Manager or Leader?

What does management and leadership have in common?

It has been said that management is doing things right, while leadership is doing the right things. Stephen Covey has said that management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success, and leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

These thoughts are instructive and probably true, but it tends to convey that managers and leaders are two different individuals – or, at the very least, that they are two completely different ideas. My take is much simpler: any manager that is responsible for people is a leader…period. I just don’t see any way around that conclusion. Even a college text book on management will tell you that management consists of four distinct functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (nice word for a manager, don’t you think?). From that I conclude that one of the four functions of managing is leadership.

Let’s look at it another way. Author John Maxwell has said that “Leadership is influence” while management is often defined as the process of getting things done through other people. Doesn’t that definition sound like “influence”? I’m certain that getting something done through the actions of someone else would require some level of influence, even if that influence is derived strictly from positional authority.

Is this a semantical debate or is there something at stake in the discussion? I’m convinced that many managers have little sense of the need to think and act like leaders when they are placed into a managerial role. This – automatically, I think – handicaps their ability to be effective as leaders. Further, even if a manager has an awareness of his or her role in leading employees, very few managers receive any specific training in leading, or influencing, employees. In fact, few managers are promoted to that position because they are seen as having excellent people skills. Quite the contrary, many individuals are promoted to management because of their technical skills or knowledge!

Failing to understand the role of leadership in management creates a critical issue in employee engagement and retention. Example: 2 out of 3 managers are considered by employees to be poor leaders according to a 2005 Conference Board Report. Not surprisingly about 2 out of every 3 employees (71% actually, according to the Gallup Organization) are disengaged or “actively” disengaged, meaning that they are essentially disconnected and disinterested in the company’s objectives. An employee that is “actively disengaged” is actually working to undermine the efforts of your company undermining your company’s efforts, and accounts for a report 15% of employees (Gallup).

I suspect that these two data points are connected. If an employee thinks a manager is a poor leader, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to learn that the employee is also disengaged. Haven’t we all been on teams with poor leaders? And it doesn’t matter if it’s a sports team or a work team – poor leadership is demoralizing. Perhaps you recognize these warning signs that employees may be disengaged: low morale, sub-par performance, blaming others in the company for failures, high turnover, negative attitudes, and absenteeism.

Are any of these symptoms prevalent in your organization?