Everybody has different job descriptions, roles and responsibilities. What we have to understand as leaders is of all the people we have hired, absorbed, attracted, everybody comes in on what’s called the effectiveness scale. When it comes to an effectiveness scale, we can go to further education, we can become more effective, we can take mentorship, we can learn and we can grow, but the reality is it is what it is. If we’re a six, we’re six. Learn how you can effectively and efficiently measure the effectiveness scale of your leaders, your vendors, your virtual assistants, and anybody that’s on your team to get more out of them and everybody understands exactly what’s going on.
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The Effectiveness Scale: Getting The Most Out Of Your Leaders And Teams
I’m in the middle of lessons by Bill Hybels. Bill personally, through his ten to twenty closest people that he mentors, has a worldwide group where they’re leading somewhere in the area of one million to two million leaders. Bill Hybels is right up there with John Maxwell, is considered a leader’s leader and the guy’s just an absolute machine. I’m going to throw out another nugget from his lesson plan. It’s what he calls a reality check and it goes like this, “You are leading groups of people. You are leading yourself, you’re leading your family. What we have to understand as leaders is of all the people we have hired, absorbed, attracted, everybody comes in on what’s called the effectiveness scale. Let’s say maybe somebody on your team has an effectiveness of a four, somebody else on your team has an effectiveness of a ten. Everybody has different job descriptions, roles, and responsibilities. This isn’t measured numerically per se, but the reality is just like in horse racing, if you ever bet horses or you know anybody that bets horses, one of the first questions a handicapper will ask is, “Did the horse move up or drop down in class?”
Meaning based on the speed of the horse, the breeding, the trainer, each horse has a class. It’s like A, B, C, D, E. An A horse might be fast enough to race in the Kentucky Derby. An E horse might be just fast enough to barely race in some local races. A lot of it is just pure heredity breeding. We’re born as fast as we are. When it comes to an effectiveness scale, obviously we can go to further education. We can become more effective, we can take mentorship, we can learn and we can grow. The reality is everyone on this podcast and myself has an effectiveness score now and it is what it is. If we’re a six, we’re a six. If we’re an eight, we’re eight. If we’re ten, we are ten. It is what it is. A leader must understand, if you have a leader that’s below you, a leader you have been coaching, a divisional leader on your team that is responsible for eight people, if that person is currently frustrated because they are not getting more out of their team, one of the things that you can do as the leader of leaders is take a guesstimation. What is their personal effectiveness scale? I’m going to presuppose they’re a six. Hybels says that a five or a six cannot attract, retain or motivate people who are higher on the effectiveness scale than they are.
A six cannot attract, motivate, train, lead discipline an eight or a ten. It’s not going to happen. Someone who has an effectiveness of an eight or a ten isn’t going to waste their time or listen to someone who’s a four. I want you to imagine for a minute, an expert pianist, would they ever take lessons from someone that’s only been practicing piano for 60 days? “No.” Not that the person practicing for 60 days is a bad person, it’s just the elite pianists needs to find someone a little bit even above their skillset or their class or their effectiveness than they are. That’s who they’re going to take mentorship from and subconsciously, they’re not going to allow an inferior to teach them. I want you to evaluate your current team and I want you to put everybody’s name on a piece of paper. If it’s just you, write your name down. If you lead 100, write their names down. If it’s 100, do an Excel spreadsheet and to the right, in column two, write effectiveness scale and just give them a guesstimation. How would you scale them from a leadership standpoint combined with a personal effectiveness standpoint, and then measure the people they’re currently leading? If you see people on their team that you know are much more effective than they are as a leader, you have a potential problem.
If you don’t do this exercise, an implosion will eventually happen. Either a person that’s below them that is more effective will leave your company or the person that is leading them will buttheads with that person at some point, come to you with frustration and talk you out of keeping them, meaning let them go. I have lived through that five times not understanding what was going on. I’m going to say it in English. At least five times, Kerri and I have had a leader in our group come to us and say, “This person has got to go. They’re destructive. They’re confrontational.” Three of five, I let them go. Then I learned this effectiveness scale a few years ago and I said, “This is positive. This is friction. This means that the person, the leader has reached their level of incompetence. There are people below them about to pass them up in this thing we call business.” It is what it is and you’ve got to find a great way to massage the egos of the people in the middle and the people below so that everybody understands exactly what’s going on.
Ego stays in check and everybody is happy that we came up with a win-win situation for the two of the five that we saved. Reality check, can you effectively and efficiently measure the effectiveness scale of your leaders, your vendors, your virtual assistants? Anybody that’s on your team that could possibly be leading someone else, can you come up with an effectiveness scale for them and then for the people on their team? You cannot ask the leader what they believe the effectiveness scale is for their people because they’re not going to judge themselves and their people fairly. You have to do it objectives really somehow some way, or you can ask them first to evaluate their team and then only after that to evaluate themselves. That’s still going to be a very skewed number just because of the egos involved. I really hope this helps. Take care.
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