Friday, March 9th, 2007...11:12 pm
See Everyone As a “10″
Lead-Down principle #2 in John C. Maxwell’s book The 360° Leader is to see everyone as a “10″. What does this mean? In the life of every successful person, there is someone who saw the potential in them…someone who pushed them to the next level in their lives by seeing the future and encouraging that person to become what they could be.
John encourages us to do the following things for employees with great potential.
1) See them as who they can become
2) Let them “borrow” your belief in them
3) Catch them doing something right
4) Believe the best - give others the benefit of the doubt
5) Realize that “10″ has many definitions
6) Give them the “10″ treatment.
In a way, it is like my senior manager says to us often, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” In terms of employees with great potential, we need to lead people as they can be, not as they are.
4 Comments
March 10th, 2007 at 12:26 am
This irresistibly make me think of Ben and Roz Zander’s practice of “giving an A”, described in their book The Art of Possibility, which I read a long time ago. On this see http://www.benjaminzander.com/book/
March 10th, 2007 at 2:17 am
I received that book as a gift from the last company I worked for. I wish more managers were able to apply this particular tip. Most managers tend to ignore people they don’t think they can build up and a lot of great potential is lost within a team. This is a great tip for keep morale up too.
March 11th, 2007 at 11:53 am
There is some truth in this, but I’ve seen leaders who keep seeing people as a 10 even though they obviously aren’t. You can risk doing damage to the rest of your team if you place too much unfounded trust in someone who continues to let you down.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
I love this honest and seemingly simple approach on how to treat employees and co-workers. I think the hardest part is realizing that these principles have to be engrained in your mind. Reading these one time isn’t enough. You have to make a decision to actually see the people around you as human beings, not just small ants at work.
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