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While encouraging your team to get things done and achieve results is one of your roles as a leader, there's a difference between focusing purely on this compared to taking the time to focus on your team's growth and development.

Just as a business needs to invest in its technology or resources, leaders need to invest in the development of their team. In short, leaders need to give more to get more.

But what does this mean in practice? If you expect more from your people yet fail to develop them, then you're what is often referred to as a 'transactional' leader. This is when a leader focuses on getting the job done and performance. The growth and learning of their team isn’t perhaps as much of a focus.

On the converse, a 'transformational' leader values learning and development as they know that in the end they will get more out of their people, and their people will get more satisfaction out of their role.

• Leaders need to relook at their priorities and understand that investing time in developing their people will drive the performance and business metrics that they are seeking.
• Once a leader understands the need to transform, it’s about making the shift to put this into practice and start to look at the developmental journey of their team.

The reality is that if you don't prioritise development as a leader, then in the long term your team's productivity, performance, and not to mention engagement, will plateau – or even worse, plummet.

It has been well documented that investing in leadership improves financial results, attracts and retains great talent, and helps in times of managing change. According to research, engaged employees lead to an increase in customer loyalty, profitability, productivity and a reduction in turnover.

It makes a lot of sense to make that move into a transformational approach to leading your team.

Author: Peter Robinson
Team Leadership Services