Are you managing your team, or developing your team? There is a difference.

Leaders, are we managing our teams, or developing our teams??There is a difference.?

One of our greatest responsibilities in leadership is to develop the next round of leaders – especially those curious, highly engaged team members aspiring to do more in their careers.?These high performers are the foundation of our succession plans and the drivers of performance within our larger teams. ?We wouldn’t be successful without them, and without a doubt, we want to see them grow and advance into their next roles.?However, in the daily grind of email, Teams chats, and endless video calls it can be easy to forget to develop our teams. Without thinking, we just do something ourselves to ensure it gets done quickly and correctly versus taking the time to really teach.?Yet when we do this, we neglect to develop our high performers and we rob them of a development opportunity; we take away a task that might better prepare them for their next roles. ?

As we move from role to role in our careers, we learn new skillsets, new strategies, new abilities.?The more we put them into practice, things that were once new and challenging to us become easier.?We do them without thinking, and we’re good at them.?If we’re not careful, this can be a leadership pitfall. The tasks are easier to do on our own: we can assess a situation and quickly determine the right approach; we need a risk remediation plan and experience quickly guides us through the process; we need to put together a project budget and we already know what CapEx vs. OpEx is, what assumptions to put in the budget, how to calculate the internal labor costs, etc.?All of this comes naturally after years of doing it and it may feel counterintuitive to spend 2-3x longer to try and teach someone else how to do it.?But that’s exactly what we need to do – teach our high performers so they understand both the “why” and the “how to” behind the things we do so that they can begin to do them with confidence.?

In the 2.5 years I’ve been in my current role, my team and I have been entirely focused on transformation. ?My team has accomplished so much in a very short period - this has been because of the aggressive goals we set, coupled with a dedicated focus on execution.?It’s something I’ve been incredibly proud of as a leader…?until the day that one of my highest performers brought up in our weekly 1:1 that she would like to get more development.?She asked if we could spend some time every week or two on developmental areas that would help her grow in her career.?I was simultaneously embarrassed and excited: embarrassed that I hadn’t been doing a great job in this area and that she even needed to ask, and excited that she was hungry and eager to learn and take on more.?From that day forward, we decided that each week in our IT Leadership huddle, I would present one development or coaching topic to the group, give a short assignment, and then spend time in our individual 1:1’s discussing and reviewing it.?

Certainly, there are situations in which time is of the essence, and you need to act quickly, and you choose to do something yourself.?We’ve all been there.?However, what if you handled the task on your own, but still used it as a teaching opportunity for someone on your team??

This past week, I was working on a financial model for a large capital project.?It was complex work that required a good deal of critical thinking, analyzing data, validating assumptions, and performing extensive Excel modeling.?It was exactly the type of skill that I should be developing in my rising leaders, however, I was in a time crunch.?I didn’t have the luxury of time to bring them into assisting on the final model, but it still became our weekly development topic.?In our leadership huddle, we reviewed how to think through the inputs of a model, the various components that impact a project ROI, how to define and validate assumptions, etc.?We selected a financial model for each member of the IT Leadership team to work on that is relevant to their respective areas, and we committed to reviewing and iterating on their models in our 1:1’s over the next few weeks.?I’ve already seen a first drafts in our 1:1’s this week. It’s impressive to see how quickly my team is picking it up and to hear the thoughtful and insightful questions being asked as we review what’s been started.?When we have our leadership huddle next week, we’ll spend some time reviewing in depth the final model that I worked on.?Over the coming weeks, each leader will get to share their own model with the team and walk through it so there is even greater exposure to the concept and how others approach it.?I have full confidence that next time we need to model something, I’ll be able to tap any of my leaders to create and present the model.

In addition to developing our team members, this hands-on development approach also drives engagement and brings diversity of thought to the challenge at hand.?Maybe we’ve become so accustomed to solving the issue at hand in one way that we forget to look through another lens.?Empowering our high performers to take on these tasks also brings another perspective, the potential to notice something we may have not considered, and perhaps a better way of doing things.

I’m so thankful that my team member took the time to call out that she wanted more development.?Prepping for the weekly topic is my favorite part of the work week.?I enjoy reflecting on the areas that were challenging to me as I advanced in my career and thinking through what will be helpful and relevant to my team as they continue to grow in their roles.?I appreciate the stimulating dialogue around those topics in our weekly 1:1’s, and most importantly – I love seeing the growing confidence in my team that they are fully capable to handle new areas of leadership responsibility.

Investing our time in practical development is a win/win for both the leader and the high performer.?We’ll develop our rising stars with the practical skills needed in their next roles, as well as being a great sounding board and source of feedback on our own work.??

What skill will you work on developing in your own team this week?