How to manage people who are smarter than you or think they are

Get the Full StoryThe ultimate test of your real talent as a manager is to create the conditions for talented people to deliver value, and to boost team performance.

David Ogilvy, regarded by many as the father of modern advertising, used to onboard new managers by gifting them a set of Russian wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. He then told the recruits that if they hired those who were smarter than they were, they would become a company of giants, and if they hired people who were not as skilled and intelligent as them, they would become a company of the smallest.

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