Understanding The Difference Between Management and Leadership

Understanding the Difference Between Management and Leadership
by Michael Maccoby
Research Technology Management; Volume 43. No. 1. January-February,
2000. pp 57-59.
According to the current wisdom, managers are principally administratorsthey
write business plans, set budgets and monitor progress. Leaders on the other hand,
get organizations and people to change. That's true, as far as it goes, but there is a
more useful distinction between management and leadership: Management is a
function that must be exercised in any business, leadership is a relationship between
leader and led that can energize an organization.
Of course, the management function can include problem solving and facilitating
meetings as well as the traditional bureaucratic tasks. However, it is not necessary
for the same person in a group to exercise all these tasks. Different people can take
on parts of the management function. Someone on a team can do the planning.
Another person can do the budgeting. A third teammember can monitor quality.
Members of a team can take turns facilitating meetings. The team as a whole can
share responsibility for meeting performance targets. In other words, you don't need
managers to produce good management.
I have seen a number of cases in which teams have been able to determine for
themselves which management tasks they wish to perform as a group, which ones
individual team members wish to take on, and which they will delegate to a
manager.
If you gave this choice to members of a technical staff, they might decide they
wanted a manager to take care of the bureaucratic stuff so they could remain free to
do more interesting work like science!. Typically, technical staff, like professionals
in other fields, don't like to evaluate or discipline colleagues. They would rather hire
a manager to do that kind of dirty work.
However, at the GE/Durham plant that assembles engines for the Boeing 777, there
are 170 employees and only one manager, according to Fast Company (Oct. 1999).
There are nine teams, each with only one directive: the day their next engine must
be loaded. Teams decide who does which work; they schedule training, vacations
and overtime; and they deal with teammates' issues of productivity or lack of work
ethic. But this is seldom a problem. Although there are no incentives other than
promotion on the basis of skills, technicians are motivated by the work itself, the
drive for perfection and pride in supplying one fo the highest-thrust engines in the
industry. Teams also send members to a work council that deals with issues such as
supplier problems, computer systems and human resource issues, and the like.
And what is the managers job? Listening, informing, focussing the teams on costs
(during the past 5 years, costs were cut 10 percent per year), and representing the
factory to the customer and within GE.
Perceptions of Management
The Dilbert comic strip reminds us that in an age where the young may know more
than their elders, technical staff may view managers as people who don't understand
technology and who make life difficult for them with demands that make little sense.
Perhaps technical teams with Dilbertian managers would be fed up enough to take
over the management function.
The manager in the Dilbert strip is a leader only in the sense that members of the
technical staff are forced to follow his directions. Of course, ideally a manager is also
a leader that people want to follow. In that case, there can be a relationship that
strengthens a group and focuses it on meaningful work. The questions we should ask
about a business leader who has a following are:
Why do people follow this leader?

What should the leader do to make teams and organizations successful?
Here are some answers:

People follow a leader either out of fear or for a mix of positive reasons such as hope
of success, trust in the leader, excitement about a project or mission, or the
opportunity to stretch oneself to the limit. In this regard, Russell L. Ackoff conceives
of a transformational leader as creating an aesthetic vision which inspires people
with an ideal of what can be achieved. Warren Bennis describes leaders who make
people feel they are the best and can achieve whatever they can imagine.
Leaders can also be dangerous, however, especially charismatic Pied Pipers who
seduce people into disastrous adventures. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the
difference between a Steve Jobs who promises that the team can be insanely great
and a demagogue who turns out to be greatly insane.
Management vs. Leadership
A Function
A Relationship
Planning
Selecting talent
Budgeting
Motivating
Evaluating
Coaching
Facilitating
Building Trust
Good Leaders
We need to recognize that there are two kinds of leaders: strategic and operational.
The first priority of a strategic leader is to envisage the companys future and to
invest the resources necessary to create it. Operational leaders have the job of
implementing the vision.
However, there are four things that both strategic and operational leaders can do to
make teams and organizations successful. They are: selecting talent, motivating
people, coaching, and building trust.
In Organizing Genius (Addison-Wesley, 1997) Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman

point out that leaders of great teams pick talent on the basis of excellence and ability
to work with others. Good leaders are not afraid to hire people who know more than
they do. Jack Welch has said that his biggest accomplishment has been finding great
people.
In Why Work? (Second edition, Miles River Press, 1995), I suggest thinking about
motivation in terms of four Rs: responsibilities, rewards, relationships, and reasons.
A leader should design responsibilities that engage a persons competence and
values. Responsibilities are motivating when they stretch people and are meaningful
to them. Responsibilities can engage such intrinsic motivations as exercising ones
abilities, creating something new, helping others and providing value to customers.
Which of these meanings is most motivating depends on an individual's personality.
The combination of intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards and recognition can
produce highly motivated people. Of course, incentives, rewards and recognition
should reinforce the kind of behavior needed for the team's success. If you want
people to cooperate, you need to reward and recognize successful cooperation.
A good leader also strengthens motivation and develops competence through
coaching. In particular, he or she knows how to keep people focussed, recognizing
that unless technical staff keep their eyes on priority goals, they will tend to drift into
paths that are attractive to them, but not essential for the business.
Good leaders also fire up people by convincing them that their job is vital for the
business to succeed. On one hand, people quickly turn off when they feel their work
is unnecessary. On the other, they feel motivated even doing simple repetitive work
when it is meaningful, like stuffing envelopes for a cause they deeply support.
Developing Trust
Finally, good leaders develop trust by walking the talk, doing what they preach.
Unfortunately, it is not always possible to keep promises in todays unpredictable
business environment. The market changes, new competitors upset plans,
technological breakthroughs force rethinking strategy. It is not surprising that
organizational surveys typically show a large gap in trust for todays leaders.
In this turbulent climate, leaders can increase trust by promoting transparency and
involvement. Transparency means clarifying reasons for decisions, and being open
about compensation policy, business results and market information. Professional
knowledge workers want to know what the leader knows about what is coming down
the road. They also want a say in decisions they are expected to implement. They
want to be sure their views are heard and taken into account. Even when they are
disappointed by the decisions, knowing they have been heard increases trust,
especially when the reasons are explained.
To summarize, companies need good management and great leaders, and efficient
function and energizing relationships. Bureaucracies are typically overmanaged and
underled, resulting in bored, unmotivated employees. Start-ups are often intensely
led and undermanaged, so that enthusiasm leads to unplanned problems,
overspending and missed deadlines.
3
There are many different ways to exercise the management function and people are
willing to follow different leadership styles. Although there are many good examples
of management and leadership, there is no one best way. You can get good ideas
from observing successful companies, but you need to design your own management
function by involving teammembers, and developing your own way of inspiring
people to follow you.

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Why do people follow this leader?

Here are some answers:

In Organizing Genius (Addison-Wesley, 1997) Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman

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