It is true, the demands on leaders are never-ending, and doubts about skills and decisions constantly plague us, all while pressure keeps mounting to deliver better, faster, and cheaper. This challenge presents a mountain to climb, especially when you couple that with an ever-changing workplace, which means your role as a leader is constantly changing. Good thing everyone loves change! Right? Well, maybe that is wishful thinking. Still, the good news is there’s a solution to the frenzy you feel.
This solution is baked in the core philosophy that your role is comprised of 3 parts: the leader, the manager, and the doer. Knowing how and when to pull each of those levers are essential skills to develop as a manager that skyrocket results. Learn more in our blog:
Leadership Skills to Develop as a Manager
Leaders’ responsibilities have an immeasurable impact on an organization. From evaluating personalities to initiating disruptive changes, skills to develop as a manager include:
- Hiring managers and other leaders
- Setting standards
- Persuading
- Originating
- Initiating change
- Creativity
- Communication
- Developing and implementing a vision
- Strategic planning and decision-making
- Critical and lateral thinking
- Mentoring
Still, distinguishing between manager and leader roles is challenging. Essentially, managers collaborate with other authorities and motivate their team, and leaders compel and persuade others to improve job performance. Leaders must:
- Accept people for who they are and leverage their strengths
- Encourage positivity, collaboration, and compassion
- Inspire creativity and ingenuity
- Welcome new ideas from everyone
- Advocate for their people
- Provide clarity, strategy, and accountability
- Ask and answer questions
As a leader, if you cannot exert the authority to influence and alter a bad situation, you have failed in that instance of leading.
Management Skills to Develop as a Manager
Being a manager often can be distilled down to motivating their team by creating a positive work environment to improve job performance. Managers must:
- Navigate a political, competitive landscape
- Influence how work and feedback are received
- Execute myriad tasks
- Engage with a broad range of people.
To succeed in this role, skills to develop as a manager include:
- Communication
- Relationship building
- Influence
- Coaching skills
- Prioritization
When fulfilling the manager role, leaders are more generalists than specialists; they manage the work atmosphere and morale to create the best conditions for productivity. Cultivating a positive work environment requires interpersonal skills.
Maybe you have to quiet an unfair client or relay feedback from a disgruntled client. In some situations, managers have to lobby higher-ups on behalf of their team or recognize and reward hard work. Ask yourself: Are you in the way or paving the way?
To pave the way, leaders must master the art of influencing and inspiring, which requires working with an expert leadership coach.
Doer Skills to Develop as a Manager
When you are promoted to a leadership position, you do not stop doing. The change is the things that you do. Being a doer as a leader means being an authority.
For leaders, doers master complex work and function as specialists and invaluable resources for employees. As a doer, there are several skills to develop as a manager that can help improve job performance for you and your entire team. These skills include:
- Prioritization
- Communication
- Coaching peers
- Coaching up
- Resilience
- Self-management
Leaders must still produce with consistency, passion, and commitment. Still, leaders cannot always be doers and must learn to delegate responsibility to focus on bigger-picture tasks. Being a doer is enticing because executing and conquering work is incredibly satisfying.
Delivering, excelling, and getting things done is a temptation because that is the role people are comfortable with when they become leaders. You must learn when to resist it.
Schedule a Consultation to Learn Skills to Develop as a Manager
Before you can inspire people to do something, you must first inspire them to feel something. Leaders must establish themselves as an authority, motivate, and influence to elevate their team and improve job performance. Still, these skills are not innate in people, and it takes an active effort to learn them, which is why working with a premier leadership coach is of the utmost importance.
At Consilio, we offer unrivaled leadership training to help you to become a leader, manager, and doer and optimize everyone’s performance. Schedule a consultation to learn more.
