Leader + manager = leadager (part 1)
by Miki Saxon
I asked Emanio CEO KG Charles-Harris what he thought of ‘leadager’ as a new word that meant both leader and manager.
KG: I believe the terms are so different that it’s difficult to put them together.
me: Yes, but I’m referring to the best. I think that if you lead without managing you end up with chaos.
If you manage without leading you codify the status quo.
KG: I agree. But management is a discipline, whereas leadership is more difficult to quantify and teach.
me: True, you DO leadership, public opinion recognizes you as a leader and the leadership industry gives you the language to talk about what you did.
KG: I’m not sure what the leadership industry is. Much of it is smoke and mirrors, but not all. I think leadership is best described as influence directed to accomplish goals, either explicitly or implicitly so. Good managers have processes and techniques that he implements to get people to work. Leaders inspire.
me: Yes, but I still think that great managers inspire and great leaders manage—emphasis on great.
KG: Leadership is not necessarily good. Hitler was a good leader but a terrible manager. He had very good managers under him, though.
me: True, and I should have said “should” instead of presenting it as a given. In today’s world, especially in business, many of those in positions of power are afraid to have people in place that might challenge them or show them up. As a result, each level of management often gets weaker as it goes down the ladder.
Fostering leadership is yet more difficult, since inspiring means taking chances and requires a culture that doesn’t just tolerate stumbles and failures, but actually encourages them. Without that safety people won’t take chances with a vision but will stick to the status quo.
Be sure to join me tomorrow for part 2.
Do you think that managers should have vision and leaders should have management skills?
Your comments—priceless
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February 21st, 2008 at 6:48 am
This whole manager vs. leader topic has been one I’ve wrestled with in the past. I’ve been in circles where manager = doer and leader = visionary. But I’ve been around too many visionary “leaders” who could inspire the heck out of you but could never get one thing accomplished. They could get people excited and on board, but they could not help people take even the first step towards accomplishing the mission. I no longer consider these people leaders. Call them visionaries or whatever you want.
And I’ve been around managers who could move people to accomplish great things. They were doers. They were not inspiring as most people define inspiring, but they inspired people enough to lead them to accomplish the mission.
So…I’m still processing this stuff. My definition of leader has changed. A leader is a doer. And I think the term manager has been given a bad rap. Managers do inspire. Maybe they just do it in different ways…perhaps more effective ways.
February 21st, 2008 at 9:28 am
Casey, I think that you’re experience is mirrored by many and agree that managers accomplish far more than they’re credited with.
And perhaps the visionaries who don’t accomplish anything are mesmerizing rather than inspiring.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Implicit in the word leader is that it is someone who leads. In order to lead there needs to be a vision of where to go, how to get there and the necessary execution of the steps. Without this, what is described is not a leader, only a visionary or something else.
Management is something completely different. It is the science of creating a repeatable process for getting tasks accomplished. These may be the necessary tasks to reach a visionary goal or just to make dinner for a family every evening. Management is part of leadership, but not necessarily the other way around. At the very least, a leader needs to put competent managers in charge of executing the vision with guidance from the leader.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:45 pm
KG, What you describe is only part of management and the easy part, at that. There is a reason that the best managers are considered inspired as well as inspiring. The do far more than create repeatable processes, they inspire their people to accomplish them as opposed to telling them—let alone ordering. Great managers inspire their people to go above and beyond the necessities.
Yes, many managers go no further than what you describe in executing someone else’s vision, but they aren’t in the ‘great’ or even ‘good’ category, more in the adequate or getting by.
People do not accomplish stuff because they have a set process by which to do it, they accomplish because they are inspired to by SOMEONE—if not their manager than someone else in the group. This is necessary in any kind of organization and at every level if that group is considered high performing.
Moreover, when you compare a highly productive, high achieving group in a company with a strong overall vision with another group in the same company that is adequate, but not exceptional it’s easy to see the difference between leadgers, i.e., managers who inspire, and managers, who provide good process and nothing else.
Process does not promote passion, whereas inspiration does.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:16 am
[…] the first post in this series Casey Ross’ comment “I’ve been around too many visionary “leaders” […]
February 28th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I’ve been mulling the Leader vs Manager vs Leader-is-a-manager-is-a-leader thoughts since I first read your posts on it.
The problem I’m faced with is that I believe I’m a decent leader or a decent manager, but when put together I end up being crappy at both. How does someone go from creating a direction, getting buy-in, and then managing the process to keep the boat going in the same general direction while still maintaining balance?
Perhaps, in my case, it has to do with focus – defining the focus to things that can be managed/accomplished and ideas that can be fostered by leadership.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Luke, One of the greatest talents of a leader or manager or leadager is the willingness to draw in the best and once they’re in the picture give them their head. Doing this requires the leadager to be secure, not arrogant, and to build a strong basis of trust with his people. The hardest thing for many leadagers to do is get out of the way knowing that there will be mistakes, since without them there is neither innovation nor growth.