The true role of a leader and HR Professional is to develop their people.
The reality is we get caught up in daily operational activity and focus on daily targets and do not see the strategic advantage of focusing on the development of our people to deliver the results they need.
Great leadership is about achieving results through the efforts of other people. Engaging with them, coaching them and giving them the authority to perform at a higher level than they may currently be.
Many of us never have time to take out of our day to coach and develop our people but we always seem to find time to fix up what has gone wrong (quite often a larger time investment than a brief coaching session).
Why is this?
Simple, we are so focused on the here and now that we lose focus of the significant benefits of coaching and developing our people.
My rule of thumb is we should be spending 70% of our time coaching and developing others (this includes taking time out to get to know your people) and the balance of the time delivering on your operational tasks as required.
True leaders that have this focus deliver significantly higher results and the workplace culture they create stimulates innovation and fresh ideas saving the company significant costs and increasing sales and public reputation.
