In my 15+ year career as a marketer, I’ve had a lot of managers. In my 10+ years as a book author and blog writer, I have interviewed hundreds of people (a lot of them in leadership roles). And in all this time one important leadership quality was mentioned rarely and put to practice even less.
What is it?
Real leaders hire people who are smarter than they are. And then they give them trust and freedom to innovate. Click To Tweet
This practice seems to be as rare as unicorns. Why? My guess is that oftentimes it stems from leaders’ ego or insecurities, from fear that someone else will outsmart and outshine them. But in hiring look-alikes, they limit the company’s (and, frankly, their own) potential for growth and for building something truly amazing.
One of my favorite quotes on the subject comes from Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of CollegeHumor Media. CollegeHumor Media, comprised of CollegeHumor.com, Jest.com, Dorkly.com, and several syndication partnerships, is a leading online entertainment company targeting a core audience of people ages 18-49. Ricky himself is a millennial who started CollegeHumor in his early twenties. Regardless of his young age, he was full of leadership wisdom. To him, it was very simple. When I interviewed Ricky for my first book Think Like Zuck (2013), he said:
“I always hire people that are smarter than I am. If you look around at the people in the office, they do what they do a lot better than I could. It can initially be a blow to the ego, but it pays off in the long run.”
Success is a team sport. You want the best team around you, if you want to not only accomplish something, but to build something exceptional. Innovation doesn’t come from fear, from overblown ego, or from holding a leadership title in the name only. Innovation comes from humility. It comes from understanding that if you are a true leader, then the collective wisdom of the team you built should outshine your own brilliance. It comes from passion, desire to create, and from servitude.
Jim Collins says it best in his timeless book Good to Great: “People are NOT your most important asset. The RIGHT people are.” - Jim Collins Click To Tweet
A true leader doesn’t breed managers, (s)he breeds leaders. One of the greatest leaders I’ve worked with at Intel, Johan Jervoe, vice president of marketing, told me once: “My goal as a leader is to work myself out of a job.” His goal as a leader was to create a strong, self-sustained team that could be empowered to make decisions and lead when he wasn’t there. That is a true mark of a leader!
So… if you are a leader or you aspire to be one, I hope you get off your high horse and acknowledge those around you who deserve to be acknowledged. I hope you give the credit where credit is due. And I hope you say thank you. But most of all, I do hope that the next time you hire a new team member, you hire the one who is smarter than you. Because, by doing that, you have the best chance to position yourself ahead of competition and to inspire people to follow you.
Cover image credit: @benwhitephotography
