Why your business needs leaders AND managers
/One question I get asked a lot is whether leaders also need to be good managers in order for a business to succeed.
The answer is that whilst every leader needs some degree of management skill and every manager needs to have some degree of leadership skill, the two roles are different – and both are needed in order to achieve success.
In fact, it’s very rare for good leaders to also be good managers, and vice versa. I meet a lot of people who mistakenly believe they have to be able to fulfil both roles to be effective in their role, whereas it’s often more effective to excel in one and ensure there are people in your business who excel at the other.
Understanding your own strengths and being self-aware enough to know when you need people with different skills to complement your work is actually a more valuable characteristic than being able to wear two hats at the same time.
But success starts with being able to know the difference between leadership and management.
Defining Leaders and Managers
Look online and you’ll find all sorts of different quotes and soundbites that attempt to define what management and leadership look like. There are many that accurately identify much of the core of each role, and there are others that seem to miss the point completely (and devalue the management role in the process).
Management and leadership cannot be effective on their own. Each needs the other, and to begin to grasp the basic definition of each it’s perhaps more useful to look at the function of the roles, rather than the people who occupy them.
Broadly speaking (and remember, I said there is no single definition that’s inarguably right!), leadership is about vision, ambition, and concept. Leaders tend to set the direction of an organisation, creating a vision and a purpose behind which everyone can align.
At point of concept, leaders may have no idea how to get the organisation to its intended destination, never mind whether the journey is even possible. And that’s where good managers come into their own.
Managers tend to be the implementers and goal setters, filtering the vision and ambition into practical, deliverable, and achievable goal-focused actions.
Some people like to interpret this as ‘right brain, left brain’, with leaders cast as ‘right brain’ creatives and managers cast as ‘left brain’ do-ers. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but it probably captures the essence of the principle.
Both roles have equal value, because without effective and planned implementation, concepts are meaningless.
Control of resources – including those of the human variety – and ensuring any processes are planned, measured and accountable is often the glue that holds transformational change and bold visions together.
What this all means is that it’s unusual for one p[erson to have the duality of skills needed for both roles – and some individuals are better suited to one position instead of the other.
What happens when there’s no leader?
If the last six years of Brexit, the pandemic and now a cost of living crisis have taught us anything it’s that the economy is constantly shifting and prone to sudden and uncontrollable external factors. In times like this, innovation, vision, creativity and fearlessness can be the difference between survival and failure.
Leaderless organisations are slow and cumbersome, weighed down by processes that limit agile, fast decision making because no single person or community of senior people feels able to take the bold decisions that are sometimes necessary to meet consumer demand.
Fewer ideas and lack of vision mires otherwise successful organisations impotent.
What happens when there’s no manager?
It’s all very well knowing where you want to go, but if you don’t have the skills and knowledge needed to get there, direction alone is useless.
If you don’t have someone in your organisation who has the skills, time and resources to ensure the right processes are in place, with the right people to run them, and the right support to help them, the creative vision for the organisation is just an ambitious document sitting in a drawer gathering dust.
Lack of management (or poor management) results in resources becoming misallocated, conflicts over the right approach and execution suffocating outcomes, and the stability of the organisation and its aims become destabilised.
Keeping the Roles Distinct
Whilst it’s not impossible for one person to combine both roles, it’s often not desirable, because ultimately something will always be compromised and lack of efficiency often translates to higher costs and higher risks.
By keeping the roles distinct – and ensuring there is no micro-management (also known as interference!) – each person is able to concentrate fully on delivering benefit through their own strengths and skills.
If you’d like to find out more about how to achieve the right balance between leadership and management, get in touch to talk about how Constantia Consulting can help you to create the right approach to the effective operation of your organisation.
