Page 270 - The extraordinary leader

The Organization’s Role in Developing Leaders • 247

principle of avoiding any discussion of what his clients could not do, emphasizing
instead what they were capable of doing and what it made sense for them to do.
Because the only purpose for hiring people was to produce results, employees
should be paid only in consideration of their strengths, not their weaknesses. But
in reality, the opposite was often the case. The organization had a proclivity to
focus on human defects, to criticize and harp on the negative aspects of
individuals, to see people as threats rather than opportunities, and to esteem the
potential of credentials instead of competency. 9

Drucker wrote:

Conversely, the effective executive makes strength productive. He knows that one
cannot build on weakness. To achieve results, one has to use all the available
strengths—the strengths of associates, the strengths of the superior, and one’s own
strengths. The strengths are the true opportunities. To make strength productive is
the unique purpose of organization. Its task is to use the strength of each man as a
building block for joint performance. 10

We cannot emphasize enough the positive impact this has on organization
culture. Rather than people feeling constant pressure and guilt regarding the
things they are incapable of doing, there is a completely different tone to the
organization that celebrates strength.
Football teams use highly specialized players. One of the key players is the
kicker. Very often these individuals are slight of build and not capable of doing
many of the things their fellow teammates are doing regularly. Seldom are
they great runners or pass receivers. However, they are usually among the high
scorers on the team. No one seems to mind these “weaknesses” of the kicker,
so long as the kicker completes field goals and gets the points after touch-
downs. Everyone is content to focus on strengths and ignore everything else.
Every leadership development process should contain time and vehicles
to ensure that the leaders thoroughly and accurately understand their
strengths. Along with that, however, the organization must constantly be
vigilant about the evolving nature of the strengths that the organization
requires. Being technically competent may have been a key strength when
the organization’s challenge was discovering more oil. But if the company is
now a consumer marketing organization with a strong retail emphasis, then
new strengths may be required for success.