True leaders develop more leaders, not grow more followers. True leaders understand that their role is to bring people with different skill sets together, empower them by teaching them what they need to know, and then get out of their way and let them do it. Are you leading or just managing?

Worth Remembering – Bury your ego. Don’t be the star. Be the star maker. – Bud Hadfield.

Whether you are a first-time team leader, supervisor, manager or a seasoned veteran looking to enhance your ability to manage and lead others more successfully, you must master these four leadership skills – Connecting, Communicating, Educating and Delegating.

Connecting. To have or establish rapport. Connect – to join together – to join with or become joined with something else. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Your success as a manager or leader begins and ends with your ability to bring people together. If you can’t connect on an emotional level with others, you stand little chance of managing or leading them.

Communicating. To convey knowledge of or information about. To cause to pass from one to another. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. If you can’t communicate in a way that others will understand, then you can’t manage or lead them. There isn’t a more valuable skill for managers or leaders to have than the ability to communicate effectively up, down and across the organization.

Educating. To train by formal instruction and supervised practice, especially in a skill, trade or profession. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. You rarely, if ever, get to hire someone who is fully trained. Your role as a manager or leader is to fill the skills gap by teaching them what they need to know and do to sustain and grow the organization.

Delegating. To entrust to another. To appoint as one’s representative. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. If you fail to delegate some of your responsibility to those on your team, you are robbing them of their opportunity to grow. You can’t be in all places and do everything by yourself. You must learn to relinquish control to gain control. You must resist the urge to micromanage them.

Worth Remembering – To create human capital, a company needs to foster teamwork, communities of practice, and other social forms of learning. – Thomas Stewart.

Are you leading or just managing? If you haven’t mastered connecting, communicating, educating and delegating, you aren’t leading. You are just managing.

Copyright 2025. Brian Smith – Power Link Dynamics. Not to be reproduced without permission. If you want to put these four leadership skills into practice, Brian’s book – ‘Leadership Lessons from a Reformed Control Freak – A 4-Step Guide to Developing 21st. Century Leaders‘ is available on Amazon and includes a 4-week online leadership development workshop. – ASIN – 0987845926.