A Culture of Leadership Development

By Doug Franklin December 7, 2009

The key to creating a culture of leadership development is the ability to ask one powerful question to all those under you. But before I give you the question, I want you to think about creating a culture for a minute. When you want to create a certain environment you must constantly focus on your desired culture. You can’t mention from what you want from time to time and you can’t focus on it once a month; you must focus on it daily. To create a culture of leadership it requires you to be thinking about using every activity of your day to develop the people around you. Creating leaders will not happen in a monthly meeting, but instead throughout the daily grind of work if you allow it. As the leader you must constantly be willing to give ownership away so others can step into new leadership opportunities. So the question used to create a culture of leadership development is as easy as, “I don’t know, what do you think?” This simple question requires the people around me to make decisions, think on a deeper level, and be the owners of their actions. When I don’t ask this, I become the lead of everything and the people around me don’t get the opportunity to lead. If you want to create a culture of leadership development, only answer questions you can answer. All other questions get the same answer, “I don’t know, what do you think?”