Leading People Development

The Best Leadership Talent Is Bringing Out The Talent In Others

The people development aspect of leadership is often overlooked by leaders, especially by those put into leadership positions for the first time, such as new supervisors, frontline managers, and newly appointed sales managers who have been promoted due to high sales performance.

Leaders whose key aim is to attract followers are interested in authority, power, status, and control. They drive to make people get things done — usually their way (or the highway). While this often produces wonderful short-term results, it is not a sustainable or replicable leadership methodology. It also tends to lead to employee burnout and high employee attrition rates.

Team member development should be the single most important priority for all leaders.

However, all great leaders know that their mission is not to create followers, but to create more good leaders for their organizations. This is why people development is a core component of the art of great leadership.

For many leaders, especially mid-level leaders and supervisors, people development time is less than 15%. Yet people development is (or should be) one of the key priorities for all leaders, as it is one of the most important drivers of sustainable success for any organization.

In fact, I would suggest that people development should be the single most important priority for all leaders. After all, if a leader is one who achieves progress through the involvement and actions of others, then greater progress will be made when the people being led are constantly being developed and improved.

Additionally, great leaders know that people development can be a highly leveraged catalyst for individuals as well as for the organization.

That is why the best leadership talent is bringing out the talent in others. 

This article is excerpted from my book Great Leadership Words of Wisdom, which is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats and has over 1000 quotes on leadership from global business leaders, statesmen, athletes, coaches, sages, and philosophers.