Leader is defined as 'The person who leads or commands a group, organization or country.' Manager is defined as 'A person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization.'
Do you see the difference? Many people do not. Many people interconnect management with leadership and look at them as a hand in glove type of thing. The simple fact is that they are in no way similar. Just breaking down the simple definitions above can cue you in to the differences between being a leader and a manager.
The definition of leader contains the words 'leads' and 'commands'. The definition of manager contains the words 'controlling' and 'administering'. Just looking at those four words shows that there is a tremendous difference between being a leader and being a manager. This blog will talk about the differences and why it is vitally important to understand those differences in life.
The term manager is a positional identifier in business. You are a Department Manager, Training Manager, Sales Manager, etc. It denotes your position within an organization. The term leader refers to an ability to bring people together to accomplish goals, project yourself in such a way that you garner respect, and the most important fact of leadership most people don't recognize; you can be a leader at any level of an organization. Being a leader means that you possess certain traits, and being a manager simply denotes you are in charge of something.
I think I have effectively denoted the difference between manager and leader at this point, so now I want to talk about the importance of understanding why good leadership is important, and somewhat rare. As a leader, you first need to understand people, to include yourself.
A good starting point is to do a personality test. Myers Briggs Personality Type Test is a great vehicle to use in order to better understand yourself, learn why you have certain predispositions, and learn how to interact with different personality types. After all, you will find that you cannot deal with everyone in the same manner and get the same results from them in life. You must talk to different types of people in different ways in order to keep them engaged, comfortable, and listening.
Another good personality test that is more simplistic than Myers Briggs is the DISC Assessment. DISC is an acronym that stands for Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance. Both DISC and Myers Briggs have been around for decades, and are used today in businesses across the globe to aid in leadership development.
Understanding your personality type will help you understand how you need to interact with different people in order to garner their buy in to your leadership. Often times, if you are in a company leading a team, it is beneficial if you can have your entire team go through one of the personality type tests listed above, because the knowledge it brings forth in everyone often aids in the team dynamic. Team members end up understanding why they had issues dealing with certain people, and with the knowledge are able to adjust their approach in conversations and foster a better, more productive relationship with their peers, subordinates and leaders.
Understanding your personality is a good starting point, but the true starting point of leadership is something I personally don't feel can be taught or learned. Some people are simply born leaders. Some people have an ability to hold a crowd, bring people together, and foster relationships built on absolute respect. Much of leadership is inherent in the leader's upbringing and natural personality. Now, I am not saying that someone who has no leadership ability cannot go through some training and become an effective leader. That can happen, but more often than not, the people who are effective leaders are naturally leading from the moment they start their first job, or even as far back as in middle school or high school. Natural leadership abilities are often obvious to those around the leader, and at younger ages may not even be evident to the leaders themselves.
Earlier I stated that leaders can exist at every level of an organization. You can have ground level employees in a company who have no say in the day to day operations, but have a natural ability to be a leader amongst their peers. Those are individuals supervisors can utilize to drive important messages in the organization. So Management is a job and Leadership is a trait.
My message to those who want to be better leaders in their fields is this:
1. Gain a better understanding of yourself through the performance of a personality profile like Myers Briggs or DISC.
2. Internalize the learnings from the personality profile and take an inward look at yourself, identifying your strengths and flaws; all the while being completely honest with yourself.
3. Find someone you work with and interact with a lot and sit down with them to discuss your impact on those around you. Ask questions you want the honest answers to in order to gain a better understanding of how your words and actions have impacted those around you to this point. This can be a very good way to open your eyes to things you may not even realize you do, and nip them in the bud immediately, ensuring you consciously avoid certain behaviors that are detrimental to your leadership impact.
4. Put together a conscious plan of approach for your new leadership style. Document it. Brainstorm and put your ideas on paper in black and white and make an agreement with yourself to live up to the standards you document.
5. Put your plan to work, but do it gradually. Turning into a completely different leader overnight is not going to have a positive impact on your organization. Ease your new approach in, let those who work with you and for you know that you are developing yourself and that they can expect some changes in your style of leadership. Let them know that you value feedback and would appreciate it from them; both positive and corrective. Some people, especially those who work for you, will not provide you feedback unless you open the door for them to do so in an open and non-punitive way where you are ultimately accepting of whatever feedback they provide. Thank them for it.
6. Always, and I mean Always, continue to grow and develop yourself. Remain conscious of what you say and do as a leader, because everything that comes out of your mouth and everything you do, to include basic body language, has the potential to have an impact on the way others perceive your leadership.
7. Value everyone and treat everyone with the same level of respect and worth. There is an executive who works for the company I work for, and I respect him more than any other person I have ever worked with or for throughout my career. The reason for that is because he has remained grounded with an understanding of the worth of every person who works for a company. He understands that the person who mops the floors and cleans the bathrooms is no less important than the person who runs a crew or runs the entire organization. This executive talks to ground level employees the same way he does other executives, and he remembers the little things about those people he comes into contact with. He was the Site Vice President at the place that I work years ago, and I had never met him before. One day I ran into him for the first time and we talked for about 5 minutes. I was just a supervisor on shift at a place that employed about 800 people. He asked what I was doing over the weekend and I said that my daughter Emalia had a dance competition in Aurora over the weekend and that we would be doing that all day Saturday and Sunday. Almost 2 months to the day later I saw the Site Vice President for the 2nd time and he said to me, "Hi Steve, how have you been?" First, I was impressed that he remembered my name. But what really impressed me was a moment later when he said, "So how did your daughter Emalia's dance competition go in Aurora a couple months ago?" There was no reason in the world he needed to remember that information, but he did, and here I am talking about it 10 years later. He is the type of person who leaves a positive impact on those he comes into contact with, and I will never forget how great of a leader he was and still is.
8. Pay it forward. As a leader, one of the major things you need to do beyond leading your organization or department, is to identify future leaders and mentor them. Work with people who you identify to be likely replacements for you in the organization you work for. Mentor them and teach them what you have learned over the years of your own development. Lift them up and prepare them for their futures, all the while telling them to do the same thing for people who they feel would be great replacements for them.
9. Develop yourself. Self Development is a constant process, and as you mentor those below you in the organization to better prepare for taking over your role some day, you need to find a mentor who will do the same for you. Look at your career path possibilities and identify where you want to end up in the short term and long term. Find a mentor in the organization you look up to and feel could help you better prepare for your next step.
10. Learn to actively listen at all times. When someone comes to you with feedback, an idea, or anything else, stop what you are doing and provide them your full attention. Nothing is more annoying than stopping in someone's office to talk with them while they actively answer emails or do other things to take their attention away from you. Don't be that person. If you are very busy at the time and cannot devote all of your attention to someone, simply tell them that you are tied up for the next 20 minutes (or however long), but you can be free to devote all of your attention to them then if they can come back. Saying something like, "Your ideas are very important to me and I want to provide you with my full attention. I am prepping for a meeting I have in 10 minutes, but the meeting will be over by 10AM. Can we meet up here at 10AM to have a conversation about your ideas?" That lets the person know that they are important to you, and that you want to devote time specifically to listen to their ideas.
11. Delegate to develop. As you move up in an organization, tasks can become fairly overwhelming to complete on your own. Some people have a hard time letting go of tasks for fear someone else will not perform the tasks as well. That is absolutely true if you never give your team a chance. If you are a leader, you have a team. Use that team to accomplish your mission. Identify someone who can help you and delegate portions of your work to them. It is something that can help develop them, and something that will allow you the time to be more effective in your role. Do not over delegate, but use delegation effectively to both accomplish goals and develop others.
12. Regularly provide positive and corrective feedback in real time. If you see something great, provide that feedback. If you see an issue with someone's work, let them know and provide that critical feedback. I will cover feedback and the preparation and presentation of information in a future blog, as it isn't a simple process if you want to do it right.
13. There are not only 12 steps, but my fingers hurt and I am done typing for now.
I think this is a good base for the Blog. It gets my point across and will hopefully provide some insight to readers. Let me know your thoughts on the information I have provided, as I am always open for some feedback; it's a gift you know!
DUNK
Do you see the difference? Many people do not. Many people interconnect management with leadership and look at them as a hand in glove type of thing. The simple fact is that they are in no way similar. Just breaking down the simple definitions above can cue you in to the differences between being a leader and a manager.
The definition of leader contains the words 'leads' and 'commands'. The definition of manager contains the words 'controlling' and 'administering'. Just looking at those four words shows that there is a tremendous difference between being a leader and being a manager. This blog will talk about the differences and why it is vitally important to understand those differences in life.
The term manager is a positional identifier in business. You are a Department Manager, Training Manager, Sales Manager, etc. It denotes your position within an organization. The term leader refers to an ability to bring people together to accomplish goals, project yourself in such a way that you garner respect, and the most important fact of leadership most people don't recognize; you can be a leader at any level of an organization. Being a leader means that you possess certain traits, and being a manager simply denotes you are in charge of something.
I think I have effectively denoted the difference between manager and leader at this point, so now I want to talk about the importance of understanding why good leadership is important, and somewhat rare. As a leader, you first need to understand people, to include yourself.
A good starting point is to do a personality test. Myers Briggs Personality Type Test is a great vehicle to use in order to better understand yourself, learn why you have certain predispositions, and learn how to interact with different personality types. After all, you will find that you cannot deal with everyone in the same manner and get the same results from them in life. You must talk to different types of people in different ways in order to keep them engaged, comfortable, and listening.
Another good personality test that is more simplistic than Myers Briggs is the DISC Assessment. DISC is an acronym that stands for Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance. Both DISC and Myers Briggs have been around for decades, and are used today in businesses across the globe to aid in leadership development.
Understanding your personality type will help you understand how you need to interact with different people in order to garner their buy in to your leadership. Often times, if you are in a company leading a team, it is beneficial if you can have your entire team go through one of the personality type tests listed above, because the knowledge it brings forth in everyone often aids in the team dynamic. Team members end up understanding why they had issues dealing with certain people, and with the knowledge are able to adjust their approach in conversations and foster a better, more productive relationship with their peers, subordinates and leaders.
Understanding your personality is a good starting point, but the true starting point of leadership is something I personally don't feel can be taught or learned. Some people are simply born leaders. Some people have an ability to hold a crowd, bring people together, and foster relationships built on absolute respect. Much of leadership is inherent in the leader's upbringing and natural personality. Now, I am not saying that someone who has no leadership ability cannot go through some training and become an effective leader. That can happen, but more often than not, the people who are effective leaders are naturally leading from the moment they start their first job, or even as far back as in middle school or high school. Natural leadership abilities are often obvious to those around the leader, and at younger ages may not even be evident to the leaders themselves.
Earlier I stated that leaders can exist at every level of an organization. You can have ground level employees in a company who have no say in the day to day operations, but have a natural ability to be a leader amongst their peers. Those are individuals supervisors can utilize to drive important messages in the organization. So Management is a job and Leadership is a trait.
My message to those who want to be better leaders in their fields is this:
1. Gain a better understanding of yourself through the performance of a personality profile like Myers Briggs or DISC.
2. Internalize the learnings from the personality profile and take an inward look at yourself, identifying your strengths and flaws; all the while being completely honest with yourself.
3. Find someone you work with and interact with a lot and sit down with them to discuss your impact on those around you. Ask questions you want the honest answers to in order to gain a better understanding of how your words and actions have impacted those around you to this point. This can be a very good way to open your eyes to things you may not even realize you do, and nip them in the bud immediately, ensuring you consciously avoid certain behaviors that are detrimental to your leadership impact.
4. Put together a conscious plan of approach for your new leadership style. Document it. Brainstorm and put your ideas on paper in black and white and make an agreement with yourself to live up to the standards you document.
5. Put your plan to work, but do it gradually. Turning into a completely different leader overnight is not going to have a positive impact on your organization. Ease your new approach in, let those who work with you and for you know that you are developing yourself and that they can expect some changes in your style of leadership. Let them know that you value feedback and would appreciate it from them; both positive and corrective. Some people, especially those who work for you, will not provide you feedback unless you open the door for them to do so in an open and non-punitive way where you are ultimately accepting of whatever feedback they provide. Thank them for it.
6. Always, and I mean Always, continue to grow and develop yourself. Remain conscious of what you say and do as a leader, because everything that comes out of your mouth and everything you do, to include basic body language, has the potential to have an impact on the way others perceive your leadership.
7. Value everyone and treat everyone with the same level of respect and worth. There is an executive who works for the company I work for, and I respect him more than any other person I have ever worked with or for throughout my career. The reason for that is because he has remained grounded with an understanding of the worth of every person who works for a company. He understands that the person who mops the floors and cleans the bathrooms is no less important than the person who runs a crew or runs the entire organization. This executive talks to ground level employees the same way he does other executives, and he remembers the little things about those people he comes into contact with. He was the Site Vice President at the place that I work years ago, and I had never met him before. One day I ran into him for the first time and we talked for about 5 minutes. I was just a supervisor on shift at a place that employed about 800 people. He asked what I was doing over the weekend and I said that my daughter Emalia had a dance competition in Aurora over the weekend and that we would be doing that all day Saturday and Sunday. Almost 2 months to the day later I saw the Site Vice President for the 2nd time and he said to me, "Hi Steve, how have you been?" First, I was impressed that he remembered my name. But what really impressed me was a moment later when he said, "So how did your daughter Emalia's dance competition go in Aurora a couple months ago?" There was no reason in the world he needed to remember that information, but he did, and here I am talking about it 10 years later. He is the type of person who leaves a positive impact on those he comes into contact with, and I will never forget how great of a leader he was and still is.
8. Pay it forward. As a leader, one of the major things you need to do beyond leading your organization or department, is to identify future leaders and mentor them. Work with people who you identify to be likely replacements for you in the organization you work for. Mentor them and teach them what you have learned over the years of your own development. Lift them up and prepare them for their futures, all the while telling them to do the same thing for people who they feel would be great replacements for them.
9. Develop yourself. Self Development is a constant process, and as you mentor those below you in the organization to better prepare for taking over your role some day, you need to find a mentor who will do the same for you. Look at your career path possibilities and identify where you want to end up in the short term and long term. Find a mentor in the organization you look up to and feel could help you better prepare for your next step.
10. Learn to actively listen at all times. When someone comes to you with feedback, an idea, or anything else, stop what you are doing and provide them your full attention. Nothing is more annoying than stopping in someone's office to talk with them while they actively answer emails or do other things to take their attention away from you. Don't be that person. If you are very busy at the time and cannot devote all of your attention to someone, simply tell them that you are tied up for the next 20 minutes (or however long), but you can be free to devote all of your attention to them then if they can come back. Saying something like, "Your ideas are very important to me and I want to provide you with my full attention. I am prepping for a meeting I have in 10 minutes, but the meeting will be over by 10AM. Can we meet up here at 10AM to have a conversation about your ideas?" That lets the person know that they are important to you, and that you want to devote time specifically to listen to their ideas.
11. Delegate to develop. As you move up in an organization, tasks can become fairly overwhelming to complete on your own. Some people have a hard time letting go of tasks for fear someone else will not perform the tasks as well. That is absolutely true if you never give your team a chance. If you are a leader, you have a team. Use that team to accomplish your mission. Identify someone who can help you and delegate portions of your work to them. It is something that can help develop them, and something that will allow you the time to be more effective in your role. Do not over delegate, but use delegation effectively to both accomplish goals and develop others.
12. Regularly provide positive and corrective feedback in real time. If you see something great, provide that feedback. If you see an issue with someone's work, let them know and provide that critical feedback. I will cover feedback and the preparation and presentation of information in a future blog, as it isn't a simple process if you want to do it right.
13. There are not only 12 steps, but my fingers hurt and I am done typing for now.
I think this is a good base for the Blog. It gets my point across and will hopefully provide some insight to readers. Let me know your thoughts on the information I have provided, as I am always open for some feedback; it's a gift you know!
DUNK
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