Leaders versus managers? Or synergy?

There are about a zillion ways different experts define the difference between leaders and managers.

Personally I like the approach Marcus Buckingham takes in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know...

Great leaders rally people to a better future.

Great managers discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.

And in a broadcast e-mail I just got from Buckingham this morning, he says....

"While there are as many styles of management as there are managers, there is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest. They discover what is unique about each person and then they make the most of it...

"This is exactly the opposite of what great leaders do. Great leaders discover what is universal and capitalize on it. A leader's job is to rally people toward a better future. He can succeed in this only when he can cut through the differences of race, sex, age, nationality, and personality and, using stories and celebrating heroes, tap into those very few needs we all share.

"The job of a manager, on the other hand, is to turn one person's particular talent into a performance. A manager will succeed only when he can identify and deploy the difference among people, challenging each employee to excel in his own way. This doesn't mean a leader can't be a manager or vice versa. But to excel at one or both, you must be aware of the very different skills each role requires."

One thing I appreciate about Buckingham is that he honors the value of both leaders and managers equally. I've read books where it's clear who the author believes has higher status. It's like leaders are the stars and managers are the housewives of the organization. Which I think is a terrible prejudice to promote and for social change organizations would be disastrous to internalize.

So let's look at the difference between the two in the context of social change.

First, I like to think of leadership as being one thing that has two phases:

The leader phase, and

The manager phase.

So I consider managers to be an essential, indispensable part of the leadership system of the organization.

Here's an analogy from physics. Light resonates back and forth between two phases: waves and particles. Which is called the wave-particle duality.

In social change nonprofits I think we need to operate by the leader-manager duality. And  I think the most important part of these two functions is...

The interface between them.

And why? Because social change happens when we build relationships to build teams to build coalitions to build movements so we can change in fundamental ways how power works. This is one process.

If we simply say that leaders work with groups and managers work with individuals, then we have this problem...

How do we get from the individual to the group?

Which is the key question of organizing. How do we start with people one-on-one and create larger and larger groups until we have the power to make the change we want?

I think we need leaders and managers to work in deep partnership. Indeed, in the best social change organizations...

The manager, in order to develop the strengths of the individual, is always paying big attention to that person's core needs in order to stay tapped into their deepest motivations. And they help the individual develop their strengths in such a way that they can become a happy, contributing, valued member of the team.

A leader offers the vision, but needs to be thinking all the time about the path the particular individuals she's rallying will follow as they grow into that vision.

So managers need to be leader-savvy and leaders need to be manager-savvy, because there's a crucial overlap between them.

Both need to work together, within one coherent system, understanding exactly how each supports the other.

And one more thing. In so many nonprofits we don't have the luxury of an exclusive division of labor between managers and leaders. The same person often does both. And yes, it's good for them to understand the difference between those two functions...

But it's even more important to understand the coherence.

Because we don't want our leader-managers to turn into split personalities!

 

© 2011 Rich Snowdon