Lead don’t manage

Leaders often say they want to lead rather than manage. Yes, they want to inspire others to achieve a bold vision and roll up their sleeves and work shoulder to shoulder with the troops. But they are too busy catching up on email, participating in meetings, delivering to customers and preparing documents.

The Centre for Management and Organisational Effectiveness found that the average leader spends two hours and twenty-five minutes emailing or texting a day and over two and a half hours on conference calls or in meetings. But that's not the only time vacuum. Many leaders admit to some form of micro-management. They've been checking the work of others and re-doing it themselves. If they didn't have to do that, they would have more time to lead.

If the leadership-management distinction is confusing, think of it like this. Management is keeping the bus clean, filled with fuel and the tyres pumped up. Leadership is getting the right people on the bus and inspiring them to drive somewhere worthwhile. Micromanagement is checking the spelling on the number plate one last time in case someone important pulls up behind you.

Not everyone believes in the distinction between leadership and management. Leadership, they say, is composed of both management and leadership in equal proportions. However, more realistically, most leaders know they are managing much more than they are leading. And they’d like to help and inspire others to achieve better outcomes. But why don’t they?

Recently I asked several leaders what core beliefs and values were driving their decision to manage rather than lead. One leader, an exemplar of the many, shared that they felt they were the only person that could do the job to the appropriate standard. That belief was leading them too take control of many tasks and becoming exhausted. It was an excellent insight and one that is frequently behind the unconscious decision to manage rather than lead. 

Leaders are not always conscious of their fundamental beliefs about the capability of their people. It is these beliefs that contribute to a leader's thoughts which inform their actions, which informs their results, which confirm their beliefs. This is a well documented cycle of behavioural reinforcement which identifies how critical beliefs and values are to effective leadership. Helping a leader become aware of the way their beliefs about people reinforce their results is vital, especially if leaders want to lead rather than manage.

Leaders don't just do things differently to managers. They seem to have a different beliefs about their coworkers capability. If you want to lead people well, you have to believe wholeheartedly in the capacity and capability of other humans to learn and execute tasks to a high standard. Yes, it might take training, coaching and mentoring to develop them. But believing in others is a precondition of effective leadership. Otherwise, you will end up doing everything yourself. To avoid that, it is useful to "go slow to go fast" . Spend more time developing people rather than correcting them. The more you develop them, the less you need to correct them.

In contexts where I see more leadership than management, conversations sound different. Jenny is great, she's done such a wonderful job on the website, says the leader. Without Dave, we wouldn't have that program. He's brilliant. The leader is always celebrating the capability of their people and stressing their own irrelevance. I’m so lucky to have found this place. I could go home and it would run like clockwork. Typically these leaders not only have faith in their team members, but they have also spent their time building the capacity of their people to be effective. If, as a leader, you feel the place is humming, and maybe you are surplus to requirements, there’s a good chance you are leading more than you are managing.

If you want to lead more than you manage, start by reflecting on your core beliefs about your people and their potential. If you believe in their capacity to grow and develop, and you are willing to connect, invest and inspire them, you too will lead a place where you’ll live the dream of being surplus to requirements.

 References

Northouse, P. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angelos, SAGE.

Senior, B & Swailes, S. (2016). Organisational Change. Harlow, Pearson.

The Centre for Management and Organisational Effectiveness. (2021). How Leaders Spend Their Time. https://cmoe.com/blog/how-leaders-spend-their-time