As a leader or manager at your workplace, your first duty is to ensure that the people you have attracted to support in the delivery of value for the satisfaction and success of your customers are set up for success. When your people win, you actually win. As a manager leading others, your primary focus is no longer about you; it is about the people you are managing and leading. You inspire them to win. You support them to win. You do not compete with them. You complete them. You wear the blue hat guiding them to excel.
By so doing, you let them shine. When they shine, you shine. Make sure you do not stifle their productivity, try not to snuff out their light, or muffle their influence. Because you have the advantage of position, age, knowledge or whatever over them does not make you either a suppressor or an oppressor. It should make you a supporter. And that is your purpose.
Choose to support and encourage people in their drive for impact and accomplishment because the gift they exhibit is for you. Sure, their gift is for you. It is because of you that they received the gift and not for themselves and so, all you may need to do is to support them. If you will not support them, do ensure that you do not deliberately put them down.
You may have members within you that may work against the progress or shine of others. Your members are the emotions that you share. They are either positive or negative. Imagine what envy can do. Imagine what selfishness can do. Imagine what inordinate ambition can cause. Now think of what the positive emotions of empathy, selflessness and reasonable ambition can do to support others to win.
People do not just win for themselves. People win more for others than they win for themselves. Those who understand life well enough, know this much. And knowing it is not just enough. That will not cut it. Supporting the promising vessel through mentoring to help achieve wholistic growth and development holds the fortune.
Whatever you do, whether you think you are doing it to others or for others, is actually for yourself because it will all come back to you. Everything you do or share returns to you in multiples.
It is imperative for you to pay attention to the emotions you share and exchange as you engage with others in your space. Are your emotions supporting and building others up or are they bringing them down? You are either rational or irrational through your emotions. Though every person has a measure of both, where you tilt towards determine whether you are dubbed rational or irrational.
You must settle with yourself the question of whether your emotions uplift or bring others down. It is the power of self-regulation that lies in your self-awareness. You can regulate yourself by mortifying your negative emotions and attitudes. You must learn to pay close and closer attention to how you deal and then appraise and evaluate the results you get.
Joseph had a gift, and his brothers envied his gift. They decided to get rid of him. The gift became a huge blessing in another place far away from them and they had to go seek the outcome and bliss of it, oblivious of the source of what they were going to seek.
Is this not what we do when we prevent the people in our space from shinning? Do they not end up shinning regardless? And when they do, we may, sometimes end up not being the beneficiaries of it. Sometimes too, we should have been the custodians and managers of it if we did not reject or stifle it. But when we stifle it and prevent it from shinning, we lose the opportunity of our own growth and promotion.
Imagine who would have been the managers of Joseph's gift if they had not pushed it away from themselves. The brothers, of course. Envy is destructive. Unfounded and unrestrained anger deafens. Greed is limiting. Selfishness is myopic. You do not want to nurture any of these. Rather you want to mortify and put a rein on them.
In the workplace, within the family, and many other places, we find that people exhibit gifts and skills that their bosses, colleagues, siblings, and others become envious of. Instead of supporting them they recommend to the visionary to get rid of them. They incite others against them. They seek to prevent the gifts from seeing the light of day.
In a client's space where I consult, a similar situation played out. An older employee by years in the establishment had worked with more than four bosses and so he had a lot of experience. But a younger boss was brought in to head the organization.
The new and younger head was not really comfortable with the wealth of experience of the person he met in the establishment. The new head advised the visionary to sack the older and trained hand who knew the system more than he did. Instead of using that experience as a strength, he chose to vilify it. But the business owner knew better.
Fast track to later. The new head, after about three or four years could not remain in the system. He had to move on after he had frittered away the fortunes he met in the system. Now, that same older and more experienced hand became the whip hand of the outfit.
What if the visionary was not better informed to know how to manage the situation rather than accede to the sack recommendation earlier presented?
The more experienced hand awoke to using a most needed gift and skill--the skill of marketing the brand to win sales never experienced in the outfit in its more than twenty years of existence. It was time and a new door was open.
Everything has its time and season. If everything has its time and season, then everyone has their time and season, too because it is humans that work things and make things work. We must understand that patience has its place however hasty we hunger to achieve value and impact.
We do not mature the same time. For some it comes earlier than for others. This much we must come to terms with and diligently apply ourselves to. It is a great fortune that helps us know how to play effectively in our space.
You are only on the seat you occupy because of time and chance. Chance is opportunity. We should learn to use opportunity well because soon, time shall catalyse it and relegate it to the past. What song shall you sing then? Will people dance each time they remember you?
It is important to stress that we can all do with a little nudge or push in a positive direction at some point in time or the other. As humans, we vacillate either towards or away from certain vibrations. When employees fail sometimes, it is the fault of bosses who dim their light, and when some employees leave, they more often than not, leave bad bosses, not just the organization.
One value I have seen in organizations is that new leaders often find it difficult to manage their promotion. When you find yourself in management position, your duty is to support those under you to win. You are no longer about yourself. You are driven more by uplifting those on your team and that becomes your success indicator. You cannot afford to bring the same people whose growth holds your ace in the organization.
While organizations may claim to set employees up for success, it takes an authentic leader to provide result-oriented mentorship to ensure that the channels of success are explored to deliver expected outcomes, as opposed to driving them towards failure, while preaching on paper that the organization sets its employees up for success.
Within a space of commonly shared ideologies, all members of the workforce must truly share core values which are lived for mission and vision to come to reality. However great the strategy, unless we have employees who are supported by the right management and leadership, the strategy will only either remain on paper or at best demotivate the people.
When we help others in our space to shine, we are helping ourselves because the people are there for us since their gifts are given not just for them but for the service of others. This is the key to true excellence and purpose.
