve ever seen. I had a meeting personally. I ran a sports tour business, and we were doing memorabilia signing for some customers and got a chance to have him sign the helmet. We had to scramble to get jerseys and helmets, but I was really excited to meet Drew Brees because I looked up to him. I admired him. And here’s the thing. You have a talented performer that you have on staff. You’ve maybe asked them to lead others, but you haven’t supported them the way you need to.
How does that relate to Drew Brees? Well, Sean Payton is the coach for the New Orleans Saints. He wouldn’t dream of putting Drew Brees out on the field without giving him the support that he needed to lead that team. The Saints invest a great amount of money to train, not only Drew Brees, but every person on that field to be the best that they can be, to use their talents to the highest degree. And it made me think about, what are you doing as a leader? Are you putting everything you can into the talented people so that they can perform at the highest level, especially in times like this? I want to share something with you that I think about a lot. It’s called Peter’s Principle.
The concept behind this is we will promote people to a position of incompetence. So maybe it’s not the first level. Maybe it happens at the second level of promotion. Maybe it’s beyond that. But, at some point in time, you will take someone and promote them, and they won’t be ready for it. And they will fail miserably. They could be talented in one place but not be ready for the next promotion. And this happens a lot in sales. You take someone who’s a high performer and you know that they’re good at closing the deal and developing those opportunities, but, when they have to lead people, they fail miserably. This is happening all across the nation. And, for many of you, you’ve probably been growing your business focused on the strategy, focused on sales, focused on all the things that are necessary for growth, and you might have neglected actually developing those people.
One of the biggest challenges you’re gonna have to face is what do we do now? One of the things I’ve been doing to step up to serve my clients is to help you understand the mistakes that you make in order to come out of this period of time, this uncertainty so that you’re ready when the market bounces back, you’re ready when we are rising up and spending money again. What are you doing now? If you don’t support those leaders at a time when they really need it the most, you’re missing that opportunity. I know this is just one of the big mistakes that I see founders making all the time.
I wanted to share it with you but we actually want to go deeper. I want to share with you five core mistakes that you can be aware of and avoid in growing your front line leaders in a time of need, like today. I’m gonna share that with you in a webinar, so, if you want to go to genehammett.com/webinar, you can sign up. We have it going two times this week, on Thursday. You can pick it up at either [11:00] in the morning or [7:00] at night, Eastern Standard, whichever works for you. There will be a replay, but you have to sign up to get that video, and it’s about the five mistakes that you can avoid when developing front line leaders.
This Peter Principle, not developing talented people and supporting them in their own growth? That’s just one of them. There’s four more that we’ll go through. But you’ll also get some of the things that you can be doing right now, in this current times. Even when you don’t have the money, when you don’t have the time, this is when they need it the most. They need that support. I talked about Drew Brees. Sean Payton wouldn’t dream of investing a million dollars into a talented player like Drew Brees without supporting him and coaching him and develop him. That’s Sean’s number one job is to develop the team. Your number one job is to develop the people around you. If you want to find out what you can do right now, make sure you join us for that webinar, genehammett.com/webinar.
I share all this with you because my mission in life is to help leaders like you really rise up in those defining moments. This is one of those moments. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I was a leader before that in a fast growth company. I knew exactly what you’re going through. I went through a massive loss myself. My story is not something that I can get through in this video, but I did lose everything in 2010 and had to rebuild my life, reinvent myself, and I created the place to serve leaders like you to rise up and be the leader that your team deserves. I share that with you because I want you to know I’m here to support you. I’m not here to sell you something. I’m here to really support your own growth through this defining moment. Will you rise up? Join us on that webinar, genehammett.com/webinar. I’m bringing all this to you because I want to make sure you’re prepared through this ordeal and beyond. As always, lead with courage. We’ll see you next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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