Source: Dr. Mullen
I once hired someone smarter than me. I hated how it made me feel.
→ They were sharper in meetings.
→ Faster with decisions.
→ More technically capable than I was.
Instead of feeling proud, I felt exposed.
I started wondering:
If they're better than me, what exactly am I bringing to the table?
Then it hit me.
I was competing with talent I was supposed to be leading. So I changed how I led.
1️⃣ I asked more questions than I answered.
↳ My job wasn't to have every answer. It was to get the best thinking into the room.
2️⃣ I gave credit publicly.
↳ If someone was better than me at something, I wanted everyone to know it.
3️⃣ I shared decisions earlier.
↳ People take more ownership when they help shape the answer.
4️⃣ I made disagreement safe.
↳ If your smartest people are afraid to challenge you, you're wasting their talent.
5️⃣ I admitted when I didn't know.
↳ Pretending to know everything wasn't leadership. It was insecurity.
6️⃣ I measured myself differently.
↳ Their growth became a better measure of my leadership than being the smartest person in the room.
That changed how I thought about talented people. I didn't need to outperform them.
I needed to create the conditions for them to outperform me.