Protect Your Most Important Asset

Many business owners and leaders continue to focus on growing revenue, aligning costs, and developing profit. All of which are vital for the growth of the organization and yet where does investing in your team fit into that equation? Your people, human capital, are your most important asset. I have a very simple equation- take care of your people, they in turn take care of your customers and your business will grow. Revenue, costs, and profits will all develop. It’s about growing business and people together.

All too often, we promote people who are great at a process (selling, operations, marketing, etc.) and we give them a title and expect them to be leaders. They are great at what they do, so we expect them to be great at leading others. They are managers, but are they leaders? What’s the difference? Managers have people work for them: the organization assigns a group of people to a manager in some fashion. People work for a manager. A leader, on the other hand, influences, empowers, and encourages others; supporting and challenging others to grow and develop. People follow a leader, they create vision, a sense of belonging, accountability, and challenge the status quo. A leader focuses on developing the people around them. Can you be both a manger and leader? Absolutely! However, many of our organizations are full of managers and lack leaders.

Here is an example from my past. A peer continuously met or exceeded their Key Performance Indicators, month after month, year after year- driving the top line, aligning costs, and developing profit. Awesome performer that the organization promoted to manage a team. That lasted two years, many of their direct reports found new roles in the organization, or worse yet, left the organization. Performance tanked. There was a lack of communication, transparency, and trust. Sound familiar?

Here is another I see all too often. We take our top performing salesperson and “reward” them with a promotion to sales manager. What happens? We likely took a person who was motivated by the hunt, competition, independence and gave them people to lead. We watch sales drop- you just took your #1 hunter off the field (no longer feeding their fire) and your other salespeople feel the impact of the lack of motivation and frustration of their new manager. Eventually they all hit their tipping point, they find a new role or organization. A recipe for disaster- feeding the great resignation/renegotiation.

How could leadership training, tools, coaches, mentors, etc. help these managers? Or better yet, how can those same tools help you develop managers into leaders?

How can you empower and invest in your existing managers, new managers, and high-potentials to allow them to become leaders within your organization?

Grow your business through people.