Notes on Leadership

I refreshed on a book on elements of leadership: "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" (1991 with later editions) by John Maxwell.

While less cited these days, Maxwell was at the forefront of the dicussion in the '80s, '90s and 00's leading corporate and church related programs.

He was originally an ordained minister and left leading individual congregations because he felt he could reach more people on a broader basis as a writer and speaker.

He has not stopped. He continues to publish and released a book last year, "The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication."

His core values related to leaderhship hold up 30 years later, but you can review the points and put in you own vote: Linked is a PDF summary of the book

Being a leader vs. managing are not mutually exclusive, of course, but how they are applied within the definition of roles need to be clear.

Some of the key aspects of leadership, from Maxwell's points and in general are:

1) Setting the vision and direction

2) Influencing those to follow

This comes in many ways as aspects of points in his book, but fundamental are:

• Leading by example
• Setting the standard
• Defining the overarching objective (Simon Sinek's "Why are we here?") and other elements to set the culture of a company (or group but I focus here more in the context of business)

3) Overall responsibility for prioritizing and gathering resources needed to execute and support objectives within the overall mission

?A leader has to have followers who trust him/her. That is addressed from the book "Speed of Trust" by Stephen M.L. Covey in a post: Trust and the Leadership Gap

Also, I wrote a post on the difference between management and leadership as defined by of John Kotter of Harvard, author of more than 25 books.

A manager can be a leader at their team level, but do not have the larger overall leadership responsibility of the owner/CEO or core C-level team members when speaking in terms of an organization. A lot depends on organizational scale.

A manager has more day-to-day responsibility, as noted by Kotter, mostly executing on an operational basis.

A manager acts to advocate up the ladder to secure resources and support as needed. That is both a job function and has an element of leadership like #3 above, but on a smaller or more limited scale and control.

Seth Godin has his take of the differences:

Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper.

Leaders, on the other hand, know where they’d like to go, but understand that they can’t get there without their tribe, without giving those they lead the tools to make something happen.

Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.

We need both. But we have to be careful not to confuse them. And it helps to remember that leaders are scarce and thus more valuable.

Godin expands the discussion as noted in this article. He relates how leadership and management interplay to address goals, challenges and innovations to succeed.

I hope this adds some perspective to how you think and operate within your own role and organization.

About me

I have been a career sales professional in B2B sales. This has included managing my own territories, selling jointly with others and managing sales teams.

My career started in Seattle with the Puget Sound Business Journal, but a significant portion of my professional time was in California, split between Los Angeles and Orange County, before a return to Seattle.

Also

I am owner and community manager for the LinkedIn group?Seattle Sales, Marketing and Advertising Professionals, which has 4900+ members: (4) Seattle Sales, Marketing & Advertising Professionals | Groups | LinkedIn

Also one of the first million members of LinkedIn (2004). I have been an active blogger on the platform since 2014, when the option was first offered.