The Guide, Not the Hero: An approach to people leadership and development

By Jeremy Oyen and Chris Anderson

Over the years, my approach to people leadership and development has been to determine the best manner of hiring and developing team members, looking at the process from every angle possible - from every level of the organization(s) to the perspectives and insights from staff themselves. Through this inspection we found that the engagement scores and customer satisfaction were relevant and truly telling once we put forward a clear and concise plan to connect, engage, and development path forward for each person and each team. 

What is better to help put such a plan into action but an intriguing thought as to how and what you are both hiring for and developing leaders to be?

Chris and I shared the following concept and the AORE (Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education) Outdoor Professional Conference this past fall and thought it best to share it more broadly.

When reading Building a Story Brand (Donald Miller), Donald focuses his message to have business leaders create better connections with their customers. That messaging in combination with the concept that the first customer of every business is the staff of that business. If you don’t focus your first branding and focus on your team, you will never have true success and the best customer engagement possible.

One of the key messages that resounded was the aspect of the Key Elements to a traditional story: (Is there a better way to look at development, than by considering the story of each of your team members?)

1. Hero

2. Problem

3. Guide

4. Call to Action

5. Plan

6. Success

7. Failure

When adding this to a focused development plan, we can drill even further and look at two of these elements:

• The Hero: in great stories the key aspects of an archetypal hero are that we see their good and their bad, they have a defined story arc, they are the center of attention, and they don’t coexist with other heroes well.

• The Guide: Archetypal Guides come in and out of the story  to support the hero in their story arc. Their credibility is automatically assumed and is not overt & we don’t see their bad side at all.

As a movie buff, here are a couple examples of Heroes & Guides in our pop-culture 

Luke Skywalker & Obi Wan Kenobi (considered Luke & Yoda as an option as well)

Bilbo Baggins & Gandalf

So, what does this means for you? 

How is this relevant to hiring and developing your team to be their best?

Your customer comes to you with the expectation that they are the HERO in their story! They are on their personal story arc to do whatever it is that you provide. Keep in mind that your customer may not be the end user of your companies product. They could very well be another member of your staff, a matrixed department, or completely different team within your organization that is seeking you out for your expertise and guidance on a project.

Your team(s) need to see themselves as Obi Wan or Gandalf. Your staff should strive to be the GUIDE in the customers adventure.

When using this analogy and inspecting the most common performance management issues, we find that the issues team members most commonly face relate back to whether the staff are in the proper roles and headspace. 

The steps to put this concept into practice are fairly straight forward, but require effort on your part to shape your organizational culture, create the resources for support, and lead people by creating programs and space for people to gain buy-in, embrace their role, and take action.

The pathway can be seen as an adventurous trail that starts where you define “who” your guides are. This is foundational work that can be seen in your job descriptions, expectation setting, and clarity of the vision of the work they are undertaking.

Your second waypoint on the trail is your recruiting and hiring. How are you making sure you are representing the path your future staff member is being asked to follow? Is the process reflective of the supportive approach the guide provides the hero?

Next along the path is learning and development followed by coaching. This part of the trail is represented as a loop. No matter how new, or “seasoned”, an employee is learning and development is expected and reassures them that they are still the hero. Your guiding role is to help them get better in their current role, allowing them to aspire to become the best of the best in that role or pursue new pathways in new roles either within or outside your organization.

Too often I hear that people are afraid to develop team members to reach new heights because they may leave and all that training would be wasted. My argument to this negativity is to ask how the employee was performing in their current role? Would they feel more or less engaged, have strong performance if they had continual development opportunities OR would they become disengaged and potentially have performance issues if they were left alone with no path ahead?

Without a conscientious Guide stepping into the story arc to make sure the Hero was on the right path, would Luke have made it off Tatooine? Would Bilbo have returned from the Lonely Mountain? 

As the Guide for your team, to help them Chase their Adventure, you need to start by doing three key things:

1. Broaden your view of your team (get to know their aspirations and potential career paths)

2. Inspect your organization’s entire employee journey, from job descriptions to on-going development. Make sure there is a clear and known path. It may have many side trails and connections but there needs to be a path that can be followed.

3. Have your guides ready and waiting! Long flowing cloaks are optional.