Management is not Leadership

If you’ve been reading my newsletter over the last few months, you know that I believe we have a fundamental misunderstanding about leadership in this country. We think it’s about title, position, or power – who has the fanciest office or the biggest parking spot or the most direct reports.

But in fact, leadership is not about any of those things. Leadership is about challenging the status quo and changing the order of things for the better.

Everyone has the potential to be a leader, but not everyone leads.

Why is that? Because the status quo is powerful. People are so often afraid of change; they’re afraid of losing something they have; of trying something new; of saying something that might get them into trouble; of looking dumb, failing, or making a mistake. They’re often very afraid of being criticized.

Because of this fear, a lot of people get stuck and become managers, not leaders. Managers work within the status quo. Leaders challenge the status quo. They do things differently and they make things better. If you challenge the status quo, you are going to be criticized. If you’ve never been criticized, you might be managing instead of leading.

The price of leadership is criticism; the payoff is solving problems.

That does not mean that managers are bad people. In fact, there are many excellent managers and, in many cases, they are very necessary. But managers do the best they can within existing constraints and conditions. Excellent managers produce excellent results within existing constraints and conditions. But leaders change constraints and conditions. They don’t accept the way things are.

They don’t accept: “This is the way we’ve always done it,” or: “It’s too hard. It’s too different.”

The truth is that fear keeps a lot of people from leading and causes a lot of people to stay where they are and manage within the status quo.

This week, I invite you to reflect: are you a manager or a leader? Are you operating within the constraints of “how thing have always been done” – or are you asking questions, standing up, and taking action to challenge the status quo?