Why you should surround yourself with people who are smarter than you

Subscriber-only episode

This podcast episode explores the crucial need for leaders to surround themselves with smarter individuals, stressing that true leadership is about empowerment rather than control. It discusses the common fears that inhibit this process and promotes self-assessment and feedback for effective team development. 

• Understanding the difference between managers and leaders 
• Identifying and confronting the fear of being overshadowed 
• Importance of developing team members for optimal performance 
• Recognising the toxic behaviour of insecure managers 
• Advantages of hiring experts to fill gaps in knowledge 
• The role of clear communication and setting direction 
• The use of DISC for assessing leadership styles 
• The value of self-assessment and peer feedback 
• Embracing vulnerability to strengthen leadership 
• Learning from successful leaders’ approaches to teamwork

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Chapters

• 0:00 Surrounding Yourself With Stronger Team
• 14:47 Building Strong Teams Through Leadership

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Hello again. I want to talk about an aspect of leadership which is basically surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you. Now, I certainly know leaders well. I'll call them leaders probably more accurate to call them managers, because to me there's a very distinct difference between the two. But there are definitely people out there who, through their own lack of self-confidence, don't want to have people who are smarter than them around, and the reason is simply that they feel they'll be shown up and people will lose respect for them, they'll lose their jobs, whatever the outcome might be.

Speaker 1: 0:56

And this lack of self-confidence or this fear of being found out, it's something I've spoken about before in the sales podcast and it's basically something that everybody has to some extent. And as we grow older, if you certainly grew up with that feeling that, for whatever reason, you felt you weren't good enough and that if you opened your mouth too often, people would find out that you weren't very good actually at what you do For most of us that's actually not true, but it's simply a fear that we have. So if this is sounding familiar to you, then I think the very first thing to take on board from this video this podcast, I should say is that, first of all, this is quite a common fear. It's just part of being human and, to a greater or lesser degree, part of the environment that we grew up in, and, secondly, it is just that it's a fear, so there's no particular truth to it for any of us. Now, for some it might be true, but you will know very quickly whether or not you're good at something, and the way to really look at that is to look at your results, look for something external to you and look at what the proof is. And if the proof is that you can actually do your job, you do get results. You are good at what you do, then allow that to be the thing that you follow, rather than the fears which, for some people and I would say probably for most people probably persist to some extent or another throughout their life. So this may just be a fear that you need to get used to living with and recognize it for what it is. It's not true. It's just a fear, and what really counts are the external measures that you have.

Speaker 1: 2:41

So, having said all of that, there are a couple of things I really wanted to cover in this podcast. So the first one relates to the people that you lead, and I've spoken about this before, but I'm a big believer in developing people so that you, the people who work for you, you get them to be the best they can possibly be. And there are definitely again, I'll call them managers. They're not, in my opinion, leaders, but some managers, because of their own insecurities, will try and keep their staff down. They'll put them down in some way, not give them authority, not give them autonomy, whatever it might be, and they do that because they're worried about being shown up. They're worried that this person who at the moment reports to them, if it's a corporate type situation, if they're given free reign, they will actually outperform them. They will be better at doing the manager's job than that manager. That's the fear.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Now, how true that is. Well, I don't know. It could be true, it might not, it might not be. There's no way I can answer that. But the important thing is that this is the fear that they have and the way that they handle that fear is to put people down, and, of course, what that does is it creates a very unhealthy, could be quite a toxic working environment for everybody who reports to that person. And, secondly, they're likely to lose people because they will get frustrated, they'll go. So that's the first aspect of it, and the second one is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you at different things. And this is likely to apply more to you if you're an entrepreneur, if you're working for yourself, if you have your own business, but certainly that's not exclusive. It could also apply in a corporate type environment. And here the thing to recognize is that if you are not afraid of bringing in people who are smarter than you at certain things, that's actually a sign of a strong leader figures or some other measure you're making it much more likely that you are going to achieve the goal that you are there to deliver.

Speaker 1: 5:04

So again, I'm taking the viewpoint as a leader we are there to deliver a certain result for our company or whatever it is we're leading, and the truth of it is that none of us is going to be really good at everything. We all have our strengths, we all have our weaknesses. So, again, a really key part of leadership is acknowledging where we're strong, acknowledging where we're weak. Now it might be possible, with at least some of the areas that we're weak, that, if we have the time and the budgets available. We can train ourselves to be better in that area, to turn a weakness into a strength, but I think the reality is for most of us that that's really not going to happen. We've got a lot to do day to day and fitting in some additional training. First of all, it might just be too much to build in to our day and secondly, it takes time to get results. It takes time to get educated, it takes time to build up experience, and whatever it is you're running may not have that kind of time available for you to get up to speed and then start really delivering in that area. So this is where, in my opinion again that If you bring in other people who are very good in the areas where you're weak, that's where you can start getting results very quickly.

Speaker 1: 6:36

And you have to also step back and look at what the role of the leader is. So the role of the leader is not necessarily and I would say probably not at all to be the best at everything. As I've said, I think that's pretty much impossible. What the leader is there to do is to set the direction, to get very clear about what needs to happen and when, to be able to communicate that to the people who are going to deliver. Because if you're in a leadership role, by definition you have a team. There are people you're leading, so that team needs to deliver as an entity, if you like. So your role as leader is to really set the direction, be very clear in communication, be able to inspire people to deliver, to feel motivated, to possibly go the extra mile to use the phrase if that's what necessary. But that's your primary role.

Speaker 1: 7:35

It is not to know how to do everything, and I certainly see this with a lot of people In fact. So I use DISC. If you're not familiar with my sales training, I like to use the DISC model because I think it's a very easy behavioral profiling module to be able to apply and to use day-to-day very easily, very quickly. And it tends to be the high D people who are very good at getting things done. They're not necessarily good at communicating or inspiring people. So if you are a high D person, just be aware of that. But also they're more likely to not want to rely on other people. They like to have control often and they like to just push through and get things done.

Speaker 1: 8:18

So if that sounds like you, I think it's really important to have a kind of inventory of your own abilities and be in the first stage, and you can do this as a two-stage thing if that suits the situation you're in. So the first thing is to write down the key areas, the key skill areas where you need to be able to deliver, or as a team, you need to be able to deliver. So communication might be one. There might be technical aspects to it, there might be interpersonal type things in communication, but being able to inspire so going beyond just words, but being able to inspire people, Whatever the aspects are, and write them all down. And then, very objectively, and be as objective and as honest as you can be, just rate yourself. Whether it's out of five or 10, it doesn't really matter, but just rate yourself on how well you believe you are doing in that particular area at the moment. And obviously the purpose of this is to try and put some objective measure against what you're good at and what you're not so good at.

Speaker 1: 9:31

And then the second stage to this if you're able, if you're in a team where you are able to I guess it comes down to the style of leadership you have, but ideally you want to have other people give you feedback. Now this can be done. They don't have to identify themselves. This is something you could do where they remain anonymous and it's just you give them a list of things to check against the same list that you did for yourself, and you get them to give you feedback on how good they feel you are in each area. And this might sound an odd thing to do, but I think it's very valuable, because if you get the same kind of numbers back from those people against what you put for yourself, then that's fine. You're being objective and you're quite real on both how you perceive your ability to do something and how you are perceived to be able to do it. But if you see the numbers are quite different and there's consistency in the numbers that you're getting from outside, then that is definitely it's an opportunity to step back and take stock and perhaps re-evaluate just how good you are in reality at some of these aspects. And this might sound like an uncomfortable thing to do, and I can quite understand that, because you are making yourself quite vulnerable in one sense. But I think it's very valuable as well, because then you can really get a good external measure of your own strengths and weaknesses. So, having done all of that and the purpose of doing that is to then look at what you do with that information and, again, the areas where you're weak uh, I my own opinion against. This is opinion, but the thing I would certainly recommend you do is look at ways you could bring in somebody else who is smarter than you in that area and the chances are that they'll be much better at it than you ever will be, because this is their thing.

Speaker 1: 11:32

As a leader, your thing needs to be leadership first and foremost. So that would be the area to really make sure you are scoring highly, both for yourself and for other people, and breaking down what leadership means on a day-to-day, from a day-to-day level in your particular situation. But if it's things like the technical side, then as a leader, you may not need to be a nine or a 10 out of 10 technically. You might need to be a five or a six so that you can at least follow the key elements and understand when things are going okay and when they're not. But you really want somebody in there, somebody else perhaps, who is the the nine out of ten or the ten out of ten, so somebody that you can rely on to give you good technical feedback and see how well that correlates with your own understanding. Equally, there might be other areas. So if you're not in the sales side yourself, then you might need somebody in sales who's very good at that aspect, somebody in marketing who's very good at marketing.

Speaker 1: 12:33

Maybe interpersonal or hopefully, communicating within the team is something you do understand, because I think it, as a leader, it's important that we do. We are able to communicate to people and acknowledge them and encourage them and all of those kind of things. But if it's an area where the feedback tells you that you're weak in that area, then you need to look at how do you handle that, and maybe you do just bring somebody in who can give you feedback, or hopefully there's someone within your team that you trust who can give you feedback from time to time, or you just bounce ideas off them and get some honest feedback. But all of this is intended to strengthen you as a leader and it is not to undermine you. So again, something that the people who aren't so good at leadership how they'll tend to view this is it's actually openly undermining them. My experience, and I think the truth of it is that in most cases, the people who work for you, if they see what you're doing and they recognize why you're doing it. So that is to be a better leader, to make it a more positive environment for everyone to work in, to make it much more likely that as a group, you will be successful, then I think most people will see that as a positive and a positive aspect to you as a leader, if only because most leaders won't do that.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Most people I've come across in a leadership position are very reluctant to open themselves up, some because, again, this is a high D thing. They think they know better than anybody else anyway. So there's a kind of low emotional intelligence associated with that and there are certain people I might. I was debating whether or not to use the t-word, but Donald Trump is, I'm sure, somebody that you see rated as an example of this, but he is one of these people. He's kind of an extreme example of it, but he's a good example because he's somebody who never apologizes when he's clearly wrong. He'll never admit that he's wrong. He certainly never apologizes to anybody.

Speaker 1: 14:47

And look, some people like that.

Speaker 1: 14:49

They think it's a sign of strength. Personally, I don't. I think it's a sign of weakness, because it's very difficult to have people follow you when you're clearly wrong in lots of areas and yet you won't admit it. So look, I would say, if you're listening to this, you're in a leadership position. Draw your own conclusions. And I'd also say look at the people who you regard as great examples of leadership, or really strong leaders, and look at the traits they have. What are the things that made them, first of all, good leaders in your opinion? And secondly, look at the kind of people they surrounded themselves with.

Speaker 1: 15:36

And again, my opinion is that the more hands-off you are as a leader, the more you give people autonomy. As long as, obviously, you're managing it, you need to make sure that what goes on is consistent with the goals that you have, both for outcomes and also the way you operate. So everything needs to be consistent and congruent. But look at the people they put around them. So it's not just about the leader, although that tends to be where the focus lies but look at who are the, the people who make it happen, the sort of go-to people, the doers, as it were because, again, as a leader you can't do everything and, in fact, most successful people, again, in my opinion and from what I've seen, they have people around them who are actually really good, but they are very happy to not be in the limelight. They're very happy to be more the sort of backroom type roles and that sort of backroom kind of personality really. But that is what you want because, if you look at and again, disc is a good one because there are four types of people.

Speaker 1: 16:41

I'm not going to go into DISC in this podcast, but for any organization or a group to be successful, you actually need all four elements of disc. You need to have the leadership person, the person who can see where the group is going, sets the high level goals, the big vision, all of that stuff. But also you need somebody who is able to communicate to everybody and make them feel good about themselves. You need somebody who is able to read other people, to know when somebody is under pressure and to maybe just change what's going on for them so that they have the support they need. You need people who are good at the detail. If you're a high D d, you're probably not, but you need people who are good at detail, who are good at doing the steps, making things so that they can be repeated, understanding processes, all those kinds of things which, for a high d leader, is going to be incredibly tedious, and they're likely to gloss over it and perhaps not give it the level of importance that, for the benefits of the organization, it should really have.

Speaker 1: 17:50

And then, obviously, there's the technical side. It's great, it's really important, particularly if you are in a more technical kind of environment, to have people close to you who are able to do a deep dive into masses of detail when it's needed and come up with solutions or answers. Because even if you're not able to do that yourself, that's fine. But you're likely to find that you have clients if you're in that kind of situation I'm assuming you are, but you're going to have clients who do want to deep dive because that's the way they're wired, and if you're not able to do that, you're going to turn them off. So again, kind of bring this back to a sales situation.

Speaker 1: 18:29

It's important to recognize that there are going to be people that you talk to, possibly a good number of people, who are not wired the way that you are and really want to get details and information that you may well regard as completely unnecessary. And I know, I've been there, so I sort of say this from experience. But when you meet those people, you need to recognize that for them to feel comfortable to go ahead with you. So, again, it's more of a sales spin on this, but it does apply elsewhere as well. But in order for them to feel comfortable with you, they need to be able to do these deep dives. So if you're not able to do that, make sure that you have people around who can do that for you.

Speaker 1: 19:13

So that really is what I wanted to cover in this podcast just to just look a little bit at why it's important to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and also why, in my opinion, people who are weak leaders are reluctant to do it. And the thing I guess I'll leave you with is that if you have been reluctant to do this, I would strongly recommend you think again. If you're able to do the kind of self-assessment and maybe the anonymous group assessment of the key skills that you have, so that list will be whatever's appropriate for what you're doing. But be objective, get some feedback and that can help you to put a strategy in place that ultimately will make your team much, much stronger and it will highlight you as a strong leader. As simple as that. So I hope you found that useful. I will speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.