Leadership vs. Management
The debate continues!
by Robert J Re
It has been ten years since the Karpin Committee released its much-heralded Karpin Report—the report of the Industry Task Force on Management Reform in Australia. The committee spent its A$3million budget, published 27 reports and made 28 recommendations. The report emphasized the urgent need to upgrade the skills of Australian leadership and management.
While there has been an increase in the discussion and the rhetoric concerning leadership and management competencies the jury is still out as far as evidence pointing to any major improvement in leadership and management is concerned. At the same time the debate continues as to the difference between leadership and management. This article focuses on
why that debate is so important.
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Here we will look at the terms and try to make some distinctions between leadership and management. Close to one thousand managers throughout Australia and New Zealand have participated in one particular eight-dayaccredited leadership and management program.
As part of the pre-work required by managers undertaking the eight-day program, participants are asked to list all their activities for the week before the course in the areas of:
• Leading (what they do as a leader)
• Managing (what they do as a manager)
• Operating (what they do as an operator /technician).
When participants understand these three distinct roles they are often surprised by the spread of activities, which, on average, looks like this:
• Leader 0–10%
• Manager 30–40%
• Operator/technician 60% plus
Leading: The essence of leadership is concerned with creating the conditions that encourage others to follow. Specifically, creating:
• A shared understanding of the environment
• A shared vision of where we are going
• A shared set of organisational values
• A shared feeling of power.
Key words: vision, direction, values, empower.
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Managing: While the leadership function is ‘big picture’ the management function has a narrower focus. Leavitt neatly described leadership, as ‘pathfinding’ while management was ‘pathminding’.
Management is situational and involves:
• getting things done (task focus)
• through people (relationship focus)
Key words: plan, organise, control (ask) and/or encourage, develop, people (relationship). Operating: Operating involves performing operator/technician functions that do not fall within the role of either leading or managing.
Key words: do, measure, advise.
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Interestingly the spread of time spent in each of the three roles does not appear to alter noticeably whether the course participants are first line managers, middle managers or senior
managers.
The relatively tiny amount of time being spent by managers in leadership activities, quite often nil in many cases, raises two critical questions:
1. Why is leadership so important?
2. Why do so few managers seemingly display good leadership?
There is enough evidence, almost impossible to refute, that ‘transformational’ or ‘enlightened leadership’, together with the application of effective management styles and techniques will bring about, clear, specific and measurable organisational improvement.
Every survey, research, and study, from the Australian Business Leader Survey (ABSL) of 2001, the Leadership Employment and Direction Research (LEAD 2000), Built To Last studies, Good to Great studies and the First XI research by Mt. Eliza Business School all point to the same results, which tell us that there really is a direct correlation between good leadership and overall organisational effectiveness. In these times of great change, leadership application takes on even more significance.
The need for “pathfinding” has never been greater considering the turbulence our workplaces are experiencing and will continue to experience. Also history tells us that it is leadership that enables organisations to endure over time. Note the conclusions drawn by Charles Handy after extensive research conducted on organisations, which have lasted for over a century. Why do so few managers seemingly display good leadership?
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At the macro level I feel that the leadership development agenda has been largely swamped by the bureaucratic and mostly ineffectual ‘competency based’ training movement, which has spawned a plethora of certification, red tape and ‘accreditation’ of both the courses and the providers. None of this has changed what has always been the case—there were good and bad courses delivered before 1995 and there are good and bad courses being delivered now.
This is not the first time improvement efforts have been hijacked by earnest people.
For example, the Quality Accreditation Movement, Australian Standards, ISO, almost totally took over and overwhelmed the Quality Improvement Movement, TQC, TQM, SPC, and so on, of the preceding years. Hijacking of movements is alive and well in the business world as it is in other forms of society.
At the organisational level, the reasons for little or no improvement in leadership would appear to be even more compelling. Here is what I believe to be the reasons people in responsible positions don’t always display good leadership skills. Managers do not know what to do
A number of managers simply don’t know what to do in the area of leadership. Many participants have been promoted into their positions and the organisation’s obligation to provide them with relevant leadership skills is often an afterthought. (Many job descriptions don’t even mention the leadership aspects of the job).
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Managers do not know how to do it
There are managers, often possessing university or other post secondary qualifications, who might know what to do in the leadership arena, but don’t know how to do it. Some of the worst people managers I have seen have MBA’s. Understanding Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily give managers the skills for communicating effectively and for creating the four conditions described in this article, which is what they really need to be effective leaders.
Lack of organisational support for good leadership
Most importantly, there is usually no system in place that recognises, reinforces, supports or rewards application of good leadership techniques. While we have KPI’s and other measures for just about everything else in the workplace there are still only a few enlightened organisations that have developed relevant leadership models that emphasise not only what has to be achieved, but also how managers should behave in achieving their own output, or their team’s outputs. Only a relatively small number of organisations I have observed in more than 28 years of HR management and consultancy use a performance management system to measure and reward effective leadership. (I know the good ones do, but I believe they are in the minority).
People do what they are rewarded for doing and the performance management system, properly applied, is the most effective way of institutionalising good leadership. And, of course, it must start at the very top of the organisation and work its way through the whole system.
The following example highlights this point.
The challenge is for organisations to support the application of leadership skills back in the workplace (The goldfish bowl). Now for the good news!
People at all levels in organisations know that both good leadership and good management are needed in order for that organisation to succeed. When either enlightened leadership or effective management is absent the organisation and the people will surely suffer.
The really good news is that both leadership and management skills can be learnt. Daniel Goleman of Emotional Intelligence fame assures us that all of the competencies of emotional intelligence can be acquired by leaders and managers. As can most other leadership and management competencies
My own experiences with hundreds of participants of the 8-day Leadership At Work Program shows how participants can, and do, show measurable improvements in their leadership and management as measured by their team members, peers and bosses.
What managers really need are simply:
• Practical tools and techniques, immediately applicable to their workplace, to help them improve in their leadership and management abilities
• A system, which constantly measures, supports, reinforces and rewards the application of these tools and techniques.
While this is really no more than common sense the question is—‘Is it common practice?’
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