Leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness. This is what John Maxwell teaches in his 21 Irrefutable laws of leadership. The lid signifies the limits of our leadership abilities or that of those who lead us.

C was a new supervisor hired by the company to drive the implementation of a big project. She was assigned to work with ten other junior employees with the responsibilities of training, teaching, and supervising their work.

C was not new to being a supervisor as she left her previous company after just being promoted to team lead. There, she led more than twenty workers in their day to day activities.

Her new environment, new team, new clients proved too much and immediately her performance dipped. To diminish the impacts to the client’s business, skilled employees were assigned to assist her. These were skilled but still junior employees of the company.

There was no improvement for the next two months. In fact, a few of the skilled staff started displaying poor performance, producing low quality deliverables, and exhibiting extreme stress.

Management decided to reassign C to a less critical project with no leadership roles.

Slowly, the big project improved. The team’s morale soared. The clients became less critical and more trusting.

It was at that time that I understood what John Maxwell’s message was and what my mentor was trying to imply. She had challenged all of the members of the management team to break out of their comfort zones and exceed their potentials. She stressed that as leaders we had the responsibility to become the best in what we do otherwise we will be hampering the growth potential of all the employees that look up to us.

We do not have bosses in our company. We have leaders. Now I understand the difference.

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