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« First Look: Leadership Books for December 2009 | Leading Blog Main Page | Got Wingmen? Never Fly Solo » 12.02.09
Managers Can (and Should) Be Leaders Henry Mintzberg is the antidote to that kind of unproductive thinking. He writes in a book simply titled Managing: “we should be seeing managers as leaders and leadership as management practiced well.” While I have maintained that there is value in separating the functions of managers and leaders for the better understanding of both, in practice, they shouldn’t be two different people. Mintzberg believes that managing is a practice that is learned on the job through apprenticeship, mentorship, and direct experience. He has good cause to assert that we should be more concerned about “macroleading;” people that manage by remote control; too far above it all. “We are now overlead and undermanaged, he writes.” By obsessing over the glories of leadership, we lose our grasp on the realities of management. And our leadership is all the worse for it. “The more we obsess about leadership, the less we seem to get.” Managing is a page-turner (if you’re into this kind of thing). Mintzberg always makes you stop and think. He’s at his best when he’s leveling the playing field. As we’ve stressed on this blog before, leadership isn’t evolving. Leadership (and management) are a fundamental human activity. How they are practiced may change depending on the context, but their essence remains unchanged. Much of what we have to learn and relearn are fundamental principles regarding how people get along and work together. Managers deal with different issues as time moves forward, but not with different managing. The job does not change. We buy new gasoline all the time and new shirts from time to time; that does not mean that car engines and buttons have been changing. Despite the great fuss we make about change, the fact is that basic aspects of human behavior—and what could be more basic than managing and leading?—remain rather stable.Mintzberg has distilled management thought into a general model of managing—what do managers do? They operate on three plains of activity, from the conceptual to the concrete: They act through information. They work through people. They manage action directly. And they need to operate on all three planes. “Too much leading can result in a job free of content…and detached from its internal roots.” A blending of all three planes into a dynamic balance is required and is best learned on the job. “No simulation I have ever seen in a classroom … comes remotely close to replicating the job itself,” says Mintzberg. He playfully addresses the conundrums of managing like: How to keep informed when managing by its own nature removes the manager from the very things being managed? How to delegate when they are better informed than the people to whom they have to delegate? How to maintain a sufficient level of confidence without crossing over into arrogance? How to bring order to the work of others when the work of managing is itself disorderly? And how do you do all these things at once? Managers are flawed. “If you want to uncover someone’s flaws, marry them or else work for them. Their flaws will quickly become apparent. So will something else: that you can usually live with these flaws. Managers and marriages do succeed. The world, as a consequence, continues to unfold in its inimitably imperfect way.” [He adds in the notes: “Not always. Politicians seem to become particularly adept at hiding flaws during elections until they become fatal in office.”] We are successful to the extent that our weaknesses are not fatal relative to the situation we are in. Commitment is the key; commitment “to the job, the people, and the purpose, to be sure, but also to the organization, and beyond that, in a responsible way, to related communities in society.” He concludes, “To be a successful manager, let alone—dare I say—a great leader, maybe you don’t have to be wonderful so much as more or less emotionally healthy and clearheaded.” No institution can possible survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”That’s good news!
Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:43 PM
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Comments
Michael, I want to comment on this post, but I'm not sure what to say other than I'm uncomfortable with the premise. I think it is very easy to say that management and leadership are two sides of the same coin, that all of this can be learned on the job, that it is simply a matter of being "emotionally healthy and clearheaded". To me, I think the difference between a manager and a leader is in their ability to not only deal with people, but get the most from them. As Drucker says, it does not take a superman, but it does take some innate skills. This said, a person may have those innate leadership skills, yet lack the ability to manage. It is this group of people, those with ability but not knowledge that should be the recipient of training. Furthermore, I would debate the statement that we are overlead and undermanaged. Engagement survey after survey point out that it is the people skills (leadership) that is lacking. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I do think we are overmanaged. The real problem is that most (managers and employees alike) have no commitment "to the job, the people, the purpose...the organization" because that comitment is not reciprocated AND too many organizations lack purpose. Just my two cents. Thanks for a thought provoking post.
Posted by: Keith Bossey | December 2, 2009 02:24 PM
Thanks for the detailed review. It helps very much to get a concise overview of a work and this sounds like one I'll need to get to quickly.
The labels exhaust me to some degree. Maybe we should call the people we report to Sponsors or something like that. "Managing" does have a negative connotation, but no one wants to do senseless work or work that someone else is doing. Does that make your Manager a coordinator?
I'm going to renounce the labels. It will probably only last until my next post, but at least I'm going to try.
Posted by: Mike Henry Sr. | December 2, 2009 02:41 PM
Mike, thanks for your comments. The labels are tough to get over. I admit I use them all the time. The trick is trying to reeducate people to what they mean. Until then…
Keith, I appreciate your two cents and I think I know what you’re getting at. You are right to say, “I think the difference between a manager and a leader is in their ability to not only deal with people, but get the most from them.” But my point and I think Mintzberg’s point (if anyone can speak for Mintzberg) is that while there are functional differences between the two, a person should operate as both a manager and as a leader. And there isn’t enough of that happening.
I think you can learn a great deal from leadership/management books and seminars because they highlight areas of concern and get your mind redirected, but there’s nothing like putting it into practice.
Posted by: Michael McKinney | December 2, 2009 03:45 PM
Great discussion! I know Mintzberg's works very well. He's the same professor who said that Strategic Planning is dead. He loves to take terms commonly used in business and turn them on their side. Does he do this from a purely objective standpoint or does he have a bias about how terms are used? I share that so everyone understands who this guy is.
Now for a dose of reality. Professors are important to us because their research and thinking can give us perspective and get us to think about things in new ways. Mintzberg and many others have helped us greatly in that way. But are their recommendations sound where the rubber meets the road?
I totally and completely disagree with Mintzberg. He is off in an academic cloud on this one (he was a little closer to the mark on strategy). We must have two different terms to describe two entirely different skill sets and roles. Otherwise, how are we to help managers manage better and help them to work with their people better.
I believe strongly in breaking down jobs, positions, occupations into their component skill sets. Then you can address each skill appropriately and reintegrate them back into the whole person. If we only develop managers by addressing everything they do as one big whole, who thinks we would be successful?
We are faced with a leadership crisis. It's holding organizations back, our country back and the world back. There are simply too many people who have mastered the art of management. They can manage very effectively and hide behind these skills due to their lack of leadership and people skills.
We must keep these terms separate so we can hold managers accountable and responsible for the separate skill set of leadership. That's the only way we are going to build a better world.
Besides my day job as a management consultant, I'm writing a book "Life Is A Fork In The Road." To research the topic of how we make choices, I have been asking people to share stories about choices they have made. It is interesting the number of stories I have received and comments about those stories that deal with bad bosses...managers who can't delegate, aren't fair, don't give good feedback, exclude people, fail to tap all the talent on their team and turn people off.
From 40 years of experience in management and what I've learned from these stories, I can tell you that we need to focus a lot more on leadership. If we merge managing and leadership together, we lose the ability to create that critical focus.
Posted by: Don Shapiro | December 2, 2009 07:16 PM
I would like to add my agreement to some of the previous comments, especially Don's. To say that we are overlead is extremely erroneous in my opinion. In my work as an executive coach, as well as in my previous 20+ yrs of experience as a manager and executive, I have seen a consistent lack of leadership at all levels of business, church, education and community. I have encountered plenty of people who can control an outcome (management), but were completely incapable of creating the effective, productive engagement of their people in pursuing their vision (leadership).
I agree that the ideal would be to have great managers who are also great leaders. However, it is essential that we maintain a clear distinction between the two so we can clearly identify the comptencies related to each. This allows for proper evaluation and then training to equip people to succeed.
Thank you all for a good discussion on one of my favorite topics.
Posted by: Joe Denner | December 5, 2009 06:10 AM
Don and Joe, thanks for your comments. I completely agree that leadership is lacking and more specifically, leadership at all levels is needed. I do think we tend to overemphasize the “Rah-rah” aspects of leadership and not the nuts-and-bolts qualities of getting along with and getting work done through people. Separating management from leadership is important as it does help to get at these issues (and as you said Don “hold managers accountable and responsible for the separate skill set of leadership), however they need to be brought back together to develop an effective and balanced person who can then lead and get results.
Management should not be a disparaging term as it often is. Leadership is not better, but it is a mindset that should permeate the organization. Leadership should be practiced by all people in all parts of society and not a title given to a select few. Managers as leaders should inspire people to that end; to inspire people to act for the good of all not because they have to, but because they want to.
Posted by: Michael McKinney | December 6, 2009 12:24 PM
What if we eliminate the labels on people and think about managing and leading as verbs.
People to whom leadership roles have been assigned or who display leadership are able to define reality (Max DePree) and influence people (John Maxwell). In order to translate this influence into action, however, the person in a leadership role should be equipped with the tools and ability to manage.
Is it possibly to be an effective manager without being a leader? In my opinion, yes. Is it possible to be an effective leader without being an effective manager? In my opinion, no.
Posted by: Aric Dershem | December 9, 2009 08:33 AM