Category Archives: Personal Development

Are You Leading or Just Managing

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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 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, 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.

Next-Level Leadership is Possible

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This is not the time to rest on your laurels. The workplace is evolving, and you need to adapt to these changes. The way you managed and led others got you here, but that approach may not be the best style for taking you and your team to where you need to go. It’s becoming increasingly evident that soft skills—the ability to communicate and interact more effectively with others—are essential skills for today’s managers and leaders. Next-level leadership is possible, but only if you focus on your people because you need them more than they need you.

Worth Remembering – Leadership is not about you; it’s about investing in the growth of others. – Ken Blanchard.

People won’t care about you or your organization until they know how much you care about them. Next-level leadership is about those you lead. It’s time you FOCUSED on your people.

F – Friendly – Smile, say hello. Idle chit-chat is vital in building those all-important relationships. Get to know everyone on your team beyond their work. People prefer to work with and be managed by people they like. How much fun are you to be around?

O – Open and Receptive. A good idea becomes a great idea the more you allow others to contribute their input. It’s bigger than you. You can’t do everything on your own. Teamwork makes everything work.

C – Confident and Competent. – Know what you know and know it very well. But also know what you don’t know and seek the advice of others. You don’t have to know everything, but you do need to know where to find the answers.

U – Understanding – Be empathetic. Don’t judge too soon. See things from their point of view. There may be things going on that you aren’t aware of. Get all the facts before making a final decision on a course of action.

S – Sincere. – If you truly want others to be successful, it will show itself in the way you treat them. Be respectful.

E – Energized. – Be prepared to lead the charge. Enthusiasm is contagious. Act as if you want to be there, even when you don’t at times.

D – Dependable. – Whatever you say you are going to do, do it. People need to trust what you say. If they can’t trust what you say, they won’t trust you at all. Your word must be your bond.

Worth Remembering – Leadership is not about titles or designations. Leadership is about making an impact on those you lead, exerting influence, and inspiring others to take action. – Brian Smith.

You have the potential to work with four different generations simultaneously. Each generation – Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z have different wants and needs, but they all have one thing in common. Each generation wants to be acknowledged and feel appreciated. Each generation wants to be included, not excluded. Next-level leadership is possible.

Copyright 2025. Brian Smith – Power Link Dynamics. Not to be reproduced without permission. Are you searching for a keynote speaker for your next event or planning a training session at your location? Brian specializes in soft skills training and leadership development. He will customize a session that is right for you and your organization.

It’s Time To Rethink Motivation

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Motivation is defined as the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving a certain way. Motivation is inside out – never outside in. Everyone is self-motivated. Everyone does things for their own reasons. You can’t make someone do something that they don’t want to do unless you have something that they want. If you know their WIIFM – What’s In It For Me – and you have the power to grant it, you can use that understanding to get them to do what you want them to do. Offering the carrot while showing them the stick always yields better results. It’s time to rethink motivation.

Worth Remembering – It is only when a person has their own generator that we can talk about motivation. They need no outside stimulation. They want to do it. – Herzberg.

The thing about motivation is that everyone can be motivated. But not everyone is motivated by the same thing in the same way. Some people are motivated by money. Some are motivated by fancy job titles or that premier parking spot in front of the building. According to Daniel Pink, author of ‘Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’, for some, autonomy is key. They want complete autonomy over when, where and how they perform their work. That’s why forcing people to go back to the office five days a week isn’t working. If they aren’t getting their WIIFM, they aren’t motivated enough to come back.

Worth Remembering – The common wisdom is that managers need to learn how to motivate people. Nonsense – People bring their own motivation. – Tom Peters.

Mason got it right. Abraham Maslow first introduced his ‘Needs’ theory in his 1943 article published in the Psychological Review entitled, ‘A Theory of Human Motivation.’. The basis of his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ theory was that all human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs. His theory provides a framework for understanding human motivation and behaviour. Think of his hierarchy as a triangle or pyramid with five levels. Once the needs in the lower tier of the triangle are met, such as food and security, we move on to satisfy the higher tiers, including self-esteem and self-actualization – a process of fulfilling our full potential and becoming the best version of ourselves.

Worth Remembering – The Motivation Equation. Needs plus goal-directed behaviour equals your WIIFM. – Brian Smith.

What’s your WIIFM? What’s the reason or reasons you do what you do and act the way you behave? If you aren’t getting your WIIFM, then you need to change the way you are going about it. You need to act and behave in a way that will get you what you want. Sometimes, that means doing one thing to get another. It’s time to rethink motivation.

Copyright 2025. Brian Smith – Power Link Dynamics. Not to be reproduced in any form without written permission. Are you searching for a keynote speaker or planning a training session at your location? Brian works with people who want to learn how to communicate and interact more effectively with others, build collaborative teams, resolve conflicts or motivate people to perform at their best.