Legacy Leaders Know their People

Getting to know your people is the number one goal for any leader. You cannot be a leader without followers. Some leaders seem to forget this simple fact. If you are leading the charge and you look behind you to find no one there? Well I guess you weren’t really leading after all. Getting to really know people is a skill we can learn. We are not born with this skill, we develop it over time. We refer to this as People Acumen.

Yourdictionary.com defines acumen as, “the ability to quickly and accurately understand and deal with a situation or choice.” Adding the word people to this word results in, People Acumen is the ability to quickly and accurately understand and deal with people in a situation or choice. Ineffective leaders struggle with People Acumen. They misinterpret the motives, fears, concerns, and the needs, wants, and desires of “their people.” Legacy Leaders get their people. Legacy Leaders quickly pick up on what motivates, what scares, what causes concern, and what their people need, want, and desire.

How do we acquire People Acumen? It’s really quite simple. We observe them. So, what does that mean? To observe means to watch, listen, and collect information about them. This is not done in a sneaky, covert way. It is done openly and with our intentions fully and clearly stated. We let our people know that we want to really get to know them so that we can help them be the most successful version of themselves as we possibly can. We let them know that we will be listening to what they say and how they say it. We let them know that we will be watching what they do and how they do it. We let them know that we would like to explore possibilities and dreams and even their “nightmares” so that we can all be the best we can possibly be. We also let them know that we care about them, not just at work, but in every part of their lives. The more we now about them and the more they know about us, the better able we will be to make decisions that are in the best interest of the organization and everyone the organization touches.

In our business, “Culture By Choice™,” we utilize an assessment that we call the Core Advantage Assessment ™ . This assessment combines the Hartman Values Proile, the DISC, and the Motivators assessments into one assessment with one report, our Core Advantage Report ™. This report tells leaders and followers what an individual is most likely going to do under both everyday circumstances and during more stressful circumstances. It also tells what is most likely going to be the motivation behind those behaviors. Thirdly, the report tells us about the values that underlie the decisions the individual makes before the actions are taken. The values exist with respect to the people involved, the problems that are faced, the systems and rules that govern the process, and the person’s own sense of self-worth, their role or place in it all, and their hope for the future. These assessments give leaders a huge advantage because in a very short period of time, the leader can discover a wealth of knowledge about their people. Legacy Leaders can use this information to help their people be the best version of themselves possible and that is always a goal of every Legacy Leader.

Legacy Leaders know that they are nothing without their people. They also know that they will never be better than the team they assemble. Knowing their people allows them to deploy them in the best way possible both for the organization and each person. Assembling highly productive teams requires excellent People Acumen skills. Being able to assess both the existing talent and the potential talent is critical for the organization today and the organization tomorrow. Legacy Leaders also realize that they can always improve. They can get better at reading people. They can have better People Acumen skills. So they never stop learning. They never believe they have arrived. They believe they are on a life long journey of trying to better understand people and to help people get better at understanding others and themselves.