Sometimes the tyranny of the urgent dominates a leader’s efforts. If that is the norm and you are not developing your people, you may be managing just fine, but you are not leading.

You can be a good manager without being a good leader. You can’t be a good leader without being a good manager.

Don’t get me wrong. Management skills are important for all leaders to develop. They are the price of admission into leadership.

But the thing that separates the leader from the manager is the leader develops her people.

The Tyranny of the Urgent

Leadership is pretty simple, but it is not easy. Leadership is about people. The hard thing is email, conference calls, webinars, reports, bosses, other departments and many more things can distract us from our number one calling – our people.

These are all urgent demands that will swallow up our time if we allow it to happen. The urgent will always be there calling out to people who want to lead. If we answer that call to the detriment of developing people, the tyranny of the urgent rules our days, and our people suffer.

We Make Time for Things We Prioritize

When someone says they ran out of time, they are truly saying they had other priorities. Priorities are the issue for many people who are barely managing instead of confidently leading.

Are my people truly a priority? Do I truly believe their growth should be on the top of my annual list of goals?

If they are not, then I doubt any of us will find the time in our crazy daily schedules to help others become better.

Carve Out People Time

If we believe that people are a top priority for us as leaders, then the next step is to carve out time everyday to be with our people. The best way for a overwhelmed manager to insure she is focused on developing people is to schedule time in her calendar every day to speak with her people.

8:00am – 9:00am or 2:00pm – 3:00pm? The time of day does not matter. What matters is we give our people the time of day. We let others know they are important by spending time with them and caring about their growth.

It is the Duty of a leader to add value to others. I cannot do that from behind a computer screen.  Besides leadership by email is an oxymoron. Read more about this style of leadership by clicking on the blog title below:

I Can’t Lead Without Leaving My Office

The Bottom Line:

I can be a good manager and not develop my people. I cannot be a good leader and do the same. People make us leaders not our skills in managing resources or creating Power Point presentations.

The REAL difference between a manager and a leader is a leader is not just good at managing processes and resources. She is also focused on developing her people and cares about seeing them grow.

Without people development, a good manager has missed taking the most crucial step towards becoming a leader – people. The people are the leader’s number one priority. A leader who develops her people, will always out perform a manager who only develops processes.

Question:

Who’s growth did you invest in today? This week?