Today’s BS Alert: Sometimes You Might Be Managing When You Think You’re Leading

Self awareness is a huge part of each person’s success. The lack of it holds one back because it leads to inaccurate self talk. That’s often the case when it comes to leading and managing.

Leadership and management are two different yet complimentary things. Both are needed but rarely is someone really good at both.

Some words, activities or disciplines make people want to say “that’s me” when it usually isn’t. Strategic is one of those words. Everyone thinks they are strategic yet they often don’t even know what it truly means to be strategic.  Leadership is another one of those words. Anyone with a title of VP, Director, Manager thinks they are a leader when in reality they might not be leading all that well.

Leadership is about setting the vision and the strategy, understanding the mission, your values, your purpose, and then conveying that to the team to motivate and drive them.

Management is about getting others, individuals and a team, to do things working together towards a common goal. Management is about tracking what’s working and what’s not. Management is about spending time with each team member: delegate, assign, track.

Leadership is about keeping the vision going and looking for that growth and it can be about motivating and inspiring, but leadership is not about tracking, checking, delegating and accountability. That’s management.

The stories we tell ourselves often can be misleading. Before you convince yourself that you’re a leader or doing a good job of leading, take a step back and see if maybe you’re managing people and processes and not leading as much as you think.

Gaining this self awareness could be the first step towards becoming the leader you can be.