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Are You Managing or Leading?

By Chris Goede | January 22, 2025
Are You Managing or Leading?

As we head into the first quarter of this new year, it’s important to kick off with a strong foundation. For me, that means taking stock of my leadership influence—specifically, how am I developing myself to this high calling of leadership?

While most people evaluate their leadership based on their management skills, leadership requires more than just being a proficient manager.

I read an article recently about how more than sixty percent of people that are promoted into a position of leadership—leading people, teams, groups—have never had any type of leadership training. Sixty percent! So, what do they end up doing? They end up leading like they want to be led, or how they’ve been led. And that’s a recipe that just doesn’t work very well or for very long.  In order for you to be a great leader, you’ve got to understand the foundation of getting people to give you permission to lead them, to connect with them, and to relate to them. And when you gain that level of influence, I believe you can make the transition from being the manager and focusing on what they do, to leading and focusing on who they are.

Most leaders still lead from level one. They lead from position only, which makes them managers and can eventually damage relationships. There are several choices we make every single day that can help shift us from manager to leader, and it starts with asking these questions of ourselves:

  • Will I be patient or impatient?
  • Will I be kind or unkind?
  • Am I committed or am I just involved?
  • Am I forgiving or unforgiving?
  • Am I selfish or selfless?

These simple questions build our influence and help us move from a level one leader (position) to a level two leader (permission), and eventually up to level five (pinnacle). We want to lead out of our influence and become people developers, not just lead from position only.

When it comes to leading, love is a verb. It’s a choice that we have to make. We have to be attentive to the needs of our team, to know what their best interests are, and be very in tune with how they feel so that we can lead them the way they need to be led. 

According to an article in Inc. Magazine, there are three reasons most people fail when promoted to leadership. The first is they only care about the money that comes with promotion. The second is they can’t stop thinking about themselves. And the third is most of those promoted think leadership is for other people, not for them.

Leadership is not for the select few. It’s for every single one of us. At Maxwell Leadership, we believe that leadership is influence, and we all have it. Think about this—who is the greatest leader you’ve had the opportunity to work for, serve with, play for? Think about the attributes of that individual and then consider… are you living that out? Are you exemplifying those same attributes as a leader? And if not, I want to challenge you to do so.

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