Leadership versus Management

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Alfredo Scaini

When leading a team you have to be both a leader and a manager. Leaders motivate staff to perform the work; managers put measures in place to ensure that the work is completed and that results are evaluated to better handle future projects.

Both qualities are needed to ensure a project is successful. On small teams when it’s only you heading the project, you have to be sure that you can motivate your team as well as manage outcomes.

Leading and Managing: Developing Super Stars

If you’re lucky, you have one or two super stars on the team that require very little motivation or management from you. These people understand the vision from the start and keep it front and center while completing each task and reporting back to you in a timely fashion on a regular basis.

These employees are worth their weight in gold and while some are inherently like this, others can grow into this type of employee. This is where your leadership and management skills must come into play and you take the role of gardener, helping these individuals blossom into super stars.

Is it difficult to create super stars? No, not if the essential ingredients are within the employee – a love of their profession, a sense of loyalty to the organization and/or project (and to you), and a positive attitude.

However, it is a large time commitment on your part. Mentoring staff is not a part time job that you can do off the corner of your desk. It’s a full time endeavor that you have to make to your employees. You do this by providing continuous, positive yet constructive feedback, examining their strengths and weaknesses and assigning work and training that builds the self confidence and professional competence in these employees.

All employees (including the super stars on your team) need you to be a leader. They need to see your excitement and commitment to the success of a project. They also need to see that you’re going to be around and that you’re competent enough to ensure that the project will succeed (leaders who are not managers sometimes have this habit of starting a project and then disappearing, leaving employees hanging and losing focus).

The article below was written back in 2009 and is from TechRepublic.com. I have a copy printed out and sitting next to my monitor as a reminder that leading teams requires a person to wear both hats.

You can read the full article on Leadership vs management: Understanding the Differences at Techrepublic.com, or check out the transcript below.

“Number 1: Leaders inspire, managers measure

When leaders finish speaking, the listeners want to go out and change the world. They get fired up and moving, willingly facing problems they would have ignored before. This energy gradually fades until the leader reestablishes it.

When managers finish speaking, everyone knows what is expected of them, how it will be measured, and what results to expect. In other words, they know exactly what they have to do. This knowledge remains valid until the goal changes.

Number 2: Leaders guide, managers navigate

Leaders give their teams a general idea of where they want to take the team. The team members then do their best to get from the current state to the future state, using the skills they posses to cover the gap.

When managers describe what they want done, they includes clear instructions regarding the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the gap plan. Then — ideally at least — the team enacts the plan in an organized fashion.

Number 3: Leaders hope, managers analyze

Leaders sometimes seem unattached to reality. Their focus on a vision of what could be gives them great hope and helps them weather trials. It also sometimes leads them to ignore problems that honestly need to be addressed before the future can come to be.

Managers, on the other hand, clearly see the present with all its warts and flaws. This clarity enables them to resolve current issues. It also can create a loop in which they can’t change things because they know only “the way things have always been done.”

Number 4: Leaders envision, managers maintain

Leaders speak about the future as if it already exists. They see it, taste it, and can sometimes even feel it just out of reach. This vision allows them to show the team what could be, lifting them out of habitual ruts.

Managers speak about what they currently see and measure. They explain clearly how things operate and identify metrics to further refine that operation. These metrics may help change. But more often, they reinforce existing habitual behaviors.

Number 5: Leaders rally, managers retrench

When things go wrong, leaders gather their team together, reestablish the vision, inspire the group, and then go out to protect them while they deal with the situation. Leaders stand up, do what’s right, and accept the consequences of their team’s actions as their own. The team continues to work and react in the background.

When things go wrong, managers gather their team together, identify the exact problem, create a plan to address it, assign tasks, and dispatch the team with strict instructions. Assuming the initial analysis identified the problem and no other problems arise, the team will quickly resolve the issue and then return to normal operation.

Without leadership, management does little more than defend the status quo. However, without management, all the leadership in the world can’t create a sustainable change. Clearly, leaders and managers have highly distinct roles — but both are essential to the success of the business.”

Read the full article on Leadership vs management: Understanding the Differences at Techrepublic.com.