It’s easy to be an individual contributor – all you need to do is be ready, willing, and able to do what’s asked. But as a professional working with others, roles and responsibilities can get blurred: you’re both doing and leading. And as a leader, you must be effective at making those that work for you effective at their jobs. Think about that:
· Your primary responsibility is to be effective
· Meaning achieving the objectives of any situation
· And assuring those that work for you are effective too
· Meaning achieving the output requirements of their jobs
· And keeping everyone focused on the results that are intended
Think of it this way: effectiveness is the basis of planning and measuring performance. Inputs are the activities one does to perform their job; outputs are the results that are achieved. A leader’s role is to make sure their employees know how to do their jobs; but more importantly, it’s to assure that expected results are achieved. That means being clear with your employees about their individual goals, those of your department, and the bigger goals of the company – and all being aligned. If you’re just pushing down orders to do this and not that, you miss the opportunity to reach down and pull everyone up to achieving all of those results. It’s all part of becoming a more result-focused manager today.
Booker T. Washington (1856 – 1915): American educator, author, orator, and Presidential advisor.
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