“Knowing something – and understanding it – are not the same thing”
~Charles Kettering
There was a time when teaching followers was a principal duty of the leader. Socrates taught Plato; Plato taught Aristotle. After studying under Aristotle, Alexander the Great went out and conquered the world. A testament to the power of knowledge – and teachers.
Back in the day when I spent summer vacations employed as a General Helper in a chemical plant, teaching followers was a big part of the job of the front-line leader. Every new assignment I was given was accompanied by, “Paul, let me show you how to do this.” My first trip to the office was because I needed to be shown how to run the copy machine.
Those days are long gone.
Were you to create a “time log” documenting how you spend the scarcest asset you have – your time – today it typically begins and ends with managing information. Try going a day without opening your computer or using your cell phone and see what doesn’t happen. Work doesn’t get authorized, change isn’t made, questions aren’t answered, bills go unpaid; problems aren’t even shared, let alone solved.
That’s hardly a random list. In management science, work activities like these reflect core management duties such as delegating, organizing, motivating, coordinating, and problem solving. Each is directly traceable to one of the four functions of management: planning, leading, organizing and evaluating/adjusting. It’s no coincidence the four combine to form the Continuous Improvement Cycle; in a nutshell, that is the work of management.
The famed consultant Peter Drucker was of the opinion there was a fifth management function: developing people. Never argue with Mr. Drucker: he was a genius about these things.
In developing followers, is there anything more basic than showing someone how to do something?
Assigning Work
As the one responsible for the work of others, every supervisor on the planet is in the business of delegating work. Doesn’t matter who the followers are, or what work they’re given to do. My supervisor, a Production Foreman, had only me and a half-dozen peers in the Automotive Department to worry about. A CEO has to worry about every single thing delegated to every person in the enterprise. Worry would be an understatement: one bad decision made by some follower half the world away has the potential to ruin a career, or wreck an entire business. Don’t think that can’t happen.
Come time to delegate, the very first thing every leader on the planet should be making darn sure of is that the person on the receiving end of the assignment is capable of performing the task properly – and safely. That aspect of delegation makes it the simplest and most straightforward of management duties. Unless you’re willing to live with failure, giving a follower something to do that they don’t know how to do represents the most fundamental mistake a supervisor can make. In tennis, it’s called an unforced error. Unfortunately, the error regularly shows up in investigation reports.
A little more management science: delegation is a management process with three separate and distinct steps. Proper execution requires setting clear expectations as to the performance of the task, determining the skills and knowledge of the person assigned to perform the task, and the subsequent evaluation of performance of the task. Should there be an event where skill and competency deficiencies are identified as the cause, the improper execution of the delegation process similarly requires investigation. It’s management’s failure.
That might read like something from a textbook, but it’s really nothing more than sound management practice.
Delegating Training
Typically, training is somebody else’s job, not the supervisor’s. That makes it a perfect example of delegation: work assigned to a wide array of sources like the training department, subject matter experts, apprenticeship programs, colleges, independent training organizations, and consultants like me.
On that point, it never hurts to be reminded of one other principle of delegation: authority can be delegated, responsibility cannot. If it were otherwise, a supervisor would not be responsible for the work of others.
So, poor training for your followers isn’t someone else’s problem. If you’re not happy with how they’re trained, it’s your responsibility to do something about it. Likewise, if a follower has been trained, but isn’t capable of performing the work, assigning them the job anyway is another unforced error.
If you don’t think that can happen, type “Texas Construction Project Scaffold Collapse” or “Toledo Refinery Fire” into your web browser. Two real-life cases where you’ll see graphic evidence of the cost of the unforced error.
I realize telling a follower they’re not qualified won’t win you a popularity contest, but it’s far better than explaining to family and friends, bosses and jurors, why you told someone to do something you knew perfectly well they weren’t capable of doing.
Who’s Got Time?
At the very beginning of my career, I regularly found myself on the receiving end of teaching by leaders I worked for. It didn’t last long. After I graduated and moved into the professional ranks, I don’t recall a single case where someone I worked for said, “Paul, let me show you how to do this” – before I did it.
Afterwards was an entirely different matter.
My first, formal, nervously sitting down across from the boss’s desk with the door closed, performance appraisal began, “Paul, you’re not very well organized. You have too many items on your daily To Do list.” Give my Department Head some credit for paying attention to what was on my desk, even if his reasoning was suspect.
I was sent off to Time Management training. That’s where I found out the only things on the list were supposed to be the mission-critical “A Primes”. I remember thinking that might be a nice idea for someone running a big company, but if I don’t put something on my list, it’s not gonna get done.
A good example of the difference between theory and practice. Training in business and industry must always be about the latter.
Time management was the subject of one of my first industrial training classes. Time management is the leading reason people like me get sent to training, as opposed to being trained by the supervisor: what leader has time to teach?
Jack Welch, for one.
You might not have been around during the two decades Mr. Welch spent running one of the biggest and most complex publicly traded companies in the world, GE. Their corporate training academy was renowned for the talent passing through its hallowed halls and the innovative courses taught there. Incredibly busy CEO that he was, Welch found time to regularly teach a class on leadership and strategy, including what he learned early on in his career when he blew up a facility he was running. He taught in the tradition of Socrates: by asking questions.
Begs an obvious question: why do you think he invested his precious time in teaching?
Do you think Mr. Welch recognized these sessions where leaders – present and future – were gathered as Moments of High Influence? Did he see his classes as the perfect opportunity to promote his business strategy, create a common understanding of things he considered important, and shape organizational culture?
It’s all so obvious, isn’t it? As leadership practices go, teaching followers is the stuff of genius.
An Unexpected Benefit
As a consultant, a big part of what I do these days is teach teachers. It involves a lot of showing. Like everything else we teach, our methods are built on what we’ve learned by observation and experience. Adult Learning Theory? Someone else’s expertise; we know what actually works in practice – in this case, the classroom. Like everything else, it’s a process.
Every once in a while, we find a client who’d rather do the teaching themselves; when they do, we cheer them on. Then we put their teachers through a rigorous training program: great classroom delivery happens by execution, not chance. They’ll be the first to tell you learning how to do that is not for the faint of heart.
Recently I had the occasion to ask one of them – an executive who’s discovered a talent and passion for teaching – “What was the unexpected benefit of teaching a course to the technician level in your operation?” I was expecting an answer along the lines of “He who teaches learns the most.” Teaching will reveal the stark difference between knowing something – and understanding it.
His answer was nothing at all like that, but something else making perfect sense. “I find teaching the folks who do the work in our business puts me back in touch with reality, and real people. Most of the time I live in the world of headquarters. Sure, I started out doing that work myself, and later supervising those who do the work. But it’s easy to lose touch with that. Spending a day with those folks is so valuable in that way.”
One more reason why teaching followers is such a powerful leadership practice.
Paul Balmert
September 2026