Am I Developing People,
or Just Directing Them?
Both look like leadership from the outside. Only one of them survives you being unavailable for two weeks.
Almost every manager believes they develop their people. Very few have looked recently at what they actually spend the hours on.
The two jobs feel similar from the inside. Directing is answering the question, making the call, handling the account yourself because you are fastest at it, and keeping the work moving. Developing is asking what they would do, letting a decision stand that you would have made differently, and being slower this week so that somebody else is faster next quarter.
Directing is not the wrong thing. Plenty of weeks require it, and a team in a genuine crisis needs somebody to make calls rather than run a coaching exercise. The problem is that directing is urgent and developing never is, so directing wins by default for years at a time and nobody notices until the bench is empty.
Eight statements
Answer for the last month, not for the leader you intend to be. Nobody sees this and nothing is stored.
When someone brings me a problem, I usually solve it rather than ask what they would do.
My one to ones are mostly status updates on work in progress.
I am still the person who personally handles the hardest accounts, calls, or shifts.
If I were unreachable for two weeks, several decisions would simply wait for me.
I could name, right now, the next thing each person on my team is working to get better at.
In the last month somebody made a call I would have made differently, and I let it stand.
This year I handed over something I used to be the only person who did.
People bring me problems early, rather than after quietly trying to fix them alone.
The difference in one line
Directing
You answer the question, make the call, and keep the work moving.
It is fast, it is visible, and it is genuinely needed in a crisis.
The cost is that nobody else gets more capable while you do it.
Developing
You ask first, let decisions stand, and hand things over before you are ready to.
It is slower this week and it compounds.
The test is what happens on your team when you are not there.
The quickest honest check is the two week test. Picture yourself genuinely unreachable for two weeks, not on a laptop at night. What stops? If the answer is a handful of decisions that only you can make, that is not a sign of how important you are. It is a description of what you have not handed over.
The second check is your calendar. Look at last month and count the hours that went to somebody else getting better at something. Not meetings where development was on the agenda. Hours where that was the actual point. Most people find a number considerably lower than they expected, and that number is the honest one.
Worth saying plainly. Some seasons genuinely require directing, and telling somebody in the middle of a merger, a survey, a peak season, or a short-staffed quarter that they should be coaching more is not useful advice. If that is where you are, the question is not whether to develop people right now. It is whether you can name when the season ends. A temporary way of operating turns permanent mostly by nobody ever checking.
Common questions
Is it wrong to just direct people sometimes?
No. New employees, real emergencies, and genuine safety issues all call for somebody making a clear call quickly. The problem is not directing, it is directing by default for years because it is faster in the moment and nobody is measuring the other thing.
How do I develop people when I have no time?
Start by changing the shape of conversations you are already having rather than adding new ones. The next time somebody brings you a problem, ask what they would do before you answer. That costs about forty seconds and it is most of the practice.
What if I am the one running on empty?
Then this is the wrong question to start with, and it is extremely common. Managers who are depleted stop developing people first, because it is the part of the job nobody notices you dropped. What to do when your managers are running on empty covers what that looks like and what actually helps.
How do I know if it is working?
Two signals. People start bringing you problems earlier rather than later, and decisions start getting made without you that you agree with afterward. Both take months, and both are more reliable than anything you could put on a dashboard.
Where to go from here
If you came out heavy on directing, the move is not a leadership course. It is one specific thing you hand over this quarter, chosen because you are currently the only person who does it. Leading yourself well is what makes that possible, because handing something over means tolerating it being done differently.
If you came out carrying both, read the piece on managers running on empty next. Doing both jobs at full effort is the most common route to a depleted manager, and it usually looks like commitment right up until it stops.
And if you want something to run with your team rather than something else to read, the free workshop formats are built for exactly this. They are written so the person running the session participates in it, which means the first thing your team sees is you answering the same questions they are.
When I’ve got something worth sending.
Just a story or an idea I picked up that I think will help you.
Sometimes that’s twice in a month. Sometimes it’s not for a while.