Introduction
“Before a person can deliver what he should as a manager, he must first receive what he needs as an employee,” wrote Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter in their book, 12: The Elements of Great Managing (Gallup Press, 2006). This is a significant statement, and one few people fully comprehend or embrace. In simple terms, Wagner and Harter are pointing out that a great manager needs a great manager in order to be a great manager.
From my vantage point, I want to share an observation that is in alignment with the above statement. In order to be a great leader, you need to be both a great leader and a great manager yourself. On one level, my observation may seem like I am being the Oracle of the Obvious. However, many people in senior leadership positions do not grasp that being a great manager and being a great leader are two completely different skill sets. And when helping people become better leaders and better managers, we need to help them to master both skill sets. This is important and necessary.
Two Different Skill Sets
To comprehend the difference between management and leadership, I would first turn to the work of Joel Kurtzman in his book, Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve The Extraordinary (Jossey-Bass 2010). As he wrote, “Strategic leaders are people within organizations who plot the course... Strategic leaders generally can think far into the future...The best of these people understand where the future is going and how to get there.” Kurtzman then explained, “The role of operational leaders is quite different from those of strategic leaders. Operational leaders make certain the trains run on time, the manufacturing processes are adequate, the logistics systems work, the technicians are well trained, and the the trucks are where they are supposed to be.... like strategic leaders, operational leaders are vital to an organization’s success.”
Clearly, given what Kurtzman wrote, the mindset of a strategic leader is focused on where the trains need to go, i.e. old locations vs new locations. On the other hand, an operational leader, which is his term for a manager, is focused on making sure the day to day operations are efficient and timely. Operational leaders “make certain the trains run on time.”
Another difference between leaders and managers is very well defined by Marcus Buckingham in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success (Free Press, 2005). As he writes, “To excel as a manager you must never forget that each of your direct reports is unique and that your chief responsibility is not to eradicate this uniqueness, but rather to arrange roles, responsibilities, and expectations so that you can capitalize upon it. The more you perfect this skill, the more effectively you will turn talents into performance.”
Here, Buckingham notes that a manager, or operational leader as defined by Kurtzman, must build on the unique talents of each employee if they want to “make certain the trains run on time.” This strengths based approach to management is built on the premise that a manager’s role is to be a catalyst who speeds up the interaction between an employee’s talents and the company’s goals, plus between an employee’s talents and the customer’s needs.
With this in mind, Buckingham then goes on to define the role of a leader. As he explained, “To excel as a leader requires the opposite skill. You must become adept at calling upon those needs we all share. Our common needs include the need for security, for community, for authority, and for respect, but for you, the leader, the most powerful universal need is our need for clarity. To transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future, you must discipline yourself to describe our joint future vividly and precisely. As your skill at this grows, so will our confidence in you.”
While a manager focuses on building on strengths, a leader is focused on creating clarity at the individual level, the team level, and throughout the company. A leader is attempting to create a picture of the future that results in a plan that is “owned and understood by the people who have to execute it,” referencing back to the work of Belasco and Stayer in their seminal work called Flight of the Buffalo: Soaring To Excellence, Learning to Let Employees Lead (Time Warner, 1994). Buckingham, for his part, is focused on creating a strategic understanding that can then be translated by a manager who is attempting to capitalize on the uniqueness of each employee. Again, both skill sets are critically important to helping someone become a better leader and a better manager.
Everything Is Situational
With the difference skill sets in mind, we need to remember that a leader or a manager does not operate in a vacuum. Leadership and management is always situational. The key is to clearly define the situation that is taking place, and then choose which is the right skill set to utilize.
To help achieve this outcome, Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey in 1969 developed Situational Leadership Theory. They believed there was no “one size first all” leadership style. Instead Blanchard and Hersey advocated for adapting your leadership style to each situation or task in order to meet the needs of the team or team members.
In it’s simplest form, Situational Leadership Theory is a relationship-oriented type of leadership focused on improving the readiness and the ability of the followers. It is seen as a flexible approach based on four different styles of leadership. The first style is telling, directing, or guiding. The second style is selling, coaching, or explaining. The third style is participating, facilitating, or collaborating. The fourth style is delegating, empowering, or monitoring. The outcome of matching the right style with the right situation is that the leader is able to gain the followers’ trust, and help them work better as a team or individual.
The first step to becoming a better leader would be to learn more about the four different styles. And this is a necessary course of action that many leaders need to take. But, from my experience, there is a parallel track to this level of training and development. On this other track, the first step to becoming a better leader is to improve your ability, individually and collectively, to set goals. As we all know, goals are constantly influencing the course of action that people and teams are taking each and every day at work. Poorly created goals often create poor performance, and generate many problems at the operational and strategic levels within the company.
Now, the standard way of creating goals is to make sure that all goals are SMART goals, namely specific, measurable, action oriented, realistic, and time based. But this choice is focused on the outcome of the goal setting process, and does not always recognize the importance of the actual goal setting process. From my experience, the process of goal setting impacts the capacity of the people to execute the goal more than the actual goal being a SMART goal. While I value all goals being a SMART goal, I want the goal to be owned and understood by all who have to do the work. This changes the depth of commitment and collaboration that happens post goal setting.
Furthermore, what the best leaders understand is that all goal setting and the resulting action are influenced by past goals and past experiences of goal setting. In essence, past is prologue. And if the past goal setting was dysfunctional or dictatorial in the creation process, then the ability to develop new goals will be challenging. It will then take a combination of great leadership and great management to be successful, because the creation and execution of a new goal or goals are always relationship-centric.
The second step to becoming a better leader is to improve your capacity for situational awareness. Historically, most leaders do this by diagnosing the competence and commitment of each of their direct reports or their team to meet the goals that have been set. Then, they focus on the competence and commitment of all involved in executing the previously mentioned goals. And I agree, this is an important part of situational awareness.
However, the above framework is mostly focused on internal day to day situations at the operational level. The best leaders I have meet can do this, but they also have situational awareness at the strategic level. And, I believe, the best way to create situational awareness at the strategic level is to embrace a key concept that Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen wrote about in their book, Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (HarperCollins, 2011). The concept is called “zooming out before zooming in.” This course of action begins by zooming out to see the bigger picture of what is happening outside the company. Here, a leader senses any changes in market conditions. In particular, they try to sense and identify what is happening. Then, they attempt to frame it up, and name it before mobilizing and aligning people into action.
Initially, most leaders only focus on seeing the big picture. But Collins and Hanson note that great leaders seek an understanding how the big picture is changing, and what changes in the “environment” are causing these changes to take place. Once they have done this, these same leaders assess the time frame and ask an important question: “How much time before the risk profile changes?” They assess with rigor to determine the time element, and the risk profile.
Next, they ask themselves a second set of important questions: “Do the new conditions call for disrupting plans? If so, how?” This generates strategic situational awareness and is a key to being a strategic leader. Once they have completed this in-depth zoom out process, then they zoom in and focus on the execution of goals and objectives, namely the world of operational leaders or managers, which ever term you prefer to use. For it is the combination of internal and external situational awareness plus the application of Situational Leadership Theory that helps all involved become better leaders.
To be continued on Tuesday.
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