the law of the lid

I just heard someone talking about the leadership law of the lid. It's the principle that you can't take people past where you are in a particular area...so you'd better figure out what your "lids" are, and then delegate those to people with higher capacity.
Makes sense...

In my mind, this goes back to pride. It's pride that makes us think we can do everything. It's pride that doesn't allow us to give things away. It's a lack of self awareness that keeps us blind to our weaknesses. It's that blindness that keeps us from allowing others to live up to their leadership ability by handing them things that they're better equipped to handle.

Because the guy running the meeting didn't ask others about his ability communicate effectively, it was a poorly run meeting. If he is willing to hear that he's not great at something....maybe he hands it off to someone who is...and we have a well run meeting.
or project...or event...or business.

This guy said that he'd pulled in his entire staff and asked them to share with the group their lid. The interesting thing was that nobody was surprised. Everyone already knew each other's lids. The people working for you know your lid. It makes sense. You know the lid of the person you work for....they know the lid of the person they work for...we just see it. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it takes awhile.

He said that it was very freeing to have people talk about their lids. It opened up constructive dialogue about how to work together more effectively...when to delegate...how to emphasize strengths...and how to do "what only you can do" within the framework of the different responsibilities.

It's gotta take some real humility to open that kind of conversation up. I don't know if I could do it. I've been out of real, life on life, daily leadership for a short time now, and I wonder if I would have had the guts to do this with my last group. I did take out time to have folks tell others what they felt like their strengths were. It was empowering to some and it was a sort of wake up call for others (who didn't have people talk about their strengths in an area where they had an inflated view of their giftedness) It ended up being a good thing because we had an honest view of how we viewed each other's strengths.

I just came out of an hour long meeting where we watched a DVD from the Leadership Summit.

Inspiring stuff that makes me thing...

that's the probleme with inspiring stuff....it makes me think...