Your Best Leadership Self
Bringing out the Best in Yourself and Others
Are you doing what you do best every day? Research shows that people who answer yes to this question are more satisfied, productive and profitable, so asking it throughout your organization is more than a nice thing to do. It’s a smart thing to do. Begin with yourself. What are your highest talents? These are commonly the talents that come easily to you (or more easily to you than to others), give you pleasure and cause time to pass without your awareness. When you use these talents, you will do better work than your peers whose strengths lie elsewhere. Furthermore, you will be more fully engaged and happier with your work. When you, as a leader, use your highest talents and enjoy your work, you set an example of engagement, fulfillment and excellence.
Can you use your highest talents 100% of the time? Probably not, but the more closely you align your job responsibilities with your talents, the happier and more successful you will be. How can you do that? First, review all of the responsibilities of your role. What are the things that you and only you can do? These you must do and ideally they fall within your strengths. Second, at the other end of the spectrum, what are the things you don’t like to do, that can be done by others? These you should delegate with care – more about that later. Third, prioritize the remaining responsibilities using the following questions:
- Which do you enjoy?
- Which give you the most satisfaction?
- Which have the greatest positive impact on your organization?
The resulting prioritized responsibilities, along with the work that you and only you can do, should comprise most of your work, if you are to use your highest talents.
How do you delegate the remainder, the tasks you don’t like to do and the responsibilities at the bottom of your prioritized list? This is your opportunity to bring out the best in others, so delegate with care and purpose. Begin by identifying the basic professional development needs of your firm or team and delegating work to fulfill those needs. Next, get to know the people in your firm or on your team well enough to know their highest talents. What do they do best? What do they enjoy most? What do they want to learn? Don’t assume you know. Instead, observe, ask and discuss. Now distribute work to leverage everyone’s highest talents as much as possible.
Remember those tasks you don’t like? Don’t “dump” them thoughtlessly. Who can learn from them? Who enjoys them? Who does them very well? How can you distribute work so everyone maximizes their time using their highest talents to meet the needs of your clients, team and organization?
Bringing out the best in everyone, including yourself, is a proven way to improve satisfaction, productivity, retention and profitability.
See my March, 2025, News and Insights for more details about Masterful Delegation.