To Manage, and to Lead

I, like many of you here, struggle with recruiting talent. When I’m meeting candidates, one area that I keep thinking of is their ability to lead. When I share these thoughts with my colleagues and peers, saying that we don’t have enough leaders, I sometimes get comments like, “We have enough managers”, or, “We need more ICs”. We do have enough managers, but what we don’t have are enough leaders.

What do I mean when I say that? It’s normal to confuse management for leadership. We call managers leaders. We call boards of directors or the C-suite the company’s leadership. We expect new managers to show leadership. But really those two concepts, while linked, are quite different. To keep it simple: management is a corporate function, but leadership is a human behavior. I can make someone a manager by giving them the role, but I can’t “make” them a leader. Management is about reporting lines, and team outputs, and the “housekeeping” of a team. The specifics of the role are usually in the job description. And while good leadership helps make a good manager, it is not critical to it. And most importantly, you don’t need to be a manager to be a leader!

So what exactly is leadership? My favorite definition is this: leadership is about getting systems unstuck. With systems I mean interactions of people & processes trying to get things done. At work – and in life – we often find ourselves in situations where things are just not working, and leadership is identifying and taking the actions that could move things forward while bringing people and teams along the journey.

If we think of leadership in that sense, you’ll agree that leadership is an individual exercise. Anyone can practice leadership; no one needs to make you a manager for you to look around you and try to fix problems. Leadership also applies outside of work: when dealing with conflicts with neighbors, family issues, the irate traveler at the airport: what can you do to move things forward? Good leaders identify “stuckness,” how to “unstick” it, and take action.

The word “system” in the definition implies the inclusion of other people. While it’s good that an individual can solve their own problems, leadership comes into play when there are other people involved. And since leadership is not necessarily about management, you’ll find that effective leadership relies on communications and influence, to move others to help with getting things unstuck. Being right is not enough. Good leaders don’t force their opinions but bring others to consensus. Leaders can’t lead if no one wants to follow them.

As humans process information, our minds build models into which the information is slotted. This means that while we’re communicating and discussing, we tend to process and interpret based on our understanding, not necessarily on what the speaker meant. In practical terms, this will lead to mismatched expectations, and statements like “I thought you were supposed to do this”. A big part of leadership is making sure that the common understanding of a discussion is as clear as possible, to ensure everyone knows who needs to do what by when. Leaders understand ownership and hold themselves and others accountable.

We have a tendency to fall in love with our ideas, thinking them more valuable because they are “ours”. We might also link our value to them, that somehow having good ideas makes us good. But we also all make mistakes. Recognizing that we’ve made a mistake could be a great opportunity: it’s a chance for us to learn something new and grow. It could also be a hindrance: if we’ve come up with an idea that turns out to be mistaken, we might hold on to it even more tightly, refusing to acknowledge the mistake and digging our heels in. Leaders know better; they can admit their mistakes, are flexible with their thinking, adapting to new facts and opinions as they become clearer. In a deeper sense, leaders can separate their ideas from who they are. Leaders know mistakes will happen, and accept them in themselves and others, and recognize them as opportunities for learning.

In summary, leadership is about behaviors and actions we can all take. In contrast to management, you don’t need anyone’s permission to practice leadership. Leaders find ways to “unstick” systems in their everyday lives, and the lessons of leadership apply always everywhere. In fact, when I think about it, I find that the more leaders I hire, the fewer managers I need.

So what are your thoughts about this? What am I missing? Let's discuss!