Manager or Leader?

“Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.”

Colin Powell – Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US Secretary of State

Has your business grown to the point where you should be spending less time on the day-to-day details and more on developing your people? Did you receive a promotion recently that makes you responsible for others? Have you recently been hired for a new job that has people looking to you for direction? Bottom line: Are you now in a position of leadership? If the answer is yes, ask yourself this; Why should anyone want to be led by you?

With great leadership the realm of possibility is nearly endless. Yet how many truly great leaders have you known? The issue is many leaders are hired or promoted for the wrong reasons. Leadership often takes the bronze prize with the cool job title and increase in pay being the gold and silver. It’s something frequently given because of seniority or family connections or because of personal marketing. Rather than seeing it as a privilege and opportunity to serve others, many new “leaders” make the big mistake of trying to lead with control. This doesn’t necessarily make them control freaks, they’ve just never been taught what great leadership is all about. Companies spend a lot of time and resources training people on the technical side of their jobs. However when it comes to leadership it’s often passed off to HR or some outside company with their 12 DVD series if it’s done at all.

What I see a lot of times is a manager, who’s done a good job, put into a leadership position with no thought to the distinction in the job requirements. When I ask about leadership everyone has an opinion of what great leadership is. But if it’s so easy to define why does it seem to be so uncommon?

Management jobs are often about controlling things. Making sure processes within a company are adhered to, schedules are followed and goals hit require someone with good executing skills. It’s easy to see why the status quo can become so ingrained. If something has been working why change it? A leadership position though necessitates our looking at the bigger picture. The status quo is the first thing we need to confront and our feelings about control need to be challenged.

If you find yourself in a leadership position and believe control is the way to lead, ask yourself these questions: Does control help maximize the potential of the people working for you? Does it help them take more initiative? Does it allow them the safety to make mistakes and learn from them? Is it the best way to develop their personal talents? In his great book, “Hacking Leadership”, Mike Myatt writes, “Controlling leaders create bottlenecks, rather than increase throughput. They signal a lack of trust and confidence and often come across as insensitive if not arrogant. When you experience weak teams, micromanagement, frequent turf wars, high stress, operational strain, and a culture of fear, you are experiencing what control has to offer – not very attractive is it?”

Less than 12% of the original Fortune 500 companies are still on the list today. Yes I know that’s a span of sixty years but how does 88% of the 500 top companies in the world fall off? We’re talking about companies with resources and assets that the vast majority of companies in the world would die for. Companies don’t fail, leaders do.

Why can one company or organization get stuck, watch the world pass them by then wither away while at the same time another company in the same business flourishes? I’d argue the difference is one company is run by managers, the other by leaders. The first group will be able to give a never ending list of reasons (i.e. excuses) why they couldn’t make it go. The economy is bad, competition is brutal, benefit costs are skyrocketing, lack of quality workers, our market is shrinking etc. etc. etc. The other company? They’ve encouraged innovation and collaboration. They’ve built real teams within their organization and pushed leadership to every level. They constantly challenge the status quo because they know the minute they stop is the minute they begin the deliberate march to extinction.