More truth about leadership
by Miki SaxonI had a recent conversation on the final post from a series last summer regarding supposed differences between ‘leaders’ and managers.
The reader said she was confused and asked whether managers needed to be ‘leaders’, too.
I think that my responses will be of use to others, so I’ve rounded them out below to increase access to the information.
It would be lovely if there was a nice, clear-cut answer to the ‘leader’/manager thing, but like a lot of these types of questions it depends on whom you ask.
There are two distinct schools of thought. One believes that leaders and managers are different and see ‘leaders’ as on a higher plane.
Others, like me, believe that to manage well requires having and using so-called leadership skills.
To further confuse the issue, there’s a growing movement that thinks leadership skills can and should be found at any/all levels of the organization (think organizational leadership) and become active as the need arises.
In other words, real leadership is what you believe and how you think and act, AKA, MAP, as opposed to your position.
Further, real leadership isn’t about style or even ‘vision’.
Style may change as you adopt a presentation appropriate to the people with whom you are interacting, but that stylistic change doesn’t change who you are and what you believe.
Vision presentation also changes based on your audience. Changes in the actual vision is a different subject
To summarize,
- While management is what you do, leadership is the way you think.
- Great management is composed of equal parts leadership and accountability.
- True leaders are proclaimed as such by those around them, not by themselves.
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Image credit: sxc.hu
