You cannot be a good mountaineer, however great your ability, unless you are cheerful and have the spirit of comradeship. Friends are as important as achievement. Teamwork is the one key to success and selfishness only makes a man small. No man, on a mountain or elsewhere, gets more out of anything than he puts into it.

—Tenzing Norgay (who along with Edmund Hillary was one of the first two individuals to successfully summit Mount Everest on May 29, 1953)

These words of wisdom describe the life of the 100X leader—a healthy spirit with a desire to help others and put the work into becoming this type of leader.

We have found that when you give yourself to help the right people you will experience a rich and rewarding life. To liberate is to free others and with that freedom usually comes the recognition and honor that fuels the 100X leader to do it again and again.

The Legacy of a 100X Life

The intentional life creates a legacy that is significant and memorable. Here is Steve’s vision for his life and his legacy:

I imagine I’m at the end of my life with only a few weeks left and it’s time to say my goodbyes. The question I often ask myself is how many people would take the time to travel in order to say goodbye in person. How many lives have I been able to influence to such a degree that they would do more than send an email or social media message? This to me is the true 100X leader test. When you multiply knowledge, skills, and expertise into the life of another it’s an investment that only grows over time. We always remember the leaders who helped us climb to levels we never believed possible ourselves. That will be for me the true measure of the life I’ve lived, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and why I’m committed to liberate all I can.

What is your dream? What do you want your legacy to be?

Developing Others

In this chapter we want to show you how to develop your people. We truly believe that people are assets, not liabilities, if given the time, energy, and support to help them grow.

When developing others, it is important to have a framework to understand where you are in the process with the person you are developing. We have modified the Hierarchy of Competence as our framework for describing the process of development. An employee, Noel Burch, developed this theory—frequently attributed to Abraham Maslow—at Gordon International Training in the 1970s.¹

First let’s remind ourselves of the Hierarchy of Competence.

• Stage One: Unconscious Incompetence—This is when a person is clueless and they don’t realize it. They may not believe the skill that they are doing is important and thus they can discount any counsel or training. In order to get to the next level, a person must own the reality that they don’t understand what they are being asked to learn.
• Stage Two: Conscious Incompetence—This painful stage occurs when a person realizes their deficiency and has a choice to learn through their mistakes on the quest to becoming competent or “faking it until they make it,” in order to not be viewed as incompetent.
• Stage Three: Conscious Competence—This is the stage of breakthrough when a person becomes good at a task and can consistently do it, though it does require concentration.
• Stage Four: Unconscious Competence—This is the stage when a person masters a craft or task in such a skilled way that it becomes second nature and they are so familiar with it that they do it without thinking, even multitasking at the same time.

We have innovated this model (see Figure 7.1), having highlighted a potential pitfall (the pit of despair, which we’ll go into later), which could happen between the conscious incompetence and conscious competence stages.

Now that you have the general framework, let’s move on to the practicalities of developing others by liberating them and fighting for their highest possible good. If you want to be a 100X leader, then you need to understand the different stages and adapt them based on where the person is at that moment. This will take time and you will need patience and commitment through the process of helping them to conscious competence. Depending on the complexity of the role you are trying to multiply, it will take a long time to properly reach unconscious competence.

So, as a working example, choose a person in your mind who you want to get to the next level and plan how you could walk them through the Developing Others tool discussed earlier.

As soon as they have realized they are unconsciously incompetent, you want to move them onto the next stage quickly. Agree on your plan of action, and start to intentionally show them how to accomplish a project you desire to complete, encouraging them to help you. This feels like a lot of challenge, but you will be functioning as a 100X leader. Anything looks really easy when done by someone who is unconsciously competent in it!

There are a number of variables that will help you develop them to this stage. Normally, higher levels of jobs bring with them the expectation of higher levels of competency and a lack of hands on training process. The real issue then is the tendency of all directors and/or executives to start to question whether they’ve made the right hire when something goes wrong. Sherpas who understand the process know that when the person they are investing in is in conscious incompetence, that’s when they most need to know their Sherpa is 100% committed to getting them up the mountain. Being able to describe their reality using a visual tool helps them understand that any frustration or feelings of inadequacy are a natural part of the process (see Figure 7.2). Unlike the average leader, unaware of this stage or its dangers, the Sherpa has made this journey before and can be trusted with the climb before them.

Every employee needs a breakthrough, and 100X leaders look for the breakthrough moments and celebrate them as they help people on this journey of growth. Celebrate the small wins particularly when the person experiences even a glimpse of conscious competence!

Who was the leader who helped you climb to the next level? How did they help you along the way? How patient were they with you?

What would our world look like if we had millions of liberators who were developing others intentionally? What if we had leaders who were allowing others to learn from their unconscious competence, sharing their magic? We believe this process could radically improve working life for teams and individuals everywhere.

The problem is that there are days when these employees will drive you crazy as they pendulum back from conscious competence to conscious incompetence (see Figure 7.3). It might feel like two steps forward, one step back, but you know that as a liberating leader your job is to calibrate high support and high challenge to show them where they need to grow and to fight for them to get to the next level. As they reach the bottom of the right corner they need very little challenge, they are doing enough of that themselves. That is often where they need maximum support to keep going. At the turn, they will have lost much of their self-confidence, they are only sticking at it because you believe in them and despite their protestations, you continue to invest in them and tell them they will make it.

The pit of despair is full of people whose leader gave up on them somewhere along the leadership journey in the conscious incompetence stage and have moved on without them. In truth, there is no way around the corner without a dedicated Sherpa.

If a person does fall into the pit of despair they usually land, then look around and nod at the others who have already made the pit their home. As they drink their coffee they say things like, “Hey Bob, how long have you been down here?” Bob then goes on to tell his story of neglect, while sharing some gossip and cynicism about a certain leader and the company as a whole. The new inhabitant of the pit of despair begins to make it his or her home too and a new depressing and negative norm is established.

There are millions of employees in companies around the world who go to work every day in the pit of despair! The art of being a 100X leader is the ability to lead people consistently around the bottom right corner of the square (see Figure 7.4). People only fall into the pit when their Sherpa has given up on them. And when that happens they give up on themselves, creating a cycle of failure.

Most leaders don’t like being around conscious incompetence. They start to believe they made the wrong hire, or think they’ve invested in the wrong person and they withdraw their support just at the time the person most needs their Sherpa.

Here are three things the 100X leader must provide to keep people out of the pit of despair:

1. Time—Your people need both informal and formal time to help them out of this pit. Informal time, in that they need the casual connection with you that builds trust and helps them acclimate to you and your leadership style. And formal time, in that they need clear direction and expectations about how they succeed in their jobs. Right now, they feel they are inadequate to the task and are teetering on the brink of the pit—you will need to patiently talk them up and out of it.
2. Vision—Your people need to know that their personal vision matches the company’s long-term vision. Do they really belong? If so, you must help them reach that conclusion and begin the climb back up to productivity. Keep reminding them of the long-term goal—to become fully competent.
3. Encouragement—Your people need your specific encouragement, not just generic encouragement. Find ways to encourage them to conscious competence.

Paul Drange, Director at Sourcewell, describes the ways he has changed his development of others:

Before encountering the 100X Leader framework, I was simply managing my department and people by feel and past experience. Then the Support-Challenge Matrix really changed the way I develop people. I tended to protect my team and was really good at giving support—almost to a fault. What I wasn’t effective at was bringing the correct amount of challenge so that they realized what it was like to be their true best self. Thus, I didn’t help them to develop as fully as they could have been. This change helped me do two key things—build deeper and longer lasting trust with my staff and organization, and realize the highest, most true potential for my staff and for myself.

To become consistent in your liberation as a 100X leader you must be consistent in your calibration of high support and high challenge to enable people to make the transition from conscious incompetence to conscious competence. Once this is taking place consistently, the individual will become unconsciously competent through time and repetition as they master their role or task.

It is possible to get your team members around the square. The secret to developing others is your willingness to actually do the development work.

Of course, you must have made your own journey from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence. As a Sherpa, you will already be acclimated so that people see you leading yourself well first and only then will they allow you to influence them. That journey has no shortcuts but instead requires much effort on your own journey to gain the respect needed to help others climb.

If you want more details on how to develop others, we have created a thorough digital process for you, and details on how to access this are found at the back of this book.

A key to developing others is learning to master expectations, both your own and those you are leading. Success has everything to do with clarifying what you expect from others and what they expect of you. The Sherpa and the climber both know exactly where they are headed, and what they expect from each other.

Managing Expectations

When expectations are unmet, this eventually leads to resentment, bitterness, and settling for a new, lower norm in a relationship. For instance, if someone in your life has expectations of you that are not reasonable, but never shares them with you, both you and the other party are going to be frustrated.

In our work with leaders, teams, and people in general we continue to see that much of the drama that people experience comes from the mismanagement of expectations and this mismanagement affects relationships and communication in ways that could have been entirely avoided.

Expectations are strong beliefs concerning what people ought or should be doing. All of us have expectations (see Figure 7.5). It is impossible not to have them. However, it is the way we manage and communicate them that make us more effective in leading people up the mountain.

There are some personality types that yield impossible expectations. These people, who normally tend to dominate others, are constantly pushing others to the brink with their high expectations. We have found that many venture capital firms and hired gun CEOs will create impossible expectations as a strategy, knowing that their people won’t hit these goals, but that they will be higher than they would have set for themselves. This type of strategy is brutal as it burns people out and then replaces them when they can no longer cope with the stress.

The next level is unrealistic expectations and again, most of us will have these in relation to something in our lives, whether it is new employees, our next vacation, or the latest gadget. Protecting leaders (low challenge, high support) tend to have unrealistic expectations but rarely share them, which create cultures of entitlement or mistrust because of their lack of communication.

Obviously, the ideal is to have and communicate realistic expectations, but to achieve this is rare. If we could all learn how to have truly realistic expectations within our relationships, roles, and responsibilities, then we would increase our influence and effectiveness, not to mention sleep better at night. It is important to truly analyze our expectations in relation to others. Are they limited? Resigned? Most people simply haven’t understood their expectations or haven’t shared them appropriately. If we have not actually communicated our expectations, and people respond to us in a different way than we had hoped, then we become resigned or apathetic in our expectations. Assuming people understand what is expected usually ends in disappointment.

Take some time to reflect on the Expectations Scale for your various relationships, roles, and responsibilities.

Reflect on how you could start to be clearer in sharing your expectations and the liberation, which could happen if you intentionally did this with the people in your life. Do the hard work and you will be glad you did.

Holding People Accountable while You Develop Them

As Sherpas, your job is to help people become consciously competent to keep them from falling into the pit of despair. We’ve just discussed the importance of communicating reasonable expectations. But what happens if the people you lead still don’t perform to the higher standard you need them to? How do you keep people accountable?

I believe that the traditional performance review process of reviewing performance once per year around salary discussions is the least effective model for raising individual performance. Instead, I believe the most effective method to hold employees accountable and to drive performance is to create an ongoing conversation around continuous improvement. If an employee knows where they are at any given time, and they have someone walking with them in the process then their success will go up tenfold. By using the GiANT tools, we have given our leaders the language and the visuals to help coach those they lead to become leaders worth following. That is how it works—consistent leadership on a regular basis, not just an annual “hit and run.”

— Deanna Farmer, CAO, Enable Midstream

We have certainly found that making continuous performance review into an ongoing conversation is the best way to hold people accountable while developing them. Figure 7.6 shows a tool to help understand what the real issues might be if you do find people who are continually underperforming.

Work through the performance diagnostic by asking yourself these questions from the top down in relation to an employee who is not performing at the required level of expectation.

First, is there an organizational or cultural issue that is affecting that person? If not, move on to the next question. Is his or her role clear? If it is, move to the next questions until you conclude what you think the issue is. You are simply moving down from top to bottom starting with the organization first before analyzing the individual.

The hands section details your responsibility. Has the individual been given the appropriate training for the job? Have you properly shared your expectations? Has he or she heard and understood them? And has he or she received adequate support/challenge? Again, if the answer is yes to all these, keep moving on through the questions until you find the issue. Remember, your job as a Sherpa is to help the individual get to the next level.

Does the person have the competency to do this job? Is there a better role for him or her inside the organization? If the answer is no to both, then the individual may not be a part of the future team and your game plan must be developed to address this. This may seem like strong language, but the reality is that leaders must calibrate support and challenge and there are times when the challenge may be more pronounced if the performance is not meeting expectations.

Does he or she have the motivation for the job and belief in the organization? Is the person’s behavior in line with the company’s values? If there’s finally a no here, the lack of passion affecting the individual’s performance could be a personal issue that is bleeding over to work or maybe a character issue that needs to be addressed. Sometimes there are issues going on in the home that can affect a person’s performance. Just remember the combination of grace and truth, of support and challenge. Be careful not to judge the person, but instead use this tool to help solve what is really going on with the person who is underperforming.

Here is how Tom Bell, CEO of Bell Lumber & Pole, does performance reviews on a regular basis:

We frame our performance reviews as coaching conversations. Specifically, we train supervisors to open their discussion of employee performance with the concept of Liberation—that the supervisor is “for” the supervisee, wanting to provide their direct reports with the right balance of challenge and support, to call up the employee’s best work. Supervisors end the coaching conversation with an agreed written plan that specifies exactly what challenge and support will look like moving forward into the next review period.

It takes commitment to a system and to ongoing, consistent conversations that will take people to the next level. This diagnostic, together with all the other 100X tools we’ve looked at, can be used to work their way into the company culture. It is much easier for people to handle accountability and performance issues when they have consistent language and tools to help train supervisors and leaders throughout the organization.

To develop people is the beginning of the X, multiplication. It begins by being intentional and learning to share your expectations clearly while holding people accountable to the goal. In the next chapter, we want to share with you how to do what very few do—become a multiplication master.

Once you believe this then you can begin to take people to the higher levels and begin to learn how to master multiplication. And multiplying leaders are the top 1% on the planet.