If I had a convo with Adam Grant
Taking the helicopter view is only half the formula for great leaders
(Image by Elena Nechiporenko from Pixabay)
An article from “Inc.” caught my eye this morning:
“Star Psychologist Adam Grant Says the Best Leaders Share These Contradictory Traits - Very few people have both”
Since it’s not often that I find others whose opinions so closely mirror mine, I was pleased to see that I was in good company. 😊
If you’re an Inc. digital subscriber, you can find the article here. If not, these are some nuggets I pulled out, along with the comments I would have made if I was sitting in a coffee bar with Mr. Grant.
Nugget #1
What sets great leaders apart from everyone else? Strategic problem-solving skills, says Wharton organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant. "Often our highest potential people are the ones who can diagnose a problem that nobody else has seen, and then figure out how to tackle it," he says.
This is the essence of the work we do here at The Potential Center. Here’s how we express it: The fastest way for newly minted managers to stand out and become highly valued is to lead a team that comes up with creative solutions no one else could see before. We train them how to develop their creative team and become a rockstar manager that gets noticed.
We're living in an era riddled with more complex problems than ever before, such as climate change, social inequality, and global health crises. Issues like these require us to identify the root cause creatively and thoughtfully. Where our lives, and our children’s lives, are at stake, I believe it’s crucial to grow expert creative problem-solvers.
Nugget #2
The ability to look at a problem, opportunity, or situation both from a high-level strategic viewpoint and in a concrete, specific way is an ability every great leader needs, Grant explains. It's rare for someone to be good at both, he says. "We encounter a lot of people who are either good at abstract or concrete thinking. The combination of the two often makes people excellent at strategic problem-solving."
Which is why The Potential Center focuses on merging these two disciplines – the art of being an inspiring leader (helicopter view, strategic), and the art of facilitating creative problem-solving (concrete, specific) in our coaching and training.
I pioneered this approach because my 10+ years’ experience as an organizational trainer and coach, and my own experience as a manager, led me to one key truth: Combining leadership development and making creative problem-solving happen is the fastest route to being an effective leader of a high-performing team.
I think the greatest asset of a leader is being able to knit together disparate parts to make it easier to see the whole picture… to be the curator of the problem (is it what we think it is?) and to be the team sherpa for getting to the best possible solution.
Nugget #3
"Once you become a leader, you also need to figure out how to motivate and communicate vision and strategy," Grant says.
Leadership is increasingly about empowering teams to achieve great things than delegating and assessing progress. I know that if I’d had free reign to make use of my team’s skills and creativity, we would have achieved significantly more than we did. The work produced was satisfactory, but it wasn’t particularly inspiring. Which is a shame because the real job of nonprofits, where I spent my leadership career, is to inspire people to take action.
Communicating vision and strategy is important, but that’s only half the job. Stated like this, communication is a one-way transaction: get the word out, job done. The real work comes with ensuring the team truly understands the organization’s vision and strategy, and the contribution each individual will make to that vision and strategy.
Nugget #4?
These are the kinds of discussions you can expect to be part of in the upcoming group coaching program Rockstar Managers.
Go be great!
I believe that, with the right support anyone can learn creative ways to solve problems. If you’d like to see what tapping into creative potential could look like at your place of work, contact me at Ellia@ThePotentialCenter.com to arrange a call.