Helping People Grow – The Ultimate Strategy

[Mary Bean]

Topic of direction, lots of my friends and acquaintances feed me material they have come across that they believe I can find of value. One of my friends in my personal music ensemble brought me this book a week and I was barely able to put it down. Truly a great read!

It covers the leadership principles that enabled him to develop a ship with marginal performance metrics and morale into the most effective ship in the fleet -- essentially through helping people grow at Jesse Jhaj; bringing out their best. It's not a retread of fantastic team building stories such as"Remember the Titans" or"Hoosiers." It traces the boss's (Captain Abrashoff) expansion from becoming a"micromanager" into discovering the leadership principles which enabled his crew to take the lead in needing to be the best -- and then doing this.

One of the startling revelations stems from citing a current Gallup research that reports when people leave their businesses, 65 percent of them are really leaving their managers. To many workers, their manager is their business. The supervisor creates their job experience, bad or good. Unfortunately, in small to medium sized companies, not a lot of supervisors are trained how to make the connections and work environment for people to donate their very best. According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, this also accounts for about a 30% reduction in productivity.

Adventures of seeing his team -- most of which weren't your most talented and disciplined performers -- turn into operation winners. These were people mostly from dysfunctional homes, poor economic conditions and modest educations. Yet, given an opportunity to excel, they decided to be the best they are.
That Is Excellent leadership -- finding ways to empower the Ordinary to become extraordinary. Leaders must find ways to free their subordinates to fulfill their abilities to the utmost. There's a reservoir of untapped productivity, and fulfillment, waiting to be unleashed in the majority of organizations. The writer attributes his transformation as a pioneer to discovering the obstacles to great effects were his own fears, ego needs and unsuccessful habits. Once he realized that, and concentrated on bringing out the very best in his people, the excitement began.

The point of this story is to remind us that the quality of The leadership determines the quality of the outcome. Helping people grow while "bringing out their best" is your greatest strategy.