What’s your favorite part of your job as a leader?

Our reader poll today asks: What’s your favorite part of your job as a leader?

• Driving the financial and operational impact of my company 10.05%
• Setting the strategy and direction for the team 25.84%
• Developing and promoting my people 47.85%
• Having a “seat at the table” for important decisions 13.39%
• Something else 2.87%

A leader’s job is building more leaders. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper said “you manage things and you lead people.” A leader’s job is building that next generation of leaders and 48% of you find that the most rewarding part of your job. Your second favorite choice was setting strategy and direction (26%). It’s hard to lead people unless they know where you’re taking them! If these two main activities aren’t enjoyable for you, consider finding ways to challenge yourself into getting more comfortable with them. As you advance as a leader, leading through others becomes more critical and you’ll find yourself stepping away from driving operational and financial performance (that’s your team’s job) and spending more time on development and direction setting. The more comfortable you are with developing others and setting direction, the faster you’ll build that next generation of leaders and take your organization to the next level.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.