In school classes each teacher has a seating chart. These are first set up alphabetically to help the teacher learn each student’s name. As the year progresses, students may move to seats that better suit their particular needs. Some students do their best in the front of the room as they see the board better, others move closer to their friends because they learn best in social settings. No matter the system used to place students on the seating chart, it is all done to help them achieve the best possible outcome.

Successfully leading a team also requires a seating chart. Like the school classroom example, this seating chart needs to adapt over time to help your team achieve success. In his book Good to Great Jim Collins talks about great companies as a bus. The bus drivers are the leaders and their main job is to get the right people in the right seats on the bus so they can arrive at the right destination.

Here are three ways leaders can use the seating chart to help their team achieve the best possible outcomes:

Help your team align to their talents

The best performing teams recognize the diverse talents of each individual, make sure they are in the right seats, and fit them together to achieve a common purpose. According to Gallup, “The best opportunity for people to grow and develop is to identify the ways in which they most naturally think, feel, and behave, and then build on those talents to create strengths.”

People want to be personally successful and on a successful team. Unless we all operate in our strength zone, we will be less successful than we could be. Aligning people with their talents is a sure way to give them the best shot at being all the can be.

Help your team aspire to be great

Being in the right seat and excelling in the right seat are two different things. People may be naturally gifted with talent, but it takes work to become great. Reaching greatness requires diligently practicing to hone your strengths. Inspirational author H. Jackson Brown, Jr. says it this way, “Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.”

There are many self-motivated people who may challenge themselves each day, but sometimes it is easier for others to see what we can become. The leader’s role here is to challenge your team to succeed today beyond yesterday and tomorrow beyond today. Ralph Waldo Emerson put it like this, “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”

Help your team help others

Achieving personal greatness by being in the right seat and becoming your personal best is a great accomplishment worth celebrating and emulating. The ultimate in success is never just our own personal achievements. The real accomplishment is always in helping others learn from our actions and succeed even beyond our results.

For those driven to success, the steps from personal to team success and from team success to other’s success are mere extensions of the same desire to be the best. Those who want to be the best will be searching for the next step. Zig Ziglar highlights this search when he says, “There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction that goes with knowing that your time, talent and abilities are not being properly used.”

Your role as the leader is to now change the seating chart once again so that the best individuals can become the best leaders.   As Ronald Reagan said, “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets people to do the greatest things.”