Why Great Leaders Are the Catalyst For Extraordinary Performance

Great leaders are workplace catalysts, they release potential energy in each of their followers. They select a person, set clear expectations and then motivate and develop every one of them. During this process they ignore conventional wisdom. They understand that the tenets of conventional wisdom are close but not quite close enough to achieve what they want to achieve.

When you look at conventional wisdom through the eyes of a great leader you will see that the advice it gives is slightly off target. But it is sufficiently off target to ensure that you get the wrong result. For example, conventional wisdom decrees that you must select a person based on experience, intelligence and determination. Great leaders on the other hand, select people for talent not simply experience intelligence or determination. Straight away you can see that selecting people without considering talent is the road to mediocrity.

Conventional wisdom states that you should set expectations by defining the right steps for the person to take. It goes on to say that you should motivate that person by helping them to identify and then conquer their weaknesses. Then finally, it suggests you should develop a person by helping them to learn and get promoted.

Great leaders don't follow this conventional wisdom instead they do something slightly different. When they set expectations, they define the correct outcomes and not the correct steps. They do this on the basis that provided the person keeps within the boundaries set by the culture of the organization, it doesn't matter how they reached the desired outcome. They know that if they set this environment, then the person will learn and grow and also use their creativity because, normally, there is no one correct way of completing a task.

The next thing they do which is different, is that instead of trying to identify and fix weaknesses, the great leader will focus on the person's strengths and build on those. This means that the person is working within their positive environment of strengths not their negative environment of weaknesses. The quality of their work will obviously be much higher and so will their levels of motivation. This point is exceedingly important because it sets the right working environment to promote excellence and success. This is why a great leader has such loyal followers.

The conventional approach is to develop the person by helping them to learn and get promoted. The great leader does something else. They help the person to find the right fit and not just the next rung on the ladder. Great leaders recognize that some people will not succeed on the next rung but they will succeed if they go to a position where they fit well.

The differences between the great leadership approach and conventional wisdom does not appear to be large at first look. However, if you start to think about it, the differences are considerable because the outcomes are so much better.