Why the best leaders focus on replacing themselves

At the core of New Zealand’s productivity problems is a leadership opportunity.

We have no shortage of smart people, but they are trapped working in their businesses instead of growing their teams and the people who can run them.

 

David Altena (above) is Head of Growth & Partnerships at SmartSpace.ai & Co-Founder & Host if The Better SMB Podcast. david@altena.solutions

(Left)Rob Bull is Director of the New Zealand Lean Academy rob@nzla.nz

How many times do you see it?

That brilliant person in the team, they’re great at their job and getting promoted, then suddenly they’re leading the people who now do that job.

It’s meant as a reward for their individual performance and talent, but we rarely go on to and teach them leadership.

We’re great at recognising ability, but terrible at growing it. Instead of building leaders, we hand over the title and hope they’ll figure it out.

We’ve systemised and streamlined and talk about stepping out of the daily grind; but here’s what’s preventing your business getting to the next level.

If you’re the only one driving performance, you’re a liability not a leader

This is especially the case if you expect everyone to think and act exactly like you. “Just do it the way I showed you” isn’t leadership, it’s replication.

Innovation in how we lead is what’s missing. Leadership maturity isn’t when everything runs without you, it’s when the people you’ve developed are running it better than you.

Good leaders hold the line. Great leaders raise it.

Too many Kiwi businesses are full of good managers who keep things ticking over. They meet targets, run a tight ship and solve problems quickly. But that’s not leadership, that’s maintenance.

The great ones don’t hold the line. They raise it, by turning expectations into energy. They build constructive pressure, not stress and create opportunities for people to lift performance because they believe they can. They challenge teams to be innovative, to solve issues for good and to seek and expect excellence.

That’s what separates high-performance from “getting by.”

We’ve normalised low expectations disguised as culture and celebrate being “like family,” when what we actually need is to be like champions. Teams need to demand more from everyone, because they know they can deliver.

Words on walls stating your mission and vision are lovely, there may even be claims that “we’re a family”. But if we’re truly honest, in most places they’re just that, words on a wall.

Leadership depth can be your real competitive advantage

“We push humility, it doesn’t mean you’re not proud of what you do. It means you’re open to someone else’s idea, open to being challenged, grounded in facts not emotion.”

Dave Bunting | Managing Director | Architectural Glass Profiles

(The Better SMB Podcast Episode 19)

What you cant copy is leadership depth.

People who can make the right call, under pressure, without waiting for permission. You want people who know how to be a human tuning fork, they set the tone for what’s done and how it happens.

That’s what global competitors have over most of us. Their frontline leaders don’t just take direction; they take ownership.

They know the numbers, coach their teams and move when the data moves.

Ask yourself these questions today:

*Does your team need to ask you for approval on every decision? If so, you don’t have a team, you have followers.

*Can they challenge your thinking with data and still have your trust? That’s leadership maturity.

Leaders who multiply, not manage

The team at NZ Lean Academy met with one of their manufacturing clients recently who said, “We used to hire for compliance, now we hire for courage.”

That’s it. That’s the pivot.

We’re so obsessed with hiring people who are a good culture fit. But what a mature and performance-oriented leadership team focuses on is finding team members who add to culture.

They understand leadership isn’t about control, it’s about multiplying decision makers who can think critically and act fast. It is about communication, doing the basics at a world-class level to create a foundation that can be built on.

Every leader who creates another leader doubles the organisation’s capacity to grow.

Think about it: the fastest way to scale isn’t adding more machines or more people, it’s adding more leaders.

That’s the productivity revolution hiding in plain sight.

Stop developing managers. Start demanding leaders.

Management asks, “What do we need to get through the week?”

Leadership asks, “Who do we need to become to transform in the next five years?”

We’ve been breeding managers when what we need are multipliers. People who lead teams, not tasks.

That shift doesn’t take funding or a new policy. It requires an investment in growing leadership capabilities and expecting a higher standard

Start by raising the expectation.

If you lead people, your job is to build capability that compounds, not just keeping things afloat.

If you don’t know who you’re growing to replace you, then you’re the bottleneck.

So this month and every month moving forward, don’t just review performance, review and develop leadership.