We Say We Want Leaders. Our Organisations Reward Managers
The quiet work of supporting people and challenging ineffective processes can be overlooked when recognition stops at formal objectives.
Leading People · Humanity of Management · Empathy & Accountability · Trust
This article is inspired by real workplace and leadership experiences. I do not use real names, company names or identifying details. Roles, teams, organisational structures, projects and business context may be removed, generalised or combined to protect the people and organisations involved while preserving the underlying leadership reflection. Where conversations are referenced, wording may be edited for clarity and anonymity.
Staying ten minutes after a meeting to check on someone is unlikely to make a particularly impressive performance slide. There may be no deliverable, no obvious milestone and no result you can comfortably claim as your own. It can still be useful leadership, especially if the alternative was everyone noticing that something was wrong and leaving anyway.
I keep thinking about the gap between the leadership organisations say they want and the work they reliably recognise. We can be very clear about delivery, deadlines and responsibilities inside a role. We become less certain when someone's contribution involves noticing a problem that nobody has formally assigned to them.
Asking a colleague outside your team whether they are okay. Paying attention to pressure that might otherwise become burnout. Challenging a process that keeps making people's work harder. These actions do not always fit neatly inside an individual's objectives, but I struggle with the idea that they therefore sit outside the work of leading.
I am not arguing that being considerate should excuse poor delivery. Managing commitments, making decisions and getting the work done matter. The distinction in the title is about what we choose to reward, rather than an attempt to turn management into an insult. Good leadership needs the less glamorous discipline of management too.
What bothers me is the possibility that someone can deliver well, contribute beyond their immediate responsibilities and still be told that the second part is an unnecessary distraction. If the organisation benefits from people taking responsibility for the wider environment, it needs to be able to recognise that contribution without first forcing it into a narrow job-description box.
There is a difficult organisational dynamic here. When someone notices a problem outside their own team, acknowledging their contribution may also mean acknowledging that the problem existed. A conversation about support can become uncomfortable for the manager who was expected to provide it. A challenge to a process can be inconvenient for the person who owns it.
I don't think that means every objection is defensive. There are real boundaries to respect. Offering support can become interference, and helping can become a way of taking over. People should be able to explain what they noticed and why they became involved without treating good intentions as a permanent exemption from judgement.
But I would want to examine the substance before dismissing something as outside someone's role. Their involvement might have helped a person address a difficulty, made a recurring problem visible or helped the people responsible make a better decision. Understanding that contribution seems more useful than beginning with whether the organisation chart gave them permission to care.
Recognition does not require turning every quiet interaction into a performance claim. I would find that exhausting. Nobody should need to announce that they were empathetic for twelve minutes after a meeting, and the person they supported should not become supporting evidence in somebody else's promotion case.
We do, however, need managers who pay enough attention to recognise a pattern. Who makes it easier for people to raise concerns? Who helps others think more clearly without trying to own the answer? Who challenges something ineffective and stays involved in improving it? That judgement requires more effort than reading a delivery report, which is partly why I think it gets missed.
There is also a cost to recognising only the visible output. People can learn that the safest use of their time is to stay inside the boundary of their objectives, however often the organisation asks them to act like leaders. I would not be surprised if some eventually take that lesson seriously.
I want to be careful about sending that message myself. If I say that I value people who take responsibility beyond their immediate remit, I need to notice when they do it well and make room for a fair conversation about the trade-offs. Otherwise, when someone chooses to ignore a problem because it is not their job, I may have helped teach them that response.
