Some years ago our school district’s board took a bold step and hired a woman from out of state to be our new school superintendent. I was elated. Soon I had the opportunity to meet her at a social gathering, and I came away thoroughly impressed and convinced that she was an excellent choice to lead the most important organization in our community.
Among her first responsibilities was to hire a principal before the new fall term began. And when I saw who she had hired, I had second thoughts about the superintendent’s qualifications. Even before I had the chance to meet the new principal, I suspected we had a problem in the district.
My suspicions were aroused because the new superintendent, a very short middle aged woman, had chosen a slightly shorter middle aged woman to be the new principal. It was almost as if the superintendent was trying to hire her clone.
Appearances can be – and often are – deceiving. But in this case the similarity proved revealing. The superintendent did not do well. And neither did the principal. In any case, neither lasted very long.
My suspicions were aroused because the superintendent was so short it seemed that she must have looked far and wide to find a woman – perhaps the only one in the whole world – who had both the proper credentials and was shorter than the superintendent. Of course I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed almost certain that the principal’s physical similarities must have played a role in the superintendent’s decision to hire her.
My concern was that the best leaders don’t hire clones to reinforce themselves. Instead, they hire their opposites – or at least they look to hire people very different from themselves – in order to help round out their leadership teams.
That’s not to say a considerate person hires a jerk, a neat and tidy person hires a hoarder, or a competent person hires an incompetent one. Every organization, every administration, needs to have a handful of basic values that everyone on the team is expected to reflect. In this sense, everyone on the team should be very much alike.
But when we move from values to perspectives and skills, differences become key assets to an organization.
The leader whose strength is vision needs others on his or her team with a gift for details. The qualitative thinker needs a strong quant or two on the team. If the CEO tends to be impetuous, she needs to surround herself with some methodical thinkers who are more risk averse. Pessimists benefit from optimists. And vice-versa.
St. Paul touted this perspective when he wrote about the Body of Christ. A body consists of many parts. They are necessarily different. Each part has a role to play in the well-being and performance of the body. Paul puts the situation clear in a series of very basic questions:
If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended. If they were all one part, where would the body be? (1 Cor 12:1-19)
When you don’t appreciate differences – and hire to get them – you risk ending up with a woefully inadequate organization.
In his new book, Real Leadership, John Addison, CEO of Addison Leadership Group and former co-CEO of financial services marketing organization Primerica, says Primerica's success can be partly attributed to the fact that he and his co-CEO had completely different backgrounds and skill sets, although they did enjoy spending time together.
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