What Is Leadership In The Workplace?

Most people have had a manager at a job. It's the person that managed the team, managed the work, managed the accounting, managed the business. But is a manager a leader? No, not really.

What does leadership look like in the workplace?

Leadership is mentoring, not disciplining or managing.

You see a manager gives out work. A leader teaches people how to lead others to do the work

A manager has disciplinary meetings when someone messes up. A leader takes mess ups as an opportunity to mentor their employees.

For example: If your employee forgets a critical task. What do you do? Do you:

• Criticize them or give them a discinplinary meeting to explain what they did wrong?
• or
• Do you take this as a chance to mentor them how to be more organized, why it's more important to think about the whole team and not just themselves, or something similar?

See the difference? Managing is just about output and productivity (if you have a decent manager). Or it can be about power over others (if you have a horrible manager). Where as leaders raise up leaders. They teach them how to be successful so they can then turn around and teach others how to be successful!

Sadly by me talking about this you will inevitably start reviewing your manager... and that may or may not lead to a good realization...