As we noted yesterday, there is much made of the putative distinction between leadership and management. Moreover, this assertion is inevitably paired with the proud presumption that leadership is also superior to management.
This argument is sufficiently pretentious to be objectionable in and of itself. Concealing a deficit of substance with a surfeit of powerfully articulate rhetoric, it has created a most undignified and unhelpful stampede of people eager to join this ill-defined – and thus peculiarly unimpeachable – class of superior being.
If we can be made to stipulate that leadership is indeed an inherently – even incompatibly – different function than management, why, I think it is fair to ask, must we also be pressed to accept that it and the “leaders” who engage in it are superior? What value does that belief add to the proposition? What extra effectiveness does it impart to the expression of leadership in our organizations?
Questions like those seem to be troublesome enough, with plenty of grist for milling more. But here’s an additional one about the presentation of this claim that just seems to me to be a real puzzler: Why does the modern leadership movement find it necessary to add what can only be characterized as the gratuitously obnoxious addendum that managers are uniquely substandard beings in comparison?
Where’s the leadership in that affront? Where’s the unifying vision, the clarion communication of shared values and sacrifice, the ineffable propensity to attract energized followers?
The classic way of posing this pointless defamation is to suggest that managers are indeed expert at how to climb ladders, but it takes transcendently insightful leaders to know where to place those ladders.
Honestly now, does that sound right to you? Do you know managers who mindlessly do what they are told, building plans with intermediate phases and landmarks to accomplish goals without any comprehension, curiosity, or opinion regarding the larger organizational purpose those goals are intended to serve?
Do you know of managers who would (other than in a vindictively oppressive environment (who creates those?)), submit to working in the dark like that? Do you know any competent managers who, in order to ensure that they are doing their work right, or even to be able to recommend a better way to do it, would fail to ask what aim it is intended to further?
On the other hand, do you know of “leaders” whose sole function seems to be to exhibit one or another of the so-called leadership functions – and nothing else? Do they provide vision, communicate purpose, build teams, and the like – every day? Do they merely arrange the big arrow, and then leave it entirely to the management drones to make all the little arrows line up appropriately?
Or, do you see the same people exhibiting both leadership and management – not just when one or the other is called for, but specifically in order to express both appropriately and effectively? If that is so, does it not suggest that they are not separate, but rather that they partake one of the other? And if that is the case, what then does it mean to refer to them separately, or to those who engage in them as distinct beings – and, moreover, to do so in an antagonistic way that simultaneously elevates one and deprecates the other?
We’ll look at this question, a key element of our current discussion, from yet another angle tomorrow. Please do stop in!
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Today’s tip: On the other hand, if you really want to be a leader, it appears that there are some pretty valuable perks that come with it. You might wish to spend vast sums on “elite” executive MBA training to learn to be an “international leader.” What sets these programs apart? How about “fireside discussions,” poetry sessions, and even scheduled reflection time? Grab your box of warm milk off the radiator and see this WSJ piece about how intense it can get at the top. If it’s too much to take in all at once, just nap on it.
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