Any successful organization is built on a great team. As a leader, you will want to see the individual members of your team develop, grow, and become the best version of themselves. This should be one of your main objectives and responsibilities. As your team gets better, the organization will get better along with it. As their leader, your desire should be to see your team members become their best. With this in mind, With this in mind, here are seven reasons why you want your team to be better than you.
1. Increases Scalability
For organizations to grow, you have to have a solid team that is dedicated and competent. As a leader, you want your team to be better than you because it allows the organization to be more scalable. If you do everything as the leader, you become the bottleneck to your organization’s growth.
Having a competent team that is better than you opens more opportunities for things to develop and flourish. You will have more ideas, more people solving problems, more empowerment, and more people putting attention to the things that matter most.
If you, as the leader, hold all the cards, then you may be why the organization has stayed stagnant.
2. Secures the Future of the Organization
Any organization built on one leader or one personality will not pass the test of time. As soon as that leader leaves, for whatever reason, the heart of the organization leaves with it. To secure your organization’s future, you want to have a team that is better than you. Why? First, when you have a culture of personal development, others will, in turn, do the same with their teams. When you help push people beyond your skill set, gifts, and knowledge, others will do the same for the people they are leading. This ensures that the organization is constantly producing high-level leaders with talent that get the heart of what you are trying to accomplish.
Second, when you as the leader need to step aside, there are competent leaders that are ready to step into your role without missing a beat. You know you’ve been successful as a leader when an organization continues to grow and thrive long after you’re gone. Teams that are better than you bring longevity to the growth and health of the organization.
3. Pushes You to Be a Better Leader
When your team is better than you and more competent than you, it forces you to step up your game and improve. You can learn from your team how to do things in a different and better way.
An important aspect of leadership is to remain flexible and teachable. Don’t be too proud to learn from those that serve under you. They may have ideas or strategies that are better than yours. In fact, they probably do. Don’t feel threatened by this. Instead, take it as an opportunity to learn and grow yourself. Learn how to do things better. They may have a better way of personal organization that will benefit you. They may be reading books, and articles, or listening to certain podcasts that have helped them grow in knowledge that can also help them get smarter
and better. Learn from your team.
Make sure to let your team members know specifically what you’ve learned from them or how they’ve made you better. Encourage them with this privately and publicly in front of the rest of the team. This lets your team know that you value what they bring to the table and that they are an important member of the team. It also encourages the entire team to continue to learn, grow, and share their knowledge.
4. Makes the Team Better
If individual team members on your team are better than you, then you know that they’re also making the team better. All boats rise with the tide. As members grow, improve, and become better leaders than you, they push the team as a whole to be better. When leaders see other leaders improve and get more opportunities, then it helps inspire and motivate other team members to do better.
When you’re the only one who is great at something, there’s no reason for you to continue to improve. However, when those around you are better at a specific skill or can get something done more effectively and efficiently, the team will notice, and it will encourage them to want to improve and grow. When individual team members are better than you, then it helps influence the rest of the team to want to be better, making the whole team more exceptional.
One thing to guard against is unhealthy competition. You don’t want your team to turn against each other to get ahead. It’s important to know your team members well and know what motivates them and when they feel insecure so that you can help through any negative emotions they may experience.
5. Covers Your Weaknesses
If you are the smartest, most talented person on your team, then you are on the wrong team, and you’re doing something wrong. Your team members should have skills and competencies that are beyond yours. Good leaders surround themselves with other leaders whose strengths are their weaknesses. You will never be good at everything. You can’t be the best at every aspect of a job or have mastered every skill or competency. But you can add people to your team that have mastered the skills and competencies that you lack.
When your team is better than you, your weaknesses are covered, and you can focus on the things you do best. Let your team thrive in the areas you are lacking.
6. Helps More People
When your team is better than you, you have more high-level leaders working together. This increases your capacity to help more people.
We all have a limit on the number of people we can interact with and assist. With more competent leaders involved, the organization’s ability to interact with and assist others drastically increases. Your impact and influences grow, with more lives impacted for the better.
This can only happen if you, as the leader, intentionally empower your team. Don’t be afraid to delegate and hand off jobs, tasks, and projects to your team, especially when they are better than you.
7. Makes You Look Good
You worked hard to develop your team and created room and space for their gifts and talents to grow and flourish. For this reason, when people look at you and the strength of your team, you will receive credit for the team’s success.
You didn’t develop your team to make yourself look good. That wasn’t your motivation. You wanted the organization to be better and your team members to grow and thrive. But as a result, you will look good, and people will come to you for advice on how to replicate your success. You can let them know that the key is to develop your team so that they are better than you.
When your team is better than you, everyone wins. Organizations need to spend more time developing the people on their teams and be ok when those team members become better than them. Insecure leaders surround themselves with leaders who don’t possess the same level of knowledge and skill to preserve their position and power. Don’t be this kind of leader. Don’t be insecure when team members are better than you.
For the reasons above, you want your team to be better than you because it’s what’s best for you and everyone.
