Week 30 Day 7: Assignment: Identify One Person to Multiply This Month

Choose one person on your team who has high potential but is not yet operating at their full capability. Design a one-month development plan using the principles from this week. The goal is not to fix a problem -- it is to accelerate a strength.

Here is the development plan template. Step one: identify the person and the capability you want to multiply. Be specific -- not 'make them better' but 'develop their ability to lead technical design discussions.' The more specific the development target, the more effective your investment. Step two: assess the current state. Where is this person today relative to the target capability? What is the gap? Is the gap knowledge (they do not know how), skill (they know how but need practice), or confidence (they know how and have the skill but do not trust themselves)? Each gap type requires a different intervention. For knowledge gaps, provide teaching. For skill gaps, provide practice opportunities. For confidence gaps, provide increasingly challenging assignments with your visible backing. Step three: design three development interactions over the month. Interaction one (week one): a coaching conversation where you share the development target, explain why you chose it, and co-create the plan. Interaction two (week two or three): a practice opportunity where the person exercises the target capability with your support. For the design discussion example: they lead a design review for a low-stakes project while you attend as an observer, not a participant. Interaction three (week four): a debrief where you evaluate progress together, celebrate growth, and plan next steps. Step four: apply the multiplier behaviors throughout. Ask questions instead of providing answers. Let them struggle before helping. Credit their contributions publicly. Step five: measure the result. At the end of the month, can this person exercise the target capability with less support from you than they needed at the start? If yes, you have multiplied. Add the plan and results to your Leadership Operating Manual under 'People Development.'

The one-person development plan implements what Boyatzis (2006) calls 'Intentional Change Theory' (ICT), which identifies five stages of sustainable personal development: discovering the ideal self (the development target), assessing the real self (current state), creating a learning agenda (the development plan), experimenting with new behaviors (practice opportunities), and developing trusting relationships that support the change (the coaching relationship). Research on ICT found that intentional development plans produced behavioral change that persisted for 5-7 years in 60% of participants, compared to 20% persistence for unplanned development. The gap assessment (knowledge, skill, confidence) draws on Anderson's (1982) ACT theory of skill acquisition, which distinguishes between declarative knowledge (knowing what), procedural knowledge (knowing how), and autonomous performance (knowing without thinking). Each type of gap requires a different intervention: declarative gaps require instruction, procedural gaps require practice with feedback, and autonomous performance gaps require volume of experience. The three-interaction structure maps to what Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) call 'deliberate practice' -- structured activities designed specifically to improve performance, characterized by clear goals, focused effort, immediate feedback, and repetition. Their research demonstrated that deliberate practice is the primary predictor of expert performance across all domains studied, accounting for 80% of the variance between average and outstanding performers.