Leadership and Management

If you are building a room in your house, you use a variety of types of tools from different disciplines. To pick two, you use carpenter tools and electrician tools. The carpenter tools (hammer, saw) are the most widely recognized, understood and used. The electrician tools (wire stripper, current tester) are less recognized, less understood and less used. There are also cross-over tools (screwdrivers, pliers, tape measure) that are useful in both disciplines. The same person will use both sets of tools to complete the room. The same holds true for running an organization.

Many people and organizations use the terms leadership and management interchangeably. They are not the same. Both, the management and the leadership sets of tools are required for an organization to succeed. They work hand in glove. However, they are separate sets of expertise. In formal organizations, a person at the head of an organization, department or team has the opportunity to exercise both sets of skills. It is important to understand the difference so that you can apply the correct approach to different situations. Some people can execute both very skillfully. Unfortunately, there are more that can not.

You lead people; you manage things.

Leadership is the application of certain skills, attitudes, values and relationships that energize people toward a common destination. It does not require organizational position. So a person with no formal authority (power) can be a leader if they can get people excited to all move toward the same objective. You know them as “informal” leaders.

Manager is a formal position conferred on a person by the organization. The management tools are designed to keep an organization running smoothly and predictably. These skills are well known and include budgets, work design, resource allocation, goal setting, P&P, etc. This tool set does require organizational position and formal authorization. There are a lot of managers who believe that organizational authority (a management tool) is synonymous with leadership. It is not.

Many managers believe that when people are not doing the right things correctly, they need to put out some new rules and then enforce them. For those of you who think this way I simply ask “Does setting a speed limit and having the police stop cars that exceed the limit cause all drivers not to exceed the speed limit?” “How many times have you seen a policeman, slowed down to the speed limit and then, as soon as the cop is out of sight, and the threat of enforcement is past, you resume speeding?” A lot of energy and expense goes into establishing and enforcing the rules. This effort does not work very well on the highway and it does not work very well in organizations either. Yet managers continue to try it. They use a management tool for a leadership activity.

Organizations requires both sets of expertise. They have to work seamlessly. It is not an either/or situation. The effective “boss” needs to be able to reach into his/her tool kit and pull out the tool appropriate to the situation.

Leadership Development is any thing that we do in a planned and repetitive practice to build or develop leadership skills and traits. The overall purpose is to improve the quality of leadership and enhance leadership effectiveness. This includes formal training at the graduate or undergraduate level, specific programs developed by organizations, courses implemented in corporate environments or military and law enforcement training.

These programs are designed to focus on those qualities in an individual or team that are proven to reflect strong leadership. Courses like this will build and hone those skills in an effort to produce a more effective and efficient leader.

Many qualities in an individual lend themselves well toward good leadership. Some people are born with strong skills and traits that make them natural-born leaders but time and testing has discovered that most leadership skills can be learned and developed in anyone who is willing to take the time and make the effort to learn and practice.

As usual, the first step in developing any learned skill is education. Once we know and fully understand what makes a competent leader, it makes the process that much easier. There is a wide variety of study courses designed to help us do this. The most important part of developing strong leadership however, is dependent upon the action we take and effort that is put toward putting this knowledge into practice. Knowing and doing are two widely different things. Developing true leadership requires sustained action until the techniques become habit.

How successful an individual can become in leadership roles is dependent upon those persons learning abilities, the teacher or source of the information and the environment that the student will learn and practice the techniques. The rate at which one can become effectively trained as a leader will also depend on many of the individuals existing skills and behavioral attributes. Some of the more prominent traits that lend themselves well to leadership learning are self-confidence (not to be confused with arrogance,) self-esteem (not to be confused with conceit), communication skills, positive attitude and self-discipline.

The most effective leadership programs will be the ones that focus on sustained efforts over a long period and a broad scope of developmental training. They will focus on applied learning through taking action and actually practicing and monitoring the growth in real world scenarios. Since leadership deals primarily with your effectiveness in working with real people and real situations, confining your learning to classroom can only produce limited results.

Good leadership training will allow the individual to put his or her skills to test in real environments where leadership is truly needed and beneficial. Situations that work best are ones that require a leader to rely on communication, taking responsibilities, developing effective plans to reach specific goals, taking action, providing motivation and achieving real world results.

Sometimes the best training is simply filling the role and applying a proactive approach to learning and applying the best practices. It is up to you to acquire the training or practice that you need to develop yourself into a great leader. Learn everything that you can and practice what you learn often.

So what is your leadership style?

Are you Authoritarian, Democratic, Servant, Thoughtful

All of the above styles have their merits, some many demerits.

But are we looking in the wrong place in the context of embracing a style that will enhance our relationship with all the major stakeholders in the company, particularly of course our internal and external customers?

The following Sufi story comes to mind:

Nasruddin tells how some people came upon him one night crawling around on his hands and knees under a lamppost.

“What are you looking for?” they asked him.

“I dropped the key to my house,” he replied.

They all got down to help him look, but after a fruitless search, someone asked him where he had dropped the key in the first place.

“In the house,” Nasruddin answered.

“Then why are you looking under the lamppost?” they asked.

“Because there is more light here,” Nasruddin replied.

Have we embraced Nasruddin’s strategy in the context of our Leadership style? Are we buying into the buzzwords and running away from the core competency we need to develop to jumpstart our leadership potential?

This competency is easy to understand but a challenge to fully embrace – the need to be real.

The New Real Leader

The new Real Leader creates leaders at all levels, which is critical if you want the organisation to grow. A recent Gallup study showed that the majority of employees said that their direct line manager was the most important person in the context of their organisational growth. The CEO/Leader – celebrity or not – was merely a figurehead with little or no impact on the employees. Thus line managers need to adopt a leadership role to fully engage workers. Remember engagement is equal to productivity and profitability.

The new Real Leader is not afraid to recruit talented people who can bring the organisation to the next level. His/her understanding and appreciation that life is truly a journey – from dependence as a child to independence to interdependence – allows them to relate to everyone with ease and to tap into the potential of their team.

The Real Leader communicates his/her vision with energy, enthusiasm, clarity and conviction.

The Real Leader cares about their employees and customers, both internal and external, and works to exceed their expectations on an ongoing basis. Considering that so many customers and employees leave businesses on a monthly basis, the ability to retain people is a key skill.

The Real Leader has a love for what they do and sees their job more as a hobby than a work commitment!

Trust, not fear, permeates the company culture.

So how does the Real Leader start the journey to getting real?

Well by initially understanding that the obstacle in front of him/her is themselves, and beginning the journey towards self empowerment.

The more you journey, the more you enhance your relationships and tap into your innate potential and the potential of others.

As always, enjoy the trip.