Leadership Versus Management

Think of a manager as a system optimizer. The average manager spends a majority of his or her time on efforts focused internally to keep the systems running and the organization functioning.³ Given resources to accomplish a set of tasks, a good manager knows how to best direct these resources. In this sense, managers are great car mechanics. Confidence is built by knowing how the car (i.e., the organization) works, knowing how to best leverage resources when problems arise, and having abounding energy to overcome problems along the way. Successful management is critical to an organization’s continued existence, for without management, transformational change cannot take root. A well-managed foundation of performance management systems is crucial in ensuring the delivery of value-added products and services.

Managerial strengths can primarily be found in four skill sets or characteristics:

• Energetic (having power within). The individual has the strength for finding the energy and power from within and has a resilient capacity for knocking down barriers and moving through adversity. This person is upbeat and lively in manner.
• Administrative (having control over what’s inside of the organization). This individual manages the processes and applies productive control and holds self and others accountable to agreed-on procedures. The individual understands current systems and how to handle them in order to achieve desired results.
• Analytical (being able to see what is actually happening inside of the organization). The individual sees patterns and cause-effect relationships; understands current results and reasons for existing performance; and measures, collects data, converts data into information, and provides insight into the information.
• Performing (being a results producer). The individual is a doer, not a spectator, and consistently achieves a high level of results on a personal basis. Individually, this person is a significant contributor in all undertakings and serves as a role model in delivering upon agreements and targets.

In comparison, a leader has managerial skills plus the ability to cast a vision, create a future reality, build community, and help empower others. Leadership is of the spirit, a creative expression.⁴ In short, leaders are great artists. They start with a blank canvas, be it for painting, score sheet for music, or a blank sheet to write a book, poem, or song, and create something.

The leader’s skill set requires more than the ability to optimize in terms of management, however important managerial skills are. The additional leadership skills are the following:

• Empowering (being able to multiply power). This individual produces alignment and attunement with staff toward a shared vision and displays enabling skills in an adult-adult relationship. More lasting than motivation from the outside, empowering implies the leader helps individuals to find a greater source of power within.
• Creative (thinking outside of the box). This individual is inventive and thinks in a nonlinear manner. Imaginative, innovative, and inspired thoughts are aspects of this person’s creative mind.
• Visionary (seeing what can be). This individual sees a compelling future and is proficient in its articulation. This individual also sees a living experience in the vision and the current situation as having to transform in order to meet the reality of the vision.
• Community building (getting results through many). This person is a builder of trust and communal purpose and capitalizes upon diversity while focusing upon contribution. This person also goes beyond team and organization building and welcomes all to get behind the vision.

The problem arises in the relationship between these additional characteristics of a leader and those needed to be a good manager. In many ways, the additional skills are the polar opposite of the managerial skills. For instance, to be analytical is the polar opposite of being visionary. However, we want both analytical and visionary skill sets within a leader. Likewise, the other three managerial skills match up with their polar opposite leadership skill. In total, four polarities are formed.

Knowing how to administer the work of the organization is a powerful asset. Knowing how to work the system, given its constraints and processes, is also a valuable skill. But a leader needs to know both how to work within the box of the organization and how to create outside of the defined box. When the organization is needlessly constrained due to unproductive systems, the leader will create better performing systems. Again, a polarity is found. The ability to work effectively the organization as it exists and the ability to create anew are both required for great leadership.

Good managerial work requires much personal energy. Having others bring their best energies to the table entails empowering others. The third polarity involves setting an example, as well as calling forth others to consciously put forth their best efforts through empowering others.

Finally, the fourth polarity is about your personal performance, or being able to do your job well and bring forth personal accomplishments. Every proficient manager gets the job done and takes pride in their production. They are performers. The leader goes a step further and calls upon not only their team but also the community as a whole to create the vision. It doesn’t matter whether others report to you directly; you should be able to gather support for vision creation in ever increasing circles of influence. This characterizes a great leader.

Figure 5.2 illustrates the four polarities and how leaders require the four managerial characteristics, as well as the four additional leadership characteristics.

Both sets of skills are needed. Great car mechanics need some creativity to approach novel problems that might be presented to them. Great artists usually study under master artists to learn techniques that will help them in the creative process. Because successful managers are asked to master a much different set of skills, many fail. It is as if you were extremely skilled with dribbling a basketball with your right hand. In fact, your high performance to date has hinged primarily upon your right-hand dribbling technique. One day the coach comes to you and explains that if you are to make the team, you will need to be able to dribble with your left hand. You argue about your dribbling proficiency with your right hand, but to no avail. In your heart you know the coach is right. It isn’t about your right-hand dribble (managerial ability). It is about acquiring another talent found in left-hand dribbling, which along with your right-hand dribble you can grow to a new level of effectiveness (leadership ability).

If we were to plot managerial strengths along two continuums, internal focus → external focus and change focus → standardization focus, we would find that the critical skill sets would be distributed primarily toward the internal focus and standardization focus. This seems to make sense intuitively. A manager is consumed with the proper and effective running of a system and making sure the results are sustainable with some incremental improvement.

On the other hand, the leader must have the ability both to manage the current operation and to hold an external focus and a change focus. Despite this hurdle, many good managers become good leaders. But this is not always the case. In fact, this is one of the reasons organizations developed parallel progression systems. Such a system still allows for ample rewards in compensation and prestige for great managers without them having to become great leaders. Parallel progression recognizes the value of both contributors: managerial and leadership.

Through our research, we have seen that different societies have tendencies toward different strengths and weaknesses depending on the characteristics and skills of their leaders. Our intent is not to describe these leanings but rather to point out that not only organizations but also societies as a whole have a way to support or dampen development in certain areas. Nevertheless, it is up to the individual to take advantage of the support or overcome the barriers of their environment. Either way, opportunities abound.

In this chapter, we want to remind you that great leaders, while not employing all the skills of leadership, do share some common traits. First, great leaders have strong self-mastery. They know where they are going and why they should go there. Thus the first question a leader must answer is “where am I going?” Leaders determine where they are going by developing self-mastery. Self-mastery is a deep sense of personal awareness and reflection on a person’s skill level. To develop self-mastery, we suggest you ask yourself the following questions: Why am I leading the organization I lead? What do I want for my organization? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? One way to answer these questions is to identify moments from your past where you were successful (and what in you caused the success). A more powerful way to answer these questions is to identify moments from your past where you failed (and what in you caused the failure). Self-mastery comes when you can sit with your connection to success and failure without rushing to judgment or denying that you were a part of failure.

Leaders must also constantly work on their skills. Drawing from previous work by Stephen Hacker, we suggest that there are eight different skills needed for transformation leadership. These skills are broken into managerial characteristics (energetic, administrative, analytical, and performing) and leadership characteristics (empowering, creative, visionary, and community building). We use the analogy of left-hand dribbling to help leaders understand how they need to continually develop their weak hand. In organizations, strong, powerful leaders might benefit from working on compassion. Soft leaders might benefit from working on their authority. The key is that leaders should be constantly developing and improving their left-hand dribble. We are not advocating that the left hand needs to become as strong as their right hand, but a better left-hand dribble will make the right hand that much better.

To summarize our argument so far, there are two key ingredients for change: leadership and vision. A successful vision is one that is an audacious goal with a vivid description. To get this type of vision, your vision needs to be possible, desirable, actionable, and articulate. Leadership is critical because it is the role of leadership to create the vision, communicate the vision, and develop the plan for moving the organization toward the vision. These two ingredients for change are not new; many change programs suggest the need for leadership and a vision. Nevertheless, before an organization starts a change effort, we would suggest that the organization access its leadership capability and not consider the vision complete until it addresses the issues of possibility, desirability, actionability, and clarity and generates emotion throughout the organization.