October 2, 2015
What does it take to be a great manager?
There is an underlying theory that some people are natural leaders and therefore the best managers, whereas others are not and are destined to be not-so-great managers.
What is the reality? Lots of natural leaders are not such great managers. The best managers — natural or not — are those who learn proven techniques, practice them diligently until they become skills, and continue practicing them until they become habits.
Is there such a thing as natural leadership ability? Of course. Some people are visionary, charismatic, articulate, filled with ideas and unusually energetic. They are motivators. They inspire. People want to follow them. But that doesn’t necessarily make them good managers.
More often, these great leaders succeed precisely because they are smart enough to hire great managers to assist them. Indeed, one of the most common stories I hear is how a natural leader will whirl into the workplace making random decisions and spreading ideas and thoughts that create hope and fear — and then just as quickly disappear, leaving the manager to clean up the mess.
I use the term management precisely to focus on the more mundane, but absolutely crucial, aspects of leadership: providing direction and guidance, holding people accountable, dealing with failure, and rewarding success. These are the basic elements of management that are way too often missing from leadership today. And these are the elements that are by far the most important when it comes to getting more and better work out of employees. I’ve learned from training tens of thousands of individuals that almost anyone can become a much better manager. How? Learn proven techniques and practice, practice, practice until they become skills and then habits.
Discussion Questions
Do you agree that being a great leader and a great manager require different skill sets? What do you see as the key to becoming a great leader? What does it take to become a great manager?
Poll
BrainTrust
Ian Percy
President, The Ian Percy Corporation
Gene Detroyer
Professor, International Business, Guizhou University of Finance & Economics and University of Sanya, China.
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They may, although there are great managers who are also great leaders and vice versa.
The key to being a great leader is possessing the ability to get people to follow you where they otherwise would not go. The key to being a good manager is having the patience to make sure the followers always march in the same direction.
The way I’ve always looked at it is that leaders work with spiritual resources and managers work with physical resources. Both potentially powerful and essential roles. Some time back I wrote a book titled “Going Deep”on how leaders can access the spiritual resources of a company. And I agree most of us have a natural fit with one or the other. We should never minimize either role.
But the one aspect that is usually missing in these “leadership” discussions is that NO leader is effective throughout the inevitable life cycle of an organization. The leader who launches a company is typically pathetic at building it. The leader who builds it is almost useless at maturing a company and often creates problems just so he/she can fix it and build some more. The leader who can stabilize a company is definitely not the leader who will cause a reinvention or transformation of the company and instead will preside over its death.
Dr. Peter Robertson’s book is titled “Always Change a Winning Team.” His point is that an organization needs to recruit leaders who can lead through the NEXT life cycle stage and NOT the one you’re in and certainly not the one you’ve been through.
The builder-leader who comes in to rescue the company from the founder-leader and then leaves three years later isn’t a failure, he or she is being smart. They go on to find another building opportunity because that’s what they do.
The message to all leaders is: Know where you fit! When you’ve made your contribution have the courage to move on to fresh territory.
“When leading the herd, it’s best to look back every once in a while to make sure the herd is still following.” -Will Rogers
Leaders don’t have a habit of looking back sometimes. Just as strategists don’t bother to explain their solutions and creatives can’t really care when people criticize their work.
Management is both skill and a talent in my opinion. You can teach the skill, but you have to have the talent. Just as with leadership or strategy or creativity. I’m a horrible manager. And the best thing I ever did for myself and every one associated with me is to realize it.
Real simple — a great sense of humor and no ego problems. Cut all the other skill sets and all that. Get to the basics — work is not the core of life and we win as a team — not just for the manager.
Forgive me for simplifying — Leaders lead and managers manage. They are two different skills. We often hear stories of how great leaders cannot manage. But the decline of companies can also be traced to a great manager becoming the leader of the company.
What does it take to become a great leader? Followers. Leaders lead with passion, not with position.
Yes. For any organization to be successful it needs both great leaders and managers. Below are some contrasting and complementary characteristics of each:
There is a difference between a manager and a leader. In some cases a good manager can be a leader (and vice-versa), but in many cases managing is more tactical and leadership is more strategic. Managers can manage people and projects. Leaders create culture, think big, motivate and inspire people to higher levels of performance and more. Leaders are supported by managers who execute. Managers are inspired by leaders and support their leader’s vision and mission.
Entire books have been written about how to be a great manager or a great leader. To me, the most important skill is about people. Good people skills are paramount.
I see where the article is going, however I hesitate to draw too deep of a line between managers and leaders. I see employees wanting to follow the “shadow of the leader” when that leader is also approachable as a manager. Patience, effective coaching and consistent followup feedback are keys to both. Strategic thinking is obviously a key leadership quality, while managers need to think more strategically in their own circles, too. This is often not the case since just getting through each day is a challenge for many managers.
Great managers are able to monitor and control an organization’s activities to execute on a plan in an outstanding manner. Great leaders are able to analyze trends, set a course for the future to capitalize on those trends and motivate members of the organization to move in this organization. The skill sets are different. Some people are able to do both but that is rare.
Great leaders take people where they want them to go. Great managers help people to get where they want to go. All based on the principal that if you help people get what they want, they will help you get what you want.
As I wrote in this post, “What’s Important To Train A Retail Manager,” your training of a manager is your chance to shape the culture of your retail store.
Your retail management skills begin with finding a manager for a department or the whole store, knowing their personality style, and training them in what matters—not that they can do transfers correctly.
The best acid test of leadership vs. management is when a sudden, disruptive change hits an organization.
We’ve seen this in banking with the financial crisis and regulations that followed. In computing, we’ve seen shrinking form factors and growth of mobile wireless communications. In retail, we’ve seen waves of e-commerce.
So the question becomes, what is the difference between change leadership and change management? Change leadership is about anticipating trends. In other words, spotting reversal of direction and acting before the crisis hits. Change leadership envisions new strategies, processes, and human capital necessary to compete in the new order.
Change management puts structures, systems and staffing in place to cross the bridge. It may sound mechanical, but it’s not. During the change management phase the change actor needs to closely watch his or her organization so expenses and morale don’t fall out of control.
The two are alternating, not sequential. Many times change management goes off the rails, and change leaders are needed to inject inspiration and urgency to recover.