Attracting Talent Through Leadership

Being a leader is not about giving orders, a leader lead by example and guide employees the right way

When we talk about leading a project, a company, or a group of people, we should be clear that it’s not just about putting yourself in charge, ordering tasks that others must perform, or facing up to problems.

The first thing a good leader must do is preach by example and set the guidelines to follow, getting the whole team aligned for the same purpose.

I want to explain how good leadership can attract talent to a team or bad management can cause it to fail.

“You manage things; you lead people. “— Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

Internal talent You don’t always have to start a selection process to add new members to your team. A good leader must have the ability to detect talent within his own company.

Such detection is essential, and the project leader can use different tools and incentives to motivate his team to demonstrate everything they can. For example, give a price to whoever achieves the deadline first or offer gift cards to the winning team.

Team learning Leaders need to know the learning skills of their team members. It is common that, when starting a new position, the worker wants to demonstrate his or her full learning ability. As a result, it is often put in a “spot” to acquire all the skills necessary to fulfill its role.

In some people, this capacity gets on hold for many reasons, including:

-Lack of motivation -Comfort -Restriction on their growth

A good leader must be able to identify the learning skills of his/her workers and continue to encourage them so that they can offer the best of themselves. Each person has a different learning ability, whether it’s because of their conditions, their situation, their seniority in the company, etc.

Support vs competitiveness It’s more common than we think to meet bosses who see their team’s talent as a threat to their position. That reflects their insecurity.

A good leader has to view his/her team’s talent as one more force coming together to achieve the same goal. If someone demonstrates the ability to innovate and improve, motivate and encourage them to continue to contribute and not stop out of fear that they will take your place.

Competitiveness is a spur to offer your best version, but not to beat anyone, but your limitations and work together for a common good.

If a worker does not feel rewarded and valued, he or she will find another way to do so, either on his or her account or by offering his or her talent to another company.

For all of this, intra-entrepreneurship is a key piece of a company’s growth, which every good leader must consider.

Do not punish failure We must not punish failure. We have to incentivize initiative, test the trial-error sequence. If we don’t learn anything from failure, it won’t have worked for anything.

It’s not about taking crazy action, not thinking about the consequences, not having a plan, not having a prior study, or not knowing what is being done.

But fear of negative consequences, if something goes wrong, may be a major obstacle that will impede growth and progress.

The bottom line

As a leader, you need to learn how to evaluate your team’s capacity for every project.

Reward creativity and innovation, teach the right way without shortcuts.

Teach and guide your knowledge to new generations, nobody is going to take your job if you do it right.

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. “— Jack Welch