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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 do, and then get out of their way and let them do it. Are you leading or just managing? Listen to my podcast and discover the four leadership skills you need to master to become a true leader.
Category Archives: Management
Are You Leading or Just Managing
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.
Management is Leadership Practiced Well
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Henry Mintzberg first coined the phrase – Management is Leadership Practiced Well – in his groundbreaking book – “Managers NOT MBAs – A Hard Look at The Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development.” published in 2004. When you get right down to it, the common denominator is people. Soft skills are essential skills. Listen to this podcast episode and discover three must haves to manage and lead others, regardless of gender or generation.
Management is Leadership Practiced Well
Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec and author of nearly two dozen books on management, first coined the phrase – Management is Leadership Practiced Well – in his groundbreaking book – ‘Managers NOT MBAs – A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development.’ published in 2004. When you get right down to it, whether you hold the title of manager or leader, the common denominator is people. In today’s multigenerational workplace, soft skills are essential.
Worth Remembering – Success depends not on what the managers themselves do, as allocators of resources and makers of decisions, so much as on what they help others do. – Henry Mintzberg.
A manager or leader must excel at communicating, educating and delegating effectively to complete tasks on time and to sustain and grow the organization.
Communicating. If you can’t communicate in a way that others will understand, then whatever you say will mean nothing. Take the time to find out how they prefer to receive information and then send it in a way that suits them. Ken Blanchard said it best – communication is the breakfast of champions.
Educating. Do you hire stupid people, or do they just get stupid after working for you? Your role as a manager or leader is to fill the skills gap. Your role is to teach them what they need to know to deliver results on time and on budget.
Delegating. You need to learn to relinquish control to gain control. It’s bigger than you. You can’t accomplish everything on your own. Teamwork makes the whole thing work. You don’t need more followers – you need to help them to grow and then get out of their way and let them do it. Resist the urge to micromanage them.
Worth Remembering – Drop the idea that you are Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. The world will go on even without you. Don’t take yourself too seriously. – Norman Vincent Peale.
We are not born knowing how to manage and lead others successfully. But we can learn how to communicate in a way that others will understand, teach people what they need to know and delegate when necessary. Management is leadership practiced well.
Copyright 2025. Brian Smith – Power Link Dynamics. Not to be reproduced without permission. To learn more about Brian and what he can do for you and your organization, contact him directly. Brian works with individuals who want to learn how to communicate and interact with others more effectively, regardless of gender or generation, build collaborative teams, resolve conflicts or motivate people to perform at their best.
Enhancing Lives & Transforming Leadership 