Sorting the leader manager thing

Roles and verbs

The leader / manager distinction.

I’ve seen chapters in textbooks on it.  I’ve seen MBA courses spend an entire session debating this.   And I’ve never got any use out of any of it.

Here’s a way to sort this out that is actually useful:

Manager is a type of role.  If you are accountable for the work of someone else, then guess what?  You are a manager.  Just like if you are accountable for the work of moving a football forward to score goals, you are a football player.

(How much time do you think people running football clubs spend discussing ‘what is a football player?’)

And whether you like it or not, if you are accountable for the work of someone else, then you are going to have to lead.  No two ways about it, leadership is something everything manager is required to do in order to do their job.

To be clear: management is a type of role, and leadership is a verb.   

What does this leadership verb involve?  Clarity.  Clarity of direction, of goals, of roles, of tasks, of feedback.  All of this requires knowledge and skill, both in terms of the business and in having the cognitive capability to create and communicate a future and to set it in motion.   This is how leadership really happens.

And this is what leadership does not involve –  Inspiration…Charisma…Motivation.  All of these are a fundamental insult to your people because they assume a) that people don’t want to work and b) they can be ‘won-over’ by gloss (and it’s also how good people end up doing bad things).

Clear purpose, clear goals to achieve it, clarity about what needs to be done, integrating everyone’s work into a whole, adding value to the work of the team…these are the sorts of actions that are real leadership.  And will see your people’s natural inspiration and motivation come out.

How to do all of this can be taught and learned.  And practiced.  Which means every manager can lead; a fundamental part of their job.

If they want to.