Stop Being The Hero Leader: Why Great Teams Need Less Leadership

“I’ve hired a team of stars, but I really need them to work like a constellation,” a CEO once said to me. It’s a great line and captures a frustration I’ve heard so often over the last 20 years of coaching the world’s top teams. This particular CEO did what most leaders think impossible: he was chasing down a moonshot 10x growth goal while freeing up 30% of his time. The breakthrough came when he realized that despite hiring exceptional talent, his hub-and-spoke leadership style was creating a bottleneck.

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Just Being A Boss Doesn't Make You A Leader

Are you a “boss” or a “leader”? What’s the difference, anyway? The terms are often used interchangeably, but they don’t point to the same skill set at all. A boss is someone who’s focused on the day-to-day operations, prioritizing things like scheduling, hiring, firing, supply management, processes, compliance — keeping the trains running and keeping people in line. Bosses are often guilty of micromanagement. They don’t trust people to be fully functioning adults.

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Why Does Your “New” Strategy Look Just Like Your Old One?

Strategy should be a creative exercise but companies frequently end up with plans that look very much like their previous ones. Strategy expert Graham Kenny describes a three step process for avoiding this trap: 1) open your mind to ideas from external stakeholders, 2) take a cold, hard look at where your performance is failing, and 3) study companies in other industries that have solved these problems.

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