As leaders, it's our duty to set the right environment for the people around us to thrive. We must invest in and nourish ourselves and our teams, and it's our job to cast a vision for growth and provide direction to our followers on how to get there. That's why this month, Leadercast has focused on growth and the steps we can take as leaders to move our organizations forward.
The journey to growth isn't an easy one, and it begins with us as individuals. Before we try to figure out how we can grow others, we must first start with ourselves. To go along with the month’s theme of growth, we read The 100X Leader: How to Become Someone Worth Following, a recently released book by GiANT Worldwide co-founders Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram.
In it, the two use the Sherpa as a model for what a leader worth following looks like. A Sherpa is a member of the Tibetan people who lives in the Himalayas, well-known for their mountaineering skills and serving as guides to climbers trekking to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Just as climbers rely on Sherpas to guide them and push them to reach their full potential, we need people, tools and resources to help us climb to the top of our own leadership. And better yet, we need to serve as Sherpas for our followers once we reach the summit ourselves.
This brings in the premise behind what Jeremie and Steve refer to as the 100X Leader: We must do everything we can to get to 100% health in our leadership—that’s the 100. Once we get to that point (and continually work to maintain 100%), we add the X, which is all about multiplying others to help them be their best.