Are you a manager or a leader?
Here is the simple question to help you see:
Are you trying to move things forward, or are you trying to stabilize them?
We need to both manage and lead
Likely you do both but at different times. The challenge is that we get caught in too much managing. We spend most of our time, heads down just trying to survive. More often, and we need to manage less and lead more.
A manager steadies things.
If at that moment, you are trying to stabilize things, keep them in line, and follow procedures, then you are managing.
Here is what managing looks like:
When you wear the manager’s hat, you are;
✔️Managing budgets
✔️Setting up work schedules
✔️Ensuring people are following their job descriptions
✔️Reviewing procedures at a staff meeting
✔️Solving the problem of the day
✔️Returning emails
✔️Attending meetings, we are required to attend
💙Managers get stuff done
Managers are maintaining order and consistency. They are keeping things status quo. In essence, they are getting the work done.
💜Leaders are moving things forward
Shifting into leadership mode means that instead of maintaining the status quo, leaders are looking to challenge the status quo. You are looking to get out of the steady, sure place and find more movement forward. Leaders focus on change, movement, and growth.
Both Managing and Leading are needed!
Leadership looks like this:
Putting on your leadership hat has you do these activities:
- Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture
- Thinking strategically
- Creating a vision
Leaders develop others and the company
Leaders motivate, inspire, and energized team members to grow and develop to be all they can be. In doing so, this also creates the space for the company to be all it can be. Leaders help individuals and teams to reach their full potential.
Too often we get stuck in managing and forget to lead
Only leading or managing gets you into trouble
When we sit on one side of the other too long, it creates a void. Yes, we need to stabilize for a moment, but we also need to keep moving.
👉️Always racing forward can lead to no foundation with which build on.
️………Only focusing on the future can create chaos, and essentially you spin out of control.
👉️On the other hand, staying still too long makes us stagnant 💩
You need to shift between managing and leading
Leaders need to know how to shift back-and-forth
Leaders need to switch back and forth from their manager hat to their leadership hat.
🔹Your strength may be in seeing the future potential of an employee, and so you focus on that during their performance review. You talk to them about their goals and help them decide what training they need to take over the next year.
🔹You may also need to have a conversation with them about them being late with paperwork. That conversation manages day-to-day challenges. It also serves to stabilize their work and how that affects the rest of the team.
Don’t get stuck in managing
Add more leadership time
🔆I CHALLENGE YOU: Work to incorporate more leading in your day-to-day work. When you can set your sights farther down the road, you can look up and gain perspective.
- That big-picture view helps you to realize that the urgent email isn’t as urgent as it appears.
- It allows you to see where completing this task of the day fits into the overall growth of the program over the next six months.
- Focusing on leading gives you a different outlook on what appears to be the biggest challenge you face. It often doesn’t look so imperative when you see it lined up with everything over the next year.
Here are three ways you can be a leader on a day-to-day basis
1) Develop annual goals for yourself and the company
Create a routine that allows you to scan and review your company and individual goals at the beginning of each day.
- As you take 3 minutes each day to reconnect with the bigger picture, it will help you to align your day’s tasks and actions with that vision.
2) Make a habit of asking yourself: “How does this fit into the bigger picture?”
Imagine being asked to attend a meeting, be on a committee or take on a project. Without stepping back, those things can seem very important at the time.
- When you step back and get perspective, it’s easier to see if they are that vital. If you see they aren’t, this simple activity will give you the words to decline such invitations. “That sounds like an exciting opportunity. While I’m tempted to join, it doesn’t line up with the three strategic priorities I have for this year”.
3) Make a point of connecting your current topic with the future vision in most of your conversations with employees.
- If you are reprimanding someone for being late, remind them of the overall goal to have smoother shift transitions and their role in that.
- When you are introducing a new policy on training, ask staff to identify how it will help them develop as identified in their individual goals.
- When someone comes to you and asks you to solve their current dilemma, focus on their potential by asking: “Remind me again, what skill you are developing in yourself? What can I do to help develop that skill in this situation?” If they are working on approaching staff before things blow up, you might coach them to come up with what to say rather than just telling them what to do.
Practice leading more often
When you demonstrate your leadership more often, you will develop your team to be stronger, more independent and more engaged. In doing so, you will find your organization more cohesive and will advance quicker towards the goals set out in your visioning processes.
p.s. Learn more about leading and managing in this video below 👇️
