In this solo, podcast‑style episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, Ben Morton expands on his “leadership equalizer” model, which frames a leader’s role as three dials: doing, managing, and leading people. He observes that many leaders keep the doing and managing dials maxed out while the leading dial is rarely turned on, causing leadership to slip into the margins. Morton argues that true leadership is a privilege that carries immense responsibility because each team member’s actions affect their families and wider community. He contrasts the individual‑contributor mindset—where success is measured by personal output—with the leader’s mindset, where success is judged by how well one supports, develops, and cares for the people one leads. To make leadership intentional, he proposes a daily prompt: “What does my team need from me today in order to deliver brilliant results?” He illustrates the real‑world impact of leadership through a personal story about his wife’s experience with her boss, showing how leadership decisions reverberate at home. Morton closes by urging listeners to look after themselves and those they lead, and directs them to his website for further resources.
Chapters
If you caught the last episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, you'd heard me talking about my leadership equalizer model. And if you imagine a leader's job has three core elements, there's doing things, managing things, and leading people. And many leaders that I work with, it's true that their doing and managing things dials are cranked all the way up whilst their leading people dial rarely gets touched. Or perhaps we end up leading in our spare time when all of the doing and managing has been done. Well. In today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, we're continuing that conversation and digging into how we can be much more intentional about being a leader and how we can be much better, better leaders. Hey, I'm Ben Morton and I work with organizations and individuals to dramatically improve their leadership capability. Whether that's through training programs, one to one coaching or keynote speaking. So if you or your organization are looking to take leadership performance to the next level, then do check out my website@Ben Morton.com and when you're there, you'll also find a huge number of resources to help support you on your leadership development journey. So let's dive into today's episode, starting with the reality, the truth that for us as leaders, there will always be stuff that we need to do ourselves and there will certainly always be things that we're responsible for managing. And and what this means is that if we are not very deliberate and intentional about our leadership responsibilities, then leading can easily slip into the margins. It can be something that we do when we have time, when all of the doing and managing has been done. But there's a problem, as you well know, like there never is time. We never quite get through the to do list. So leadership can very easily get get the remains the remnants of our time. And in over 15 years of delivering leadership training, coaching senior leaders and talking about this stuff on the stage, there's one thing that I've noticed time and time again that really helps leaders make the shift and fully step into and embrace their job as a leader. And let me tell you this, it's not another tool, model, framework or hack. It ultimately comes down to understanding on a really deep level what it actually means to be a leader. For me, it starts with accepting a truth that's easily overlooked. Leadership is a privilege and it comes with immense responsibility because every single person we lead is more than an employee. They're someone's partner, parent, sibling, best friend. They are the most important person in the world to somebody else. And what we say and do as leaders on our good days and on our bad days. It doesn't just affect the people we lead. We when they're at work, it affects them when they go home. And that affects everyone they interact with. It affects how they are with their loved ones. Me personally, I'm seeing this firsthand right now in my own home. My wife, who is a very experienced senior leader, is being impacted by her current boss. And as a result, the mood in our house can be, let's just say, suboptimal. And it's happening a lot. So you see, this stuff really matters. I personally believe that once we grasp the weight of that privilege and responsibility we have as leaders, the next shift is understanding what our job is as a leader. And this can represent a big change from how many of us, most of us even started our career. So when we start out as an individual contributor, we're rewarded and recognized based on what we personally deliver. But as leaders, it's no longer solely about our own output. Our success is measured more on how well we support, develop, and look after the people that we've got the privilege and responsibility to lead so that they can deliver the result we're accountable for. That's the job of a leader. And then when we start to remind ourselves of this every single day, we can start to lead far more intentionally and have a far greater impact. Impact. So let me leave you with one final question. A question to help you reset and recalibrate your focus each morning before you start work. And here's the question. What does my team need from me today in order to deliver brilliant results? That's it. That's the question. And when you start your day with that question, you'll start to shift from being busy to being intentional. You'll start to lead by design, not by accident. So that's it for this episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. I hope you got value from it. As always, look after yourself, look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, lid on.
