Is Your Team Leading vs Managing?

“A leader is one who sees more than oth­ers see, who sees far­ther than oth­ers see, and who sees before oth­ers see.” — Leroy Eime

Every­one has a def­i­n­i­tion of the dif­fer­ence between lead­ing vs managing.

In my world, it’s sim­ple: a man­ag­er works with a group of peo­ple to opti­mize their per­for­mance to do today’s work effec­tive­ly — in a way that’s good for the cus­tomer, and prof­itable for business.

Some think that peo­ple can work autonomous­ly with­out any form of man­age­ment. I strong­ly disagree.

Whether it’s a peer-based or hier­ar­chi­cal sys­tem, man­agers are incred­i­bly valu­able as cat­a­lysts to keep things mov­ing for­ward – to help peo­ple align, to focus on what’s most important.

Lead­ers are com­plete­ly different.

Lead­ers take peo­ple to places they haven’t been before, and thrive on change. They define ways to cut the exist­ing path, and cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties. And while lead­ers are some­times good at day-to-day coor­di­na­tion, their most impor­tant skill is to get peo­ple to fol­low them, and to change how they think and work to get to a new place.

Grow­ing Leadership

“The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from med­dling with them while they do it.” — Theodore Roo­sevelt, Amer­i­can President

In young com­pa­nies, good man­agers are the often the most trust­ed, reli­able peo­ple. But as the com­pa­ny grows – and your exec­u­tive team grows with you — there has to be an increas­ing ratio of your direct reports that are high­ly effec­tive lead­ers – not managers.

Let’s say you’re the CEO of a $10M busi­ness, and most of your direct reports are effec­tive man­agers. Only one or two of them have the abil­i­ty to become lead­ers. There’s the poten­tial to grow to $50M, but you’re stuck at $30M because it’s five man­agers and you.

In order for the com­pa­ny to grow, you need to hand off lead­er­ship respon­si­bil­i­ties, bit by bit. In theory:

• At $20M two of the peo­ple you work with need to be leaders
• At $40M three need to be leaders
• At $60M four need to be leaders
• At $80M all your direct reports need to be leaders.

The exec­u­tives I’ve seen suc­ceed have been com­mit­ted to hand­ing over their lead­er­ship abil­i­ties – and to mak­ing a lot of tough deci­sions. Not all great man­agers make good lead­ers – it’s just not in their DNA. So when they try, they don’t enjoy it, aren’t effec­tive – and it cre­ates stress and ten­sion for everyone.

A Win­ning Com­bi­na­tion: Strat­e­gy and Oper­a­tional Optimization

What works is a leader who charts the course to where you are going next, and a man­ag­er who pulls it all togeth­er. Suc­cess­ful lead­ers (typ­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs) have an amaz­ing right and left hand – amaz­ing man­agers who make it all work.

The point is that there’s a nat­ur­al place for all of us to thrive. If you are in a lead­er­ship role and don’t enjoy change or resist it, it’s an indi­ca­tor that you may be a bet­ter man­ag­er – so be the best one you can.