Did you know that you can’t lead if you’re a lousy manager? No matter how many leadership classes you take, books you read and seminars you attend if you don’t build good management skills you won’t lead anyone anywhere.
(By the same token, and I’ve said this many times, if you don’t practice so-called leadership skills you’ll have a tough time managing today’s workforce.)
Steve Wyrostek, in a guest post at Brilliant Leadership, has a list of actions so you can figure out if you’re a bad boss or a good one. He says “that a managerial jerk can never achieve good, sustainable results.”
True, although bad managers are known for bringing lots of fresh blood into their area—and then spilling it.
The trouble is that you can be a lousy manager without being terrible, a jerk or downright evil.
Call it lousy by benign neglect.
These are the ones who leave their people alone to find their own way with little guidance and less feedback.
Rather than manage they often focus on the big picture, providing their people with a detailed vision of what the future holds, but no operational map of how to get there, how far they’ve come or how far is left to go.
Leadership skills are important, but they can’t come at the expense of good management.
What does Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz have in common with incoming President Barack Obama?
While they are superb choices as managers and as leaders,
both are entering their respective stages at a time of crisis;
both have multiple and diverse constituencies;
both are the focus of extremely high, often conflicting, sometimes impossible expectations; and
both are subject to substantial outside influences, circumstances and pressure.
Hopefully both will succeed, but the real lesson to be learned here is in the list of commonality and what they do.
Not because of the obvious difficulties, the scope of challenges or even enormous pressures, but because these four points are what every person in charge faces—from multinational CEOs through small biz owners and managers at every level to parents. In many ways the scope isn’t even all that different, relatively speaking.
It’s like cooking. You can take a recipe for two, multiply by X and feed an army.
Which makes this the opportunity of a lifetime.
Look at your world, professional and personal, and analyze it based on the four points above and sort accordingly. Then watch the actions of these two role models.
For instance, Obama spent substantial time before the election and all his time since talking with a wide variety of people and gathering a diverse amount of information from all quarters—including just plain people—in order to be as fully briefed as possible to the situations he’ll inherit on January 20th.
Bartz plans to gather diverse intelligence from all stakeholders and doesn’t seem interested in just kowtowing to those with power.
“But for the moment, she doesn’t even seem to care [about a Microsoft deal]. She told journalists to stop already with the speculation and advice, and explained that she would take her time listening to employees and customers before making any big decisions.”
Ask yourself, how often do you take on a situation by doing instead of listening, analyzing and thinking first?
Plan on watching these two, learning from what they do and applying that knowledge to your own situations—kind of long-distance mentoring.
On a post over at Managing Leadership, Wally Bock left a great comment that’s germane to my recent posts and to the notion that the idea of ‘leadership’ has been corrupted by the leadership business and the media.
“…people prefer magical thinking to accountability.”
They sure do. That magical thinking is just great for all those who don’t want the responsibility of making their own decisions. It’s wonderful to have a ‘leader’ tell you what to think and how to act. That way, when things get screwed up, it isn’t your fault; it’s the leader’s fault. You get to say, ‘S/he told me to…’ and poof—instant absolution with no strings attached.
“There’s a joke about a professor who says that a certain idea is “fine in practice but may not work in theory. We didn’t have a problem identifying who was the leader before we had leadership theory. Nobody worried about whether that Caesar fellow was a true or real or authentic leader. They just followed him.”
Caesar didn’t worry about it, either. He just did [whatever] and assumed that everyone would follow along. And follow they did, at least until he decided to make his leadership official. At that point their response was direct and very final.
We followers need to do something similar to the leadership movement; not necessarily as final, because it does have its uses.
We need to reform its thinking; recognize that leadership skills are for everyone—not just a select few—and stop it from appointing/anointing those selective few as ‘leaders’.
So, new mantra—everybody is a leader; lead yourself first and don’t worry abut the rest.
For a long time now I’ve believed that the L word in all its forms has been abused and corrupted and I’ve haven’t been shy about saying so. Further, I hate words that are defined using variations of themselves. When that happens there is nothing concrete against which to check the meaning of the word or its usage.
I’m also not a lover of people who rant and whine about what’s wrong, but offer no ideas to fix the problem/situation.
So it’s time to start working on solutions.
Perhaps a new acronym would jump-start changing the career slant of ‘leader’.
That way we can offer leadership skills to all, so that they can indeed lead whenever it’s appropriate to the situation—leaders in the instance—instead of anointing a chosen few.
How about POF (person-out-front) to refer to someone at the front of the organization.
Or perhaps it would be better to use upper and lower case for the person in front who may or may not be a Leader, but is a leader.
For example, Richard Fuld is a leader, whereas Lou Gerstner is a Leader.
Of course, that may be worse, since people in those roles already consider themselves ‘special’ and might start thinking of the likeness between god and God.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten, but I’m hoping that y’all, AKA, my brilliant readers, will add your ideas and suggestions.
I 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.
Talk about something with no real meaning—except when looking at the man-hours spent teaching and writing about it or the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on acquiring it.
And I find the practice of identifying ‘leaders’ early in their careers particularly repugnant for two reasons.
1. The idea that you can identify future ‘leaders’ from their actions on the playground or in high school or during their initial working years is inaccurate at best and stupid at worst.
Those identified as kids are the ones who excel at getting noticed, love the spotlight, have a good story to tell and are typically attractive and mainstream. The nerds and misfits are rarely noticed as future ‘leaders’—think Steve Jobs.
Picking them out for special training during their first five years of work eliminates all those who work for bad bosses or for companies where entry level hires are grunts with no real responsibility.
Choosing them because they have an MBA is really ridiculous—all the degree proves is that they could afford grad school (either had the money or went into debt) and that they made it through. That’s it.
Further, the ‘early leader’ approach eliminates all those late bloomers giving them far less opportunities to excel.
The second reason is much worse.
2.Those ‘chosen’ start getting extra attention and mentoring from day one of being identified, so the traits that got them noticed get stronger. Stronger isn’t always better.
They are anointed, singled out for greatness, they are special.
Being special sets you apart; suddenly you’re better than the others and that means that there must be different rules for you because you’re special, better—and entitled. An attitude best summed up by Richard Nixon when he said, “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
And that sense of being anointed a ‘leader’ is partly responsible for the current debacle.
The terms ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ are bandied about constantly, but nowhere more often than in politics, especially during elections.
But did you know that nearly five thousand years ago a Chinese philosopher proved that truly great leadership couldn’t exist in the political arena?
Not true, I hear many of you say.
OK, first, consider three generally acknowledged descriptions of true leadership by Lao Tse in the Tao Te Ching.
Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.
The superior leader gets things done with very little motion. He imparts instruction not through many words but through a few deeds. He keeps informed about everything but interferes hardly at all. He is a catalyst, and though things would not get done well if he weren’t there, when they succeed he takes no credit. And because he takes no credit, credit never leaves him.
As for the best leaders,the people do not notice their existence.
The next best,
the people honor and praise.
The next, the people fear;
and the next, the people hate—
When the best leader’s work is done,
the people say, “We did it ourselves!” To lead the people, walk behind them.
Now name for me just one politician who comes even close to fitting these descriptions.
Sadly, the oxymoronic coupling of ‘leader’ and ‘politician’ usually is just plain moronic.
I frequently disagree with Jack and Suzy Welch in their weekly Business Week column, but in The Connected Leader they offer up good insights as to the effect of the internet on leaders, i.e., bosses, in terms of what it can and can’t do as well as what the leader needs to do.
“The Internet…ushers in a whole new level and scope of employee engagement. Leaders should welcome this development, and most do, but it’s a mistake to treat it lightly. Once employees engage you by speaking out, albeit electronically, they expect to hear back. We would suggest that it can be just as damaging for a leader not to respond to feedback as it is not to ask for it at all.”
Well and good, no arguments. And most leader-bosses are trying to embrace this—even when it scares them silly—because if they don’t they can’t hire. That’s right, engagement is high on the list of employee demands and not just by Millennials and if it isn’t there, well, it’s available somewhere else.
But what I’m cheering is this.
“…one aspect of leadership we believe the Internet won’t change because it can’t. Real leaders touch people… They get in their skin, filling their hearts with inspiration, courage, and hope. They share the pain in times of loss and are there to celebrate the wins.”
It’s called face-to-face and it’s where many leader-bosses are not cutting it. I see too many of them who embrace the orderly world of digital communications as a way to avoid messy, in person interactions—but it doesn’t work.
Current and future technology isn’t the answer—shoe leather is.
That’s right, getting out there and talking face-to-face, knowing your people and giving them the opportunity to know the real you. Not now and then when there’s a special message, but regularly.
As to having the time, you do, because if you don’t your retention will sink like a rock as your turnover soars and you get a street rep that says, ‘give up hope all who join this company’.
CandidProf is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at a state university. He’ll be sharing his thoughts and experience teaching today’s students anonymously every Thursday— anonymously because that’s the only way he can write really candid posts.
An uncaring and ineffective professor does not even take into account the possibility that students are not properly prepared for their class. The students who are ill prepared will not have a chance.
So, you have to learn where your students are. What do they know? What do they not know? If a large number of them don’t know the shape of the Earth, then be sure to cover that. If they don’t understand a certain type of differential equation, cover that in class. But, a good leader also recognizes when success is not possible.
Occasionally I have a student who has no chance of succeeding in the class. That is tough for me, because I want everyone to succeed. But, I have students who sign up for calculus based physics even though they do not even have a good grasp of algebra and have never had calculus.
I have students who take the second semester class after taking the first semester class somewhere “easier” where they did not cover as much material as we do in our first semester class. Unfortunately, the second semester class builds on the concepts covered (or supposed to be covered) in the first semester.
There is only so much that I can do. Physics is intense enough. I cannot teach algebra, trigonometry, and calculus AND physics. If students are missing some things, then I can help them and explain those few things. But, I cannot teach them an entire course’s worth of material in a few minutes when they come by my office.
Eventually, you have to realize that some of them need to stop, drop the course, and go back and take the other classes that they need in order to succeed in your course.
It is very difficult having to tell a student that he or she is completely unprepared for the level of your class and needs to go back and learn the basic things needed before signing up for the class again. You know that many of them will just quit rather than doing that. But, you also know that they won’t succeed if they stick with it. That is something that a good professor will occasionally have to do, though.
What’s all the fuss about leader as opposed to manager?
I keep wondering why there is so much discussion about “leader” vs. “manager.” The head of a company has to be a leader, because people need to follow someone or something in order to be productive and effective. Without a model to follow, people fall into chaos. That includes everyone from your children to heads of major corporations to the companies themselves.
Every person within a company also has to be a manager—from the top down. Without management of processes and outcomes, there is chaos.
So what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that we’ve been taught that you can
compartmentalize those two functions; and
you don’t have to be both to run a company.
Wrong! There have been so many books written on this subject that it is almost absurd to talk about it, but even my own research for my book, The Alpha Factor, which was focused upon how to create total dominance in the marketplace, had to recognize the importance of the leader/manager. The key is in understanding how and where to lead and what to manage. And aren’t those the key definers of leaders vs. managers?
I think that it’s the “how,” “where,” and “what” that make a total leader.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
What does Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz have in common with incoming President Barack Obama?
On a post over at 
For a long time now I’ve believed that the L word in all its forms has been abused and corrupted and I’ve haven’t been shy about 
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.
The terms ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ are bandied about constantly, but nowhere more often than in politics, especially during elections.
.
“The Internet…ushers in a whole new level and scope of employee engagement. Leaders should welcome this development, and most do, but it’s a mistake to treat it lightly. Once employees engage you by speaking out, albeit electronically, they expect to hear back. We would suggest that it can be just as damaging for a leader not to respond to feedback as it is not to ask for it at all.”
So, you have to learn where your students are. What do they know? What do they not know? If a large number of them don’t know the shape of the Earth, then be sure to cover that. If they don’t understand a certain type of differential equation, cover that in class. But, a good leader also recognizes when success is not possible.
For the next few months (longer I hope) Wes Ball, founder of 
