A rehabber explains leadership through altitude levels: visionaries at 50,000 feet set direction, middle managers at 20,000 feet create waypoints, tactical leaders at 500 feet handle obstacles, and frontline staff execute. Most teams skip the middle layers and wonder why execution falls apart.
You are a huge visionary. You live up at 50,000ft, and so you've got this team down on the ground, and you're like, from 50,000ft, I can see that we're at my house, and I would like to go to Greece. And you're like, it's in that direction. Just go. So you leave the room and they're at your house, and they walk out the front door and they get in the car. They don't know where to go next. Like, they don't have any waypoints. You didn't give them any waypoints. You just said here to there go.
Many CEOs, we didn't go to leadership school, right? We're just winging it, and we're figuring it out as we go, and as we make mistakes, we learn and we improve and we get better. So I don't want to say that I'm the greatest leader. I don't want to say I'm a really, really crappy leader. But I have learned a lot of lessons along the way. One of the probably most important things that maybe you have some insight on is I am the type of person that does not want to babysit somebody. I want to hire somebody where I can say, hey, Becca, I love you. I think you're perfect for this role. And when you come on, I'm going to give you tasks, and I'm going to say, you have the opportunity to ask any question that you have about this and come to me at any point in time with your questions. But I'm going to let you own this, and I'm going to let you take it to the finish line. And so I will do that, and I will let them go. And I've seen some people excel and some people bang their head against the wall. So me as a leader, I have realized that there's some people that I need to foster or nurture more or check on them more or just choose that. I can't hire that type of person underneath me because it just. It doesn't work. So what's your feedback for leaders like.
That you are a huge visionary. You live up at 50,000ft, and so you've got this team down on the ground, and you're like, from 50,000ft, I can see that we're at my house, and I would like to go to Greece. And you're like, it's in that direction. Just right, go. And you're like, ask me any questions you want. And they're like, I don't know. Like, do we have A car. And you're like, yes, you have a car. All right, cool. Do we have plane tickets? Yes, you've got plane tickets too. And so then you're like, all right, we're good, I'll see you in Greece. Because I'm going to go do something else because I'm a, I'm a big visionary. So I've got other things to be working on. Right. So you leave the room and they're at your house and they walk out the front door and they're like, they get in the car and they're, they don't know where to go next. Like, they don't have any way points. You didn't give them any waypoints. You just said, here to there, go.
Right?
So that's the highest level leadership. That's like the biggest visionary. So then what I realized is that underneath of you there needs to be a smaller visionary who is down at like 20,000ft who can say, all right, I can see closer, I'm closer to where you are. You see the, you see the house in Greece, that's it. They get down closer and they're like, I want you to get in the car and I want you to drive to the JFK airport. Okay? Then you're going to get the JFK airport. You're going to take that over to France. Then from France, you're going to go from here to here. So then you've got your 20,000 square foot, 20,000 foot leaders. Then you have another level of leadership. And the problem is both you and that 20,000 foot leader don't realize that there's a cow blocking the road at the end of the driveway because you're so high up that like, you don't even. This doesn't even register on you that this is a thing that would be a problem for them getting to Greece. Right, Right. So then you need someone who's in the car, who's driving, who has a level of leadership. They're down at the like 500 foot and they can say, oh, you get to the end of the driveway and there's a cow. You're going to go around the cow. Right? Like, I can see there's another road off to the left. Just make a left, go around it, come back to the right. So you need these, like, levels of getting closer and closer and closer to the ground. And then you've got the people in the car who are driving and they're actually doing all the work in your organization. So I in my head had this epiphany where I was like, there's actually four levels of leadership or maybe there's three because maybe you have a smaller visionary. Like there's no big visionary atop. So maybe it starts at the smaller visionary. And then they, they need, they need the, the process managers and the project managers and then there's the people executing.
That's really powerful in terms of a lot of people ask, who's my first hire? And I know when you're doing your very first hire, we tend to have the answer of, you know, write down all the things that you're doing and those $10 an hour activities that should be passed off to an administrative person so that you can start working on your highest and best use. But there comes a point in time where you're growing so big that. And if you don't have the knowledge that you just shared, then you're not sure that you need that middle person. And then there becomes this big gap between the CEO and this visionary and the people executing down there and they're just feeling a little lost and the visionary doesn't even realize it. Like you said, they're off like planning the next big thing. And I think that's been a big mistake that we've made. That when I say we, I mean I have made in our organization is really learning how to fill that middle, middle gap.
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