Leaders that want to have a real impact know that no business scales without a focus on the people in the business. No strategy, plans, or goals will ever outperform a team that has high character, competence, and is aligned on purpose. If you want to scale results you need to focus less on the result and more on the process for growing and developing your team.

Here is your leadership truth for this article - Results-driven leadership starts with people-driven strategies.

The discussion today and the theme for all of this weeks content will be centered around what I call the Growth Factor. The growth factor in simple term is developing strategies that increase the character, competence, Here is the growth factor formula:

This formula is utilized to quantify the effectiveness strategies in increasing the character and competence of our team members, leading to individual transformation and ultimately driving execution and high returns on business success. The focus of the growth factor is found in the synergistic relationship between the qualities of character and competence within the team, facilitating transformative growth in individuals, and leveraging this growth to drive successful execution and business outcomes.

The key is here is understanding the focus is on the team and not the results. Most don't get the result because deep down their heart is not focused on the team members but instead the primary focus is on the business result. The key is in the growth factor working is that the leaders heart must be authentic and care for the team members.

Here are 2 intentions you as a leader must adopt:

1. Stop managing results, start cultivating leaders.

2. True leaders focus on cultivating the qualities that drive outcomes: character and competence.

Lets dive a little bit deeper into the 2 intentions you need to adopt and some steps you can begin taking to shift your mindset.

Stop managing results, start cultivating leaders.

Here is what most leaders do. They focus purely on the numbers. They focus on red and green metrics. When they see green - they do nothing. Most wont even give more than a simple generic "thank you" to the team. When they see red, they may ask a question - but most will just say we need to improve it. Its good that we can identify what is going on, what is going right, and what is going good. But that is not enough.

We must dive deeper into the people not the results we are seeing. We must make a connection between our team members passions, strengths, and weaknesses. We must understand that the key in changing any business metric is by shifting the focus to the individual. As leaders we must make the goal to grow the person, to empower them with tools, and resources so that they become the person that delivers the results.

The mechanism for this is simple: One on ones, on the job coaching, and giving your team your time while communicating the destination you desire to go. Your role is to provide the landscape and to draw out the potential that lies within your team members. It is your role to draw out their strengths and utilize the job as a way for them to grow themselves. The focus is on the individual - not the result.

This week begin having one on one with your team members and here are the steps you need to implement:

1. Utilize the GROW coaching framework - google this, not enough time to cover this in an article.

2. Set a time to meet. Make the meeting about them. You are simply following this framework to help them reach their potential. This is not a meeting for you to do all the talking and to "tell" them what to do.

3. Once you get to the end of the GROW framework and after the meeting. You are going to do everything you can to help that person achieve the goal they came up with. Provide resources, tools, and anything that you can think off to add value to them.

4. Lastly utilize their role and the job to assign them to the areas that will help them in this development. Partner with them on determining the end state and what good looks like. Then let them go figure out the how while you help coach them as things arise.

You see when you stop managing the result and you start cultivating the leader within you being the process of true transformation and aligning win win for them and the business.

True leaders focus on cultivating the qualities that drive outcomes: character and competence.

Scaling your team and driving outcomes begins with understanding what character and competence traits need to be present for these outcomes to exist. It is essentially taking the be, do, have model of living and capturing that thought process within your team.

The leadership mechanism that I have found that works best for this is utilizing team OKR's. OKR's stand for objective and key results. Setting objectives are easy but the real power of change is found in the key results aka daily routines, process, and activities we must do to achieve the said outcome.

An example of an OKR for an operations team may look like this.

Objective: To improve overall team morale percentage by 10%.

Key Results:

1. Increase leadership floor presence in a positive manner. Seek to talk to 20 people today while giving them positive recognition with details. Example - I want to thank you for assisting another team member today you saw struggling. It meant a lot to me as we want to have a team that cares for each others and help carry each others load. Thank you.

2. Engage with team members to solve things that are making their job harder. Utilize a 1x meeting weekly to gather team issues and look to resolve those issues.

3. Create an engagement team that develops monthly and weekly activities based on team member feedback. Look to create fun and memorable events within team. Acknowledge birthday, work anniversaries, milestones, etc...

Utilizing the OKR system with the cultivating leaders now gives you an opportunity to work alongside your team. You do this because you know your team members strength and weaknesses. You now find ways to create the win win by working with your leader who has a goal for engagement, who is passionate about engagement, and who wants to do more.

The key for you as a leader is to coach them and ask effective questions to determine the OKR's needed for their project to becomes a success. Now here is the key. They must own this process and you must allow them to come up with the how. This is vitally important. Because most want the responsibility and the authority to get the result how they see fit. As long as they are operating in integrity, not breaking policies, or doing something that could result in long term damage to the business - let them be.

The greatest gift you give our team is the ability to learn and grow from failure. Remember our focus is on developing and cultivating the leader. The OKR that they are working on is just way to grown and develop them.

I think this is a great stop pointing for today, but I want you to have one more leadership truth to help aid you in having the right mindset of a leader that grows their team members.

Remember this,

Shift your focus from bottom lines to frontline growth, that's where the real magic happens.