EP151 – Leaders Building Strong Teams

Understanding the difference between managing and leading will enhance your abilities in both leadership and team building. #AdvancedQualityPrograms #TheQualityGuy #Teams #Leadership

Are you prepared to lead or to manage? As Alexander Fleming famously said, “The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity.”

One of the most important things a good leader does is cultivate the next level of leaders. This means investing in developing the people and teams within your organization. Professional development is far more than the annual performance review; it’s about helping your people achieve their maximum potential, not just in their current roles but also in future opportunities within the organization and their overall careers for years to come.

To effectively cultivate another’s potential, you must get to know them on a deeper, more holistic level. Specifically, you must discover:

Their strengths and areas for growth: This will help you identify specific opportunities to build their competency.

Their sense of purpose: This is what motivates and engages them, giving meaning to their life.

Their long-range career dreams: This goes beyond their current job, meaning you must create a safe space for them to share their future aspirations.

Together, this information will help you guide the professional development of your people. Each year should begin with a clear plan that’s reviewed at least quarterly. Developing your people is a craft and involves more than we can cover in a podcast episode.

A significant shift has occurred over the past decade in how work is done across all types of organizations. Nearly 90% of employees relate to spending one-third to one-half of each day working in focused teams, and 95% of them participate on multiple tasked teams simultaneously. Teams are instrumental to the industry, and organizations that effectively empower them to gain substantial competitive advantages. Teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage because it is both powerful and rare. The challenge is that exceptional leadership is needed to overcome the rarity of effective teamwork. Investing in your team leaders and equipping them with essential skills to build and lead high-performing teams pays off.

The Difference Between Leading and Managing

Throughout your day, you likely alternate between managing and leading. Today, leadership and management are closely intertwined as most people in leadership roles also manage people, projects, or functions. Let’s explore the key distinctions between the two activities.

The primary goal of leadership is to produce change and growth. As a leader, you envision a better future and design the changes necessary to guide the organization there. The primary goal of management is to produce order and consistency. As a manager, you create a stable work environment that is clear and consistent, enabling employees to maximize productivity. Inevitably, there is some inherent tension between the roles of manager and leader.

Think about your day-to-day work over the past two weeks and identify when you were managing and when you were leading. Here are key distinctions to look for:

Approach: Managing is tactical and hands-on, while leading is strategic and visionary. This difference stems from the timeframe involved. Managing occurs in the present, focusing on short- and mid-term goals to ensure the organization’s current success. In contrast, leading is future-oriented, involving setting strategies and driving change to create the organization of tomorrow.

Focus: Managing has a narrow, internal focus, while leading has a broad, external focus that encompasses other functions, the industry market, and national and global affairs.

Resources and Structures: Managing relies on existing resources and structures, while leading involves designing new processes for the future.

Task Goals: Managing focuses on directing daily work and employees to achieve current goals. Leading requires planning for the future, establishing a long-term vision, and strategizing to realize that vision.

People Skills: Both managing and leading require emotional intelligence. However, managing is more tactical, involving one-on-one meetings, delegating tasks, and coaching employee performance. Leading is strategical putting your people on the right place to perform and empowering them.

All that said, there is no single answer that fits every organization or serves every leader. It is a skill that requires daily practice and calibration. This is what makes the concept of leadership so intriguing. What is considered a future vision for one organization or leader could be standard practice or management in another. But understanding the difference between managing and leading will enhance your abilities in both areas.

~”For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening.”~ Alexander Fleming