What is the one thing that you are are or could be 10X’s better than your peers?
My wife is an amazing journalist.
She has many strengths.
But she has one where she is 10X’s better than her peers.
It’s in identifying, generating and building new story ideas.
People marvel at her ability to do this again and again.
It’s her key leadership strength.
She may not have a formal leadership role but she is an acknowledged thought leader in her team and organisation.
I believe this is the new way to look at developing leaders.
For too long we have asked leaders to work on their weaknesses.
I believe a more productive route is to ask leaders to work on their strengths.
The new goal is to build a single leadership strength so that it is 10X’s better than their peers.
For some leaders it could be decision-making or collaborating or problem-solving or engaging others.
It does not matter what specific leadership strength a leader concentrates on.
Consider this thought experiment.
Imagine a culture of 10X’s leaders.
Imagine a group of leaders that were world-class in a specific area.
Imagine what they could teach others.
The new game in town for leaders is not to divide this group into high, medium or poor leaders but to raise the performance level of every leader.
The aim is to play to the individual strengths of each leader.
The world’s best male football (soccer) player is Lionel Messi
He is not all that good heading the ball nor with his right foot.
But he is the world’s best at attacking defenders in their danger zones and scoring or setting up goals for others.
He is perhaps 10X’s better than his peers at this specific ability.
The other big advantage of this 10X’s approach is that it encourages the individual leader to pursue excellence.
By doing so they can lift their expectations to what is possible.
They also can inspire and coach others to lift their performance in this key area.
The Australian golfer Adam Scott recently said when talking about the performance of fellow Aussie Jason Day;
‘When I was coming up only Tiger Woods played at that level where he was so much better than everyone else but now there are 10 guys who can do it.
Maybe not week in, week out like Tiger, but they can play at the same level he played.’
The key message?
Welcome to the era of the 10X leader.
What is your key leadership strength that you can transform or build into a 10X capability?