Friday 24 February 2012

Five Great Management and Leadership Blogs

Over the last week, I have read many great blogs on leadership and management.  Here is a selection of ones that particularly caught my eye.

Conquering a Leadership Paradox by Kevin Eikenberry

When someone is promoted to a management position, it is likely this isn’t as a full-time manager/leader, regardless of what the job description says.  They still have other work to do too. It is likely these responsibilities are more closely connected to the individual’s past comfort level and expertise (using the skills that got them the promotion in the first place).


The Russians have a saying: “With lies you may get ahead in the world – but you can never go back,”  What liars are not aware of is that using deceit to “make it” is the easy part; it’s staying on top that is hard, and enjoying one’s success, long-term, is hardest of all.

Counterfeit Leadership by Frank Sonnenberg

How do you spot a counterfeit leader? These are the individuals who spend much of their time playing politics, protecting their turf, and promoting their self-interests instead of addressing difficult issues, making tough decisions, and introducing the change that’s required to achieve long-term success.

Nine Reasons Managers Struggle by Michael McKinney

Former CEO and president of Verizon Wireless, Denny Strigl explores nine specific behaviours that leaders do and don’t do that make them serious performers, marginal performers, or failures.

The Joy of Leadership by Jon Mertz

If you are leading in a way consistent with your values system, then the expression of this consistency will shine through in your interactions and actions with others.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Monday 20 February 2012

Management clichés: management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things

Like most clichés, Peter Drucker’s much quoted distinction between management and leadership, has lost its original impact and to some extent meaning through repetition and being taken out of context.  In a recent interview in the New York Times, a successful entrepreneur and former senior executive at Dell, Microsoft and Apple described Drucker’s aphorism in a somewhat alarming way.  Admitting that he thought he was a lousy manager but a pretty good leader, he depicted management as ‘dotting the Is, crossing the Ts, giving reviews, doing all the HR stuff’, while leadership requires understanding of the broader context, which may lead to decisions contrary to company policy.  

This seems to be a rather impoverished view of what management is about, reducing it to little more than administering company policies and procedures.  Is that really what organisations expect and need from their managers?

Over the years, much has been written about the differences between leadership and management, resulting in a proliferation of conflicting opinions and models.  Leadership has perhaps become associated with high-status activities to do with strategy, change and innovation, while management is seen to be much more mundane, concerned with operational implementation issues.  While having a distinction may be useful in that it promotes greater understanding of the range of perspectives needed to run an organisation successfully, the problem arises when people try to separate leadership and management into distinct activities undertaken by completely different people.   

Management involves much more than just administering company policies; to use another of Drucker’s observations, “management’s concern and management’s responsibility are everything that affects the performance of the institution”.  In order to help the organisation achieve its strategic goals, managers must have an in-depth understanding of the broader context, and possess the ability to challenge existing ways of doing things.  So although management includes ‘doing all the HR stuff’, this is far from blindly following company policy and ensuring compliance.  It involves considerable leadership skill to motivate, inspire and engage people, which may occasionally mean using judgement to weigh up the risks involved in acting contrary to policy. 

So although it is clear that being a manager requires the use of leadership skills, can a leader be effective without management ability?  Some leaders may concentrate on creating and communicating the vision, while the interpretation and implementation of this, together with the day-to-day management of the organisation, is largely delegated to others.  The way these leaders manage their direct reports may be fundamentally intuitive rather than based on following set procedures.  This approach relies heavily on trust and respect for management, for without these there is a risk that the vision will never be realised and management will be forced into a Cinderella role, while leadership plays the Ugly Sister, full of self-importance and frankly rather ridiculous in its lack of understanding of the practicalities of life. 

Where effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right) are both required for success, so are leadership and management, and in most cases, these cannot be divided into completely separate roles undertaken by separate people.   

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Wednesday 8 February 2012

A passion for management

In the past, when children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, traditional responses would include becoming a doctor, train driver, pilot and even explorer or astronaut.  Our present fascination with celebrity has possibly moved the emphasis more onto becoming famous, whether as a pop-star, actor or perhaps just for being famous. 

In any decade though, it is unlikely that manager would have been any child’s career of choice.  Being a manager is something few aspire towards; it is something people become while doing something else.  Scores of dedicated nurses, enthusiastic IT boffins and successful salespeople take on management responsibility, not because they are passionate about the challenges it offers, but as a way of earning more and progressing their careers.  For others, being a manager is seen as a stepping-stone on the path to greatness – the dues you have to pay if you want to become a senior executive with all the power and perceived glamour that entails. 

Having taken a step onto the management ladder, people often find it is not always a comfortable experience.  They spend less time doing what they love, and more time being caught in the middle of the organisation, blamed by both those above and those below for all its ills. According to research by the Hay Group, many company directors in the UK believe middle management to be the single greatest barrier to achieving company objectives, while dissatisfaction with a manager is a major factor in employees looking for a new job.

Given all of this, it would understandable if people were less than passionate about being a manager; and yet passion is exactly what managers need if they want to succeed.  It takes passion to motivate, engage and get the best out of people, and a passion for success and delivering the organisation’s strategic goals is what senior executives need from their managers.  

It is difficult to be passionate about something if your focus is elsewhere.  Many managers see the people management aspects of their role as interruptions that get in the way of their real work, be that caring for patients, solving some technical problem or closing a sale with a new customer.  Similarly, understanding the wider context of what is happening in the organisation sometimes seems like a distraction that has little to do with the day job. 

Turning irritation into passion takes effort; it starts with paying attention to what’s happening around you and instead of looking for quick fixes, getting curious about what’s creating the problems in the first place.  Curiosity sparks interest, and from here genuine passion can be ignited.  Passionate managers are rare, but hugely influential.  Although being a manager may not have been your first career choice, becoming a passionate one is something to aspire towards.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk