Ducks in a Row: You Can’t (Successfully) Have One Without the Other
by Miki Saxon
To build a solid culture that will stay true to its values, yet flexible enough to grow with the company you need get past the idea that positional leaders don’t need management skills or that managers don’t lead.
Jim Stroup, who wrote a blog called Managing Leadership, the archives of which contain tremendously useful information on leadership and management for bosses at all levels, used to point out in numerous posts the absurdity of separating the two.
“No one has proven that leadership is different from management, much less that it is a characteristic inherent in individuals independently of the context in which those individuals operate, one that they carry with them from one organization to another and which they then instill into groups otherwise bereft of it.”
A comment left on a 2008 Washington Post column by Steve Pearlstein regarding the leadership failure that led to the economic crisis neatly sums up the problem with defining leaders based on their vision and skill at influencing people to follow them.
“What a great summary of the economic problem. However this was not a lack of leadership. Defining leadership as influencing people to move in a specific direction, the financial and economic elite successfully led the country into the economic disaster. The problem was a lack of management that failed to identify the signs of the pending disaster.”
Honing the skills to only do one or the other well short-changes your people and your company — but it’s how you win.
Being proficient in both leading and managing will
- prevent visions from blindsiding you;
- provide strong motivation;
- increase productivity and creative thinking;
- create an environment in which people are challenged and grow to their true potential;
- ensure a higher level of personal satisfaction; and
- increase your tangible rewards.
And if those 6 results don’t motivate you, the sophistication and mobility of today’s workforce certainly should.
Image credit: Rodney Campbell
