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Earning the Right to Win: Build People Up Instead of Breaking Them Down, with Bill McDermott, CEO, ServiceNow, Former CEO, SAP SE, and Author, Winner’s Dream
I’ve always believed in building people up versus breaking them down. Most people spend an inordinate amount of their time focused on their weaknesses and they become very insecure about the things that they’re not. I’ve always focused on people’s strengths, that unique brand of magic that’s their DNA, and have always gone out of my way to accentuate that.
So for example, with my first sales team in New York City, I had 18 representatives that could not have been more different. Some people were great speakers, other people could write great proposals. Some people were good in finance. Some people could close, some people could canvas. And I created many teams where we accentuated the strengths of each individual. And I developed the next generation manager by putting four people in charge of these many teams. Now, the people that reported to them really understood that they were getting amazing knowledge from expertise in all areas. And we really focused on the strength of the individual.
The other piece that was very important to this is discretionary effort. A lot of times a manager will beat down the non-performers: “You got to clear out the people that don’t perform. Clear out the dead wood and bring in new.” I’ve always believed that most people can perform if you give them amazing training, amazing knowledge, if you script as much as you can for them so they in fact internalize what it means, what it takes to be a winner. Now, by doing it at this level, every person on the team had a vision of discretionary effort. I give 10% of my discretionary effort and my time to you as my colleague, to give you my strength to offset your weakness. Now you form an amazing team, a team that has goals that has dreams as a team, but goals as individuals and everybody’s in it to win it and help everybody else.
One of the winner’s dream goals was everybody on that team going to the President’s Club, which at that time was the top performing trip. That was for the best performance. We had the only team where every single person on the team went there because they gave the discretionary effort, we focused on the strengths, not the weaknesses, and we were all in it together.
The best thing for a leader to do is provide air cover for the troops. Your teams have to know you deeply respect them, you care about them and you are there for them. That’s leadership, and leaders never walk past a problem and they never leave one of their teammates in distress. They’re always there on the frontline, leading from the front.