One of / my greatest disappointments in life / has been / seeing people / squander their potential. // We constantly / underestimate / our own / capacities, / and / we're also / vulnerable to / underestimating / what other people / are capable of achieving. // The measure of a leader's success / is / how much / the groups / they're in charge of / ultimately accomplish. // That means / that / if you fail / to help people realize / their potential, / you are failing as a leader. // When I work with leaders, / I tend to see them fall into one of two traps / when it comes to developing their people.// One is / that they're cheerleaders / and the other is / that they're critics. // If you're a cheerleader, / you recognize / people's best selves / and you try to harness their strengths, / but there's good empirical evidence to suggest that / when we become too comfortable with our strengths, / we start to use them as a crutch. / And they can even become career derailers. / So / if one of your strengths, / for example, / is charisma,/ you are at risk / for under-preparing / when it comes to leading a meeting / or giving a speech because / you're so good at / improvising / and speaking extemporaneously, / you may not do your homework.

I don't think / you just want to be a cheerleader / because you are in danger / of letting people / turn their own strengths / into weaknesses. // I think the problem with critics / is they often deflate / the people around them. / If you're constantly telling people what they're doing wrong, / people get discouraged really quickly. / Their motivation starts to falter. / At some point, / they begin to doubt / whether they have any potential / at all. // I think the best leaders / are neither cheerleaders / nor critics./ They're actually coaches.// They / see people's potential / and they try to help them/ become a better version / of themselves. // They allow people / to / recognize their strengths / but not get complacent around them. / They allow people / to see their weaknesses / but not get discouraged by them. / And they remind people, / "Yes, / you might be pretty good today, / but you're capable of becoming even greater tomorrow." / And that energizes people / to want to become better / as opposed to being comfortable with where they are / or completely incapable / of growing from where they're stuck. //