3 Blockers Keeping You from Developing Leaders
Leaders cost more money than followers. Period. That is just true. In general, leaders cost more money than followers. And so often, I see is when business owners engage in hiring conversations, they're looking for the cheapest possible option to get the tasks done that they need done.
Alex Judd:Now for certain hires and for certain activities, that might be what you need to do. But if you want leadership, if you want critical thinking, if you want people to own outcomes, if you want people to share responsibility, if you want people to think proactively, that costs more. Man, it's just so easy, to get into a spot in business where you might say this verbally or you might certainly feel this emotionally. I just feel like it's all on me. I have definitely said that before.
Alex Judd:I've also heard so many business owners and leaders say that, man, I I just feel like this project is all on me. I just feel like this decision is all on me. I I just feel like this business sometimes is all on me. And here's what I wanna tell you that you might not expect. Sometimes the reason that you feel that way is because it is.
Alex Judd:It is all on you. And, but you weren't expecting that one. Right? The reason why sometimes it's all on you is because you aren't developing leaders. Here's what I've seen in my business growth journey and in the business leaders that we get to coach with and lead every single day.
Alex Judd:That oftentimes, that feeling that it's just all on you, that you you have to make the decisions. You you have to define where we're going. You you have to figure out the strategy. You're the one that's thinking about all the different variables and all of that. It's because you're the sole leader in the organization.
Alex Judd:And that's oftentimes not because people don't want to lead or that they won't lead. It's rather that you haven't given them the opportunity, the empowerment, and the development that they need to take leadership responsibility and ownership. And so that's why it's so critical that we focus on what are the things that get in the way of leaders developing other leaders because it's not, helpful for it to all be on you. And why is that the case? Well, there's three reasons why I think it's so important for you to focus on how you develop other leaders.
Alex Judd:Number one, it's more sustainable than doing it all on your own. You doing it all on your own, you having all the variables in your head, you making all of the big decisions, you being the one that's constantly thinking about anything is wonderful as long as you never wanna go on vacation or I don't know, like have a life. Right? The minute you decide, oh, I actually wanna have a life or I wanna go on vacation and be able to turn stuff off, it's not really good. And so as a result, it's not sustainable.
Alex Judd:Right? Number two, it's more scalable. If you're not developing leaders, but you only have a culture of compliance and followership within your team, well, then you become the bottleneck for your business without a shadow of your of a doubt because everything is centralized around you. And so what's really critical is you decentralizing decision making ability, the ability to take action, the ability to to solve problems, the ability to proactively and strategically think about the business. It's way more scalable for you to be able to do that.
Alex Judd:So it's more sustainable. It's more scalable to develop leaders. Here's the third one. It's more strategic for you to develop leaders than doing it all on your own. One of my favorite things I've ever read on the topic of strategy was actually kinda written by a guy that it it was a chess grandmaster, which, man, I just wish there was a way to become an entrepreneurial grandmaster because I think that's the single most epic title you can ever have.
Alex Judd:Right? A grandmaster. Well, that's what this guy was. He one of the best in the world at the game of chess, which we all know that chess is a strategic game. And he was actually talking about the things that people often kinda have as misconceptions about strategy.
Alex Judd:He said what people often think about strategy is wrong. They think that strategy is all about knowing what you're gonna do 10 moves ahead from the present. Like, what are you gonna do 10 moves into the future? And he said, certainly, there's a part of that that is strategic thinking for sure and second and third order consequences and all of that. Yeah.
Alex Judd:That there's absolutely strategy involved in thinking through those things. But he said, a lot of times, it's less about knowing about the moves you're gonna take 10 steps in the future and more about knowing the moves that you have available to you in the present. And how does that connect to this topic? Well, as an individual leader, you have a finite number of moves available to you. And those moves are a product of the things you've read, the the podcast you've listened to, the experiences you've had, the background that you come from.
Alex Judd:Right? All of those things feed into this resource, this pool that we call your moves. And if you're leading alone, you are leading your business based on your bag of moves. The minute we start bringing other people to the leadership table and giving them leadership opportunity, letting them speak into decisions, allowing them to inform the strategy that the company is taking to move forward, you add so many more moves to the pool that you're drawing from to determine the way that your organization is going. So so why do we develop leaders?
Alex Judd:Why is this in your best interest and the best interest of your business? It's more sustainable, number one. It's more scalable, number two. It's more strategic, number three. Now here's what I want us to understand is that there's two parts to developing leaders that you've gotta have.
Alex Judd:It's willingness and ability. You've heard the phrase willing and able before. Here's what I often see as the case is that a lot of business owners, a lot of leaders are actually able. Like, they have the tools. They have the skill set.
Alex Judd:They can develop leaders, and they even know the practices that if they were, to develop leaders, what are the things that they would do? But a lot of times, they're unwilling to exercise those skills, those tools, those habits, those disciplines. So it's not that they're not able. I just can't develop leaders. They're actually very able.
Alex Judd:It's that they're unwilling. And so that's what we're really gonna focus on in terms of the blockers is what are the things that actually represent our unwillingness to develop leaders? And you may look at this and be like, well, that I I it's not that I'm unwilling to develop leaders. Listen to me real quick. Here's the things that I often see leaders are unwilling to do that prevents them from creating a leadership culture and developing other leaders on their teams so they don't have to do it all alone.
Alex Judd:And I I want you I wanna challenge you. Look in the mirror and see if any of these things might even have a microcosm of truth for your leadership. Number one, an unwillingness to invest the money. Number two, an unwillingness to slow down. And number three, an unwillingness to lead leaders.
Alex Judd:That's the high level, and now we're gonna break them each down. So let's go on into the first one, an unwillingness to invest the money. Let me give you the most practical black and white thing I'm gonna say in this entire episode. Leaders cost more money than followers. Period.
Alex Judd:That is just true. In general, leaders cost more money than followers. And so often, what I see is when business owners engage in hiring conversations, they're looking for the cheapest possible option to get the tasks done that they need done. Now for certain hires and for certain activities, that might be what you need to do. But if you want leadership, if you want critical thinking, if you want people to own outcomes, if you want people to share responsibility, if you want people to think proactively, that costs more.
Alex Judd:And probably the best thing you should do whenever you're looking for that person is not look for the cheapest possible option. And so here's what we often see. Business owners want leaders, but they don't wanna spend the money. And that's the flawed thinking right there. It is that they think about it as spending and not investing.
Alex Judd:But here's what I will tell you is once you do it well once, you will believe wholeheartedly in the value of investing in leaders because you realize, oh, man. It costs more, but the return is so much greater, so much greater. The return of both financially, but also the return in terms of your sanity, your freedom, your joy, you loving the people you're working with. So so there's two kind of ways this often happens. A lot of times, business owners or businesses have the money, but they won't invest it.
Alex Judd:And the reason why they won't invest it, this is the unwilling business owner. They say, I'm unwilling to invest the money. The reason why is one of two things. They either lack belief in what a leader is capable of. So what that looks like is they don't understand what's possible if they hire a leader.
Alex Judd:They don't understand how much more the business could grow. They don't understand how much could be taken off their plate. They don't understand the opportunities that could be discovered if they actually invested in a leader, or they have insecurity. So so the first one is lack of belief. The second one is that they might have insecurity.
Alex Judd:And what that means is, like, they they're insecurity about I need to hold on to all of this because all of this represents my value. And if I start giving away leadership responsibility and authority, then I'm losing my value. Well, then you're not gonna pay more money to start feeling more insecure. You would never do that. Right?
Alex Judd:There's another piece to the insecurity idea that I I wanna hit on for a moment is especially if you're hiring, you know, one of your first kinda executive level leaders, if that's the stage of business that you're at. Maybe you're over 2,000,000 in revenue, and you're suddenly encountering, you know, salary numbers that are bigger than you've ever seen before because you're looking for executive level leaders. So often, we see a number like a $160,000 a year, and, we read that as like, oh my gosh. I'm gonna have to pay a $160,000. And that's not even counting, you know, benefits, health care, time off, all of that, right, that comes along with hiring a leader.
Alex Judd:So they see it as a $160,000 a year, and they're like, there's no way we can swing that. In reality, what you're actually opting in for is $13,300 a month. Now that's still a lot of money. Right? And you should be a a really wise steward with how you invest that money and with hiring the right person and with thinking through how are we gonna get a return on that investment.
Alex Judd:But when you stop thinking about it as a $160,000 and you start thinking about it as $13,000 and you start to think through what are the activities that this person is going to be engaged in and what are the things that they're saying they could do to grow our organization, you actually start to connect the dots way faster. Now now that's for the leaders that have the money or they have the financial margin, but they won't invest it. There are also businesses that I know that the leader says, I want leaders on my team. I just don't have the money right now to hire those. And I wanna address that in two ways.
Alex Judd:Sometimes that's the downstream effect of not having invested it in the past. So because you didn't invest earlier, you now don't have the margin to be able to invest right now. And what I would tell you is, like, we're gonna have to figure that out. And and, really, this kind of brings us to what we're gonna have to do if you don't have the money that you need to hire other leaders right now. You're gonna have to rely on resourcefulness.
Alex Judd:And what is resourcefulness? Resourcefulness is doing what you can with what you do have. And so maybe it's fractional. Maybe it's relying on your brother-in-law for a season. Maybe it's hiring a contractor for a time.
Alex Judd:Maybe it's you doing the extra legwork right now knowing that the minute it becomes available, and I know what that deadline is, I'm going to hire a leader. But what we can't do is just say, well, I don't have the money right now, so that means I'm I'm just not gonna prioritize having leaders to help me lead this business. If you want to develop other leaders, you can do that. You're just gonna have to be resourceful. The other thing that I would say is, man, if you can get someone that is young and willing, your resourcefulness is gonna come in developing that person.
Alex Judd:But, man, if you can get someone that is young and hungry and excited and wants to be part of the mission and the work and they're bought in to, man, I wanna become a leader in this organization, that person doesn't cost as much as someone that has ten years of executive level experience doing what you're doing. And it can be oftentimes really thrilling if it's the stage of business that you're at to find that young person that is going to grow into leadership with the company as long as you're ready to get on that growth train with them. And that really actually brings us to the second blocker. So the first one was the unwillingness to invest the money. The second blocker is an unwillingness to slow down.
Alex Judd:I I love that proverb that says, if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. Developing leaders takes time. And there's two things about it that I wanna hit on that really require a lot of intentionality and time. Number one is the idea of developmental delegation, and number two is alignment.
Alex Judd:And so let's break these down together. So often, we teach and think about, if we're not careful, delegation as a time management tool. I And actually think that can be an incredibly selfish way to look at delegation because delegation is like, how do I get the stuff that I'm not good at or that I don't wanna do off my plate and onto someone else's? And, certainly, that's one way to look at delegation. A lot of times what that results in is handing off a bunch of tasks to other people.
Alex Judd:But here's what I will tell you is and maybe I'll phrase it as a question. What is the single best way to develop people into greater levels of leadership capacity? Maybe you think books, podcasts, courses, work, right, that they can do, bookwork that they can do. It's none of those things. And that's kinda crazy given that I create courses.
Alex Judd:You know, I'm working on a book, and and we record podcasts. Right? That's not the best way to develop people. The single best way to develop people into a greater level of leadership capacity is give them real responsibility that they can own the outcomes of. That's developmental delegation.
Alex Judd:When you're giving someone outcomes and you're telling them, basically, figure it out. Now I I wouldn't recommend you use that language unless they're a very particular personality type, but I will tell you that people learn through the doing, especially if that doing comes in partnership with coaching and equipping and training and evaluation and great questions. When you provide all of that to people, oh my gosh. Your delegation can still accomplish you getting stuff off your plate, but it can also accomplish them expanding their leadership capacity. And they're also expanding their understanding of how the business works as a whole and how all of these pieces work together and their ability to work with other players on the team.
Alex Judd:All of that becomes more possible when you have when you think about delegation developmentally. But what does that take? It takes time. Right? If you're going to delegate in a way that actually results in people expanding their leadership capacity, you're gonna have to spend a lot of time setting expectations, documenting, those expectations, following up in coaching conversations.
Alex Judd:Whenever people ask you questions, you're not gonna give them answers immediately. You're gonna ask great questions of them, and you're gonna prove to them you actually have the answers inside of you. Developmental delegation takes time to document, to train, and to coach. And most leaders aren't willing to slow down and do that. Here's, the other piece that takes time, alignment.
Alex Judd:Jim Collins says that leadership is 1% vision and 99% alignment. Now think about this. When you are the only one that's leading, right, when it's all on you, what's the benefit to that? Now you could say there's no benefit to that, but that's actually incredibly false. Right?
Alex Judd:You there's actually a lot of benefit to that, and the benefit to that is agility. Right? Because leadership is 1% vision and 99% alignment. The 1% vision comes from you, and the 99% alignment comes from you aligning you to you. Right?
Alex Judd:Which isn't isn't all the times easy, but but it's way easier than getting other people in alignment with the vision. Right? And so the minute we start adding other people, well, then that 99% of alignment actually takes a lot of time to say it's not just do I buy in? Do I wholeheartedly understand? Do I agree on the strategy?
Alex Judd:You're now saying, man, do do other people buy in? Do they agree? Do they believe in this? Or do they, you know, do they fully kind of think about how this affects every part of the organization? And most leaders never experience or accomplish that just because they're unwilling to slow down.
Alex Judd:So so what do you have to do? You have to be willing to slow down. Now what we all know to be true is if you do this right, and this is the bet that you're making, this is the investment, if you do this right, you are slowing down so that we can speed up. So if you slow down for long enough and do it effectively and intentionally enough, it it's not just you speed up. It's a we speed up that everyone gets better and faster at what they're doing.
Alex Judd:And that's where we start looking at leadership being more about, multiplying the efforts of others instead of just adding, tactically adding to their own individual efforts. As a leader, your goal is to be a multiplier. You wanna have a multiplying effect on the efforts and energies of the people around you. And in order to do that, you've gotta be willing to slow down so that we can speed up. Let's go to number three.
Alex Judd:An unwillingness to invest the money was number one. An unwillingness to slow down was number two. Number three is an unwillingness to lead leaders. Many leaders don't find themselves leading other leaders because they just don't want to. They want to lead followers.
Alex Judd:And they might say, oh, man. No. That's not true. I absolutely wanna lead leaders. Make sure before you actually say that, you remember and think about what leaders actually do.
Alex Judd:Because what do leaders do? They make decisions. They make mistakes, and they want to expand and grow. That's what leaders do. And so do you want to lead people that make decisions?
Alex Judd:Do you want to lead people that make mistakes? And do you want people that want to expand and grow, that they're hungry to move forward, that they constantly wanna be taking new territory, new responsibility? Because if you have any hesitation to any of those things, I I would say that's fine, but you don't actually wanna lead leaders. You wanna lead followers. And what we often see is people say, oh, I wanna lead leaders, but then they get frustrated when people start making decisions that are different than theirs.
Alex Judd:Or they say, oh, I I wanna lead leaders, but then they they get all bent out of shape when people start making mistakes. Or or they say, I wanna lead leaders but then when those very leaders that they said they wanted to lead start expressing, hey, I I think we can do more things or I have these ideas about things that we can do differently or hey, I'm looking for opportunities where I can expand my compensation and my responsibility. Suddenly that person that was so excited about leading leaders, they're nowhere to be found. So here's what we have to make sure we're opting in for if we wanna develop leaders. Number one, you have to make sure you want to lead yourself.
Alex Judd:So so you will never lead others in making decisions, making mistakes, and growing and expanding if you yourself are not willing to make decisions, to make mistakes, to grow and expand. Because if you're not willing to do those things, you're gonna be the cap. You're gonna be the lead. But but then here's the other thing, is you have to be willing to let them. You have to be willing to stand back and say, I'm gonna allow them within reason and within wisdom to make decisions, make mistakes, and grow and expand.
Alex Judd:And not only am I going to allow that to happen, I'm going to cheer that on. I'm going to foster that. I'm going to, work towards that happening. But but so often, what we see is that there's an unwillingness to actually lead leaders, and what we actually want is to lead followers. So think about what you actually want.
Alex Judd:And if you do wanna lead leaders, then then opt in for that and make sure you're living that way yourselves. Now let's talk about what that looks like practically real quick before we close out. If you wanna lead leaders, what you wanna delegate is not tasks. What you wanna delegate is outcomes. Now there's something that I've learned on this recently that I wanna share with you that that I think could be incredibly helpful.
Alex Judd:The clearer the outcome, the more removed you can and should be. So so here's what I mean by this. If the outcome is, like, crystal clear, like, you know exactly what needs to be accomplished and it's incredibly objective, not subjective. So it's black and white, not gray. Then I would say you can and should be very removed if you're putting a leader in a position to own it.
Alex Judd:Obviously, this is, you know, operating as though you made a great hire. That person is equipped. That person is empowered. All of that. Right?
Alex Judd:The clearer the outcome, the more removed you can be. So what what does that mean? Well, if you can give a leader a metric and say that this metric is, you know, the error or the goal that we need to hit and, you know, you have the authority and responsibility to be able to do whatever you need to do within our values and mission to hit that outcome. If you can give them that and they're a person that has the knowledge, attitude, skills, and habits needed to accomplish that goal, then you can and should get out of the way. Now here's where we can screw up though.
Alex Judd:Sometimes we are fuzzy or unclear on the outcomes we need or outcomes are a little bit more subjective than they are objective. What I will tell you there is, at least from my perspective, there's a time where that actually might be what you've got to work with. Right? For me, at least, there's sometimes where it's like, I actually don't fully understand what's possible yet, what we want yet, what the goal is yet, exactly what we're trying to accomplish yet. And so the outcome I have an idea, and I'm gonna give you all the idea that I've got so that we can work towards this together.
Alex Judd:But but it's gonna be a little bit fuzzy. It's gonna be a little bit subjective, but here's the expectation we're setting. We're setting is, like, we're gonna have collective patience for it being fuzzy and subjective for a period of time, and we are going to move towards greater degrees of objectivity and therefore alignment so that I can become less involved. And so if the outcome isn't yet clear, we can be more involved. We just need to make sure we do that with a high degree of wisdom and nuance and winsomeness and that we're collaborating and also that we're not getting upset or frustrated when people aren't aligning with our fuzzy expectations.
Alex Judd:We gotta be willing to say, we're gonna move towards this together, and it's gonna be clunky. And what we are moving towards is objectivity, clarity, and specificity. And we're gonna get there, but right now, we're making sausage quite frankly, and that might be a little bit messy. The principle that I want you to remember, the clearer the outcome, the more you can and should be removed from the day to day work. And so that's why, man, as a leader, one of the greatest things you can do if you've got a player leaders on your team is as fast as possible, get clear outcomes.
Alex Judd:Just get really clear on what we're trying to accomplish because then that gives you the ability to do what everyone is hoping you will do, which is get out of the way. Okay. Here's what I want us to understand as we close. I I really believe this. Your greatest impact as a leader will come from developing other leaders.
Alex Judd:I actually believe that. Your greatest impact will not come from your personal effort, your personal performance, the goals that you personally had. I actually believe this. Your single greatest impact in this world will come from you developing other leaders. So then the question does not become, are you able?
Alex Judd:I actually believe you're able. Praise God. You're able. You have the skills. You have the tools, and anything you don't have, you can absolutely learn.
Alex Judd:Here's what I wanna know, though, is are you willing? You might be able, but are you willing? Because if you're going to develop other leaders, you gotta be willing to, number one, pay the cost, and what we're talking about there is investment. You gotta be willing to slow down so that we can speed up, and you gotta be willing to lead leaders instead of just building a team of compliant followers. Let's go.
Alex Judd:Well, there you have it. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. If you want any of the information or resources that we mentioned, that's all in the show notes. Hey. Before you go, could I ask you for one quick favor?
Alex Judd:Could you subscribe, rate, and review this podcast episode? Your feedback is what helps our team engage in a sequence of never ending improvement. We wanna amplify what's valuable to you and, obviously, reduce or even remove the things that aren't. Also, you leaving a positive review is what helps us connect with, build trust with, and serve other leaders around the country. So thanks in advance for helping us out on that front.
Alex Judd:Are you a leader that wants to grow your business in a healthy way, serve people exceptionally well, and glorify God in the process? Go to pathforgrowth.com to get more information about our community of impact driven leaders and schedule a call with our team. Hey, thank you so much to the Path for Growth team, Kyle Cummings and the crew at Podcircle, and the remarkable leaders that are actively engaged in the Path for Growth community. Y'all are the people that make this podcast possible. Y'all know this.
Alex Judd:We're rooting for you. We're praying for you. We wanna see you win. Remember, my strength is not for me. Your strength is not for you.
Alex Judd:Our strength is for service. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
Alex Judd:Hey.
