CHAPTER 1
IDENTIFYING LEADERS
Find Them So You Can Develop Them
One of my favorite activities when I speak is answering specific questions from the leaders in the audience. Recently, at a conference put on by Chick-fil-A, someone asked how I develop good leaders. “First,” I responded, “you need to know what a good leader looks like.”
I know that may sound simplistic, but it’s true. And I’ve found that most people have a difficult time describing what a good leader—or good potential leader—looks like. Leadership experts and authors James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner said, “Our images of who’s a leader and who’s not are all mixed up in our preconceived notions about what leadership is and isn’t.”1 How can people find something they can’t identify?
As a speaker, I do a lot of traveling. And often my host will send a driver to pick me up from the airport. Over the years, I’ve found there are two types of people who look for me. The first stands near baggage claim, holding a sign or iPad showing my name. I have to go over and find that person and identify myself. The second type of person comes over and finds me as I step off the escalator and says, “Hi, Mr. Maxwell. I’m here to take you to your hotel.”
I’ve never met either of these people, yet the second type is able to find me. How? They recognize me from a photograph they’ve found in one of my books or on a website. They took the time to be proactive and know who they’re looking for.
As you prepare to develop leaders, which type of person do you want to be? Do you want to know what you’re looking for in potential leaders and be able to find them? Or do you want to hold up a sign and hope somebody comes and finds you? It’s your choice.
For many years I’ve been friends with Bob Taylor, cofounder of Taylor Guitars. Bob makes some of the finest guitars in the world. What’s his secret? He’ll tell you it’s the design and manufacturing process. He can make a guitar out of anything, and to prove it, he even once made a guitar out of scrap wood from an oak pallet. But that’s not the norm. He uses the finest woods he can find, and buying them has become more and more difficult, as many of the best exotic woods are on the endangered species list or disappearing altogether. Bob said, “I’m living in the era where you cross the threshold of ‘there’s all the wood in the world’ to ‘there’s not any more.’”2
In an interview he gave to the New York Times more than ten years ago, Bob said, “I used to buy Brazilian rosewood back in the 1970s at the lumber yard for $2 a square foot. Now it’s impossible for us to make a guitar out of it and ship it outside the US. If we do get a little bit of it, it’s extremely expensive. The cutting of it has all but halted. Adirondack spruce is unavailable. Mahogany was so plentiful it was a commodity. Now only specialty cutters are getting it and the prices have gone through the roof. All these things happened just in my lifetime.”3
That’s been such a concern of his that he’s dedicating the next twenty years of his life to initiatives to ensure that wood is sourced responsibly and to growing trees for the future—not his future, but the future of others—sixty, eighty, and a hundred years from now. Bob said, “We no longer live in a world of new frontiers and of wasteful use of our natural resources.”4
Bob knows what he’s looking for when it comes to potential guitar wood. If you want to be successful developing leaders, you need to know what potential leaders look like, and you need to be as tenacious as Bob Taylor is when’s he’s sourcing wood for guitars. Every person you bring onto your team will make you either better or worse. And every leader you develop will do the same. Maybe that’s why Amazon founder Jeff Bezos remarked, “I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”5
THE SIX AS OF IDENTIFICATION
For a leader who develops leaders, there is something scarcer and much more important than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. One of the primary responsibilities of any successful leader is to identify potential leaders. Peter Drucker observed:
FOR A LEADER WHO DEVELOPS LEADERS, THERE IS SOMETHING SCARCER AND MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN ABILITY. IT IS THE ABILITY TO RECOGNIZE ABILITY.
So, how do you do it? How do you identify good potential leaders, people you want to develop? As I said, you need to have a picture of that person, and I want to paint that picture for you. Take a look at these six areas of identification and answer each of the corresponding questions, and you’ll know what you’re looking for.
1. Assessment of Needs: “What Is Needed?”
Who are you looking for? If the mission of your organization were to climb trees, which would you rather do: hire a squirrel or train a horse to do the job? That answer is obvious. What is your organization trying to do? Do you possess a clear target? Do you know what you’re going after? That will tell you what kind of leaders you need to find to improve your organization. You’ll never hit a target that you haven’t identified.
Chick-fil-A’s Mark Miller, whom I quoted in the introduction, has vast experience finding and training leaders. He said:
If you never defined your target, or you have not revisited it lately, I encourage you to do so now, before you start identifying potential leaders. Answer these questions:
• What is your vision?
• What is your mission?
• Who do you need on your team to accomplish your vision and mission?
• What resources will you need to accomplish your vision and mission?
Knowing what you need and who you are looking for is essential to success. You can’t be haphazard in selecting people to develop and expect to succeed.
2. Assets on Hand: “Who Has Leadership Potential Within the Organization?”
Where is the best place to begin looking for potential leaders to develop? In your own organization or on your team. It just makes sense for so many reasons:
They Are a Known Quantity
Unlike when you interview people from outside, you don’t have to imagine how insiders will perform. You don’t have to rely on what they say about themselves. You’re not limited to hearing the opinions of their handpicked references. You can look at their actual performance to see what they can do. You can observe their strengths. You can personally talk to everyone who works with them to find out about them.
They Already Fit the Culture
Anytime you bring in someone from outside, you have to guess whether that person will really fit your culture and be able to work well with the people in your organization. When someone has already been working in the organization for any length of time, you know if he or she fits. And that individual is already a part of the community.
They Have Already Established Influence
Good leaders, even those with little training or experience, influence other people. When you’re trying to identify potential leaders to develop, look for influence. It’s a qualification that must be present in someone you wish to develop as a leader, because leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. If people can’t influence others, they can’t lead. And if they already have some degree of influence in your organization, they already possess an asset that they will be able to use in the future to get things done. It’s like having a running head start in a race. When you give them tasks, they will be able to mobilize the people they already influence more quickly.
How do you measure their influence? I recommend you use the 5 Levels of Leadership. Here they are in order from lowest to highest levels of influence:
1. POSITION: People follow because of title.
2. PERMISSION: People follow because of relationships.
3. PRODUCTION: People follow because of results.
4. PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT: People follow because of personal life change.
5. PINNACLE: People follow because of respect from earned reputation.
Andrew Carnegie was a master at identifying potential leaders. Once asked by a reporter how he had managed to hire forty-three...
