“Leaders have the unique ability to make someone feel ten feet tall”

If you had to select one, just one quality to develop as the leader, what would it be?

I’ll answer this question by saying management and leadership are different, to state the obvious. Management is technical, but leadership is emotional. And all of us, when we are in leadership positions, we must be great at how we make people feel.
Leaders have the unique ability to make someone feel ten feet tall or ten inches tall. And I see my job as a leader, it’s not to be your friend, it’s not to be your family member. That’s not how I run my team.
My job is to help you realize your potential beyond what you ever thought possible. And by the way, when I say my job is not to be your friend, I have a 100% retention rate of any of my direct reports in the last four years that have worked for me at Compass.

Amazing.

It’s not because I’m their friend, right? It’s because I understand what it is for them to realize their potential, and I help them unlock it. And in order to do that, you have to have an emotional connection with someone. That’s not like a technical capability.
And when you help someone feel 10 feet tall, you give them that emotion. You can help them achieve anything. And the most important thing that you can give the people that you work with when you’re a leader is self-belief.
I think the strongest steel— you can’t be broken if you have well-earned self- belief. And I think your manager, your leader, can uniquely give that to you in a way that a lot of times we can’t give it to ourselves even if we deserve it.