For the first time,I heard it from my friend, who wanted to be a leader than a Manager.
It intrigued me.. what is a leader ..? what separates leader from a Manager...? Do we have to be a good manager to be a leader..??
In short the difference is:
Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.
The difference may be summarized as activities of vision and judgment — effectiveness —versus activities of mastering routines — efficiency. The chart below indicates key words that further make the distinction between the two functions:
· The manager administers; the leader innovates.
· The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
· The manager maintains; the leader develops.
· The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
· The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
· The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
· The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
· The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
· The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon.
· The manager imitates; the leader originates.
· The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
· The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.
· The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
The most dramatic differences between leaders and managers are found at the extremes: poor leaders are despots, while poor managers are bureaucrats in the worst sense of the word. Whilst leadership is a human process and management is a process of resource allocation, both have their place and managers must also perform as leaders. All first-class managers turn out to have quite a lot of leadership ability.
In a different perspective:
here is an article in Hindu News paper by B. S. RAGHAVAN
What are the qualities and capabilities of a leader as distinguished from those of a manager? Is there anything like leadership in and by itself, which differs from what is expected of a manager? Are the functions of the leader and manager distinct and separate?
Management tracts purposely pursue these enquiries. It is a truism that not all leaders are necessarily good managers and vice versa. It is equally clear that high designations alone do not help in delivering the goods. There is a view of Jawaharlal Nehru, for instance, that he was inspiring as a leader but fell short as the chief executive of the nation. Making a distinction between the attributes of a leader and a manager is a pointless pastime. Management pros, however, happily indulge in it. Some write-ups go to absurd lengths in viewing leader's role in isolation from that of the manager. One that I saw recently lets itself go with things like: Leaders inspire, managers measure; leaders guide, managers navigate; leaders talk, managers listen; leaders expect, managers demand; leaders support, managers teach; and similar inanities.
Actually, if a leader is one who inspires his associates to act in tune with his vision by setting an example in all that he expects in and of others, then every functionary who has been given a task to accomplish, whether called a manager or by any other name, has to be a leader as well.
Similarly, it is no use merely entertaining or propagating a vision and having impeccable credentials as a person unless they translate into achievements contributing to the goals of the organisation or the collective good of the society. Thus, the only reliable test of leadership is its ability to produce results commensurate with the efforts.
I think you have to be a good manager to be a good leader. Having the vision alone wont solve the purpose.. you should also know how to deliver effective results. :D
Showing posts with label Mgmt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mgmt. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Friday, November 16, 2007
5 P's of leadership
The Five Ps of Leadership
There are whole libraries full of things that tell you what to do about leadership and how to remember what’s important. Here’s another short edition to that library – the 5 P’s of leadership. They are:
Pay Attention to What’s Important
Praise What You Want to Continue
Punish What You Want to Stop
Pay for the Results You Want
Promote the People Who Deliver Those Results
Pay Attention To What’s Important
Time management courses, strategy books, and management gurus all will tell you that there’s not a lot that’s really important. Your job as a leader is to concentrate on what’s most important so that it gets taken care of. Then let the rest of the stuff take care of itself.
Now if you’re a perfectionist, that’s going to be hard for you to do. But there’s not P for perfectionism in this scheme of things. No, we recognize that there are limited resources of time, energy, people, and money. Because those resources are limited, you want to go for the big stuff first.
What you’re after is the 20% of stuff that gives you the biggest bang for the buck. What underlies all of this is something called Pareto’s Law. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian Economist and Sociologist in the late 19th century. He formulated something he called "The Law of the Unequal Distribution of Results." You probably know it as the 80/20 rule.
All the 80/20 rules says is that there’s 20% of the stuff you do that gets you 80% of the results. The trick is finding that 20%. Once you’ve found it you then have to pay attention to it.
Pay attention to it in your written and oral communications. Restate the key themes over and over. Don’t undervalue repetition, repetition makes for memory and memory makes for action.
Pay attention to it in your casual contacts. John Kotter, in his book to general managers, pointed out that effective general managers make great use of the random contacts they have with people. Those contacts could be in the hallway, at the water cooler, in the elevator, or walking down the street. The seize on those moments to talk about the things and ask the questions that are important to their leadership agenda. You should do that too.
Organize you day, your communications, your organizational structures, your reward systems and everything else to pay attention to what’s important and then do that with unremitting diligence.
Praise What You Want to Continue
Praise is your best training tool. In technical terms, praise is a positive consequence that follows a positive action. It’s a reward for something done right. Use praise to get people to continue to do things or to take positive action. That’s where it’s best used.
Remember, too, that praise is a tool that is most effective when it’s used inconsistently. Used consistently, praise tends to loose its force. So, don’t worry so much about praising everything that people do right, but do worry about praising.
That’s important, because most of us came up in a world where we didn’t praise enough. Seek out opportunities to praise but don’t get anal retentive about it.
Punish What You Want to Stop
Punishment is the mirror image of praise. It’s a negative consequence that follows negative behavior. It follows a principle stated almost in biblical terms by one of my past trainees. She said: "the good shall be rewarded and the unjust shall be punished in proportion to their deeds."
Punishment – negative consequences – are the tool you use to get people to stop stuff. If you figure out what’s most important for people to quit doing in your organization, rig up some kind of negative consequence for them if they do it. Be careful though, because you may fall prey to the hot stove guideline. It was Mark Twain (or if it wasn’t it should have been) who said, "A cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. But he won’t sit on a cold stove either.
The management lesson here is that if you zap people too much with negative consequences, they don’t just quit doing the stuff that you don’t want them to do. They quit doing pretty much everything. That’s why "rule by fear" and "controlled ferocity" cultures have a devil of a time getting people to take initiative. They’ve been zapped so often they’re just not willing to risk it.
Pay For the Results You Want
Years ago when I was managing distribution and customer service centers I happened to compliment one of the customer service reps. She immediately turned around to me and said, "Don’t just tell me, show me, payday is Friday."
Pay is one of the tangible ways you can reward people for doing good stuff. It’s another form of praise in visible, tangible form. Don’t limit your thinking about pay to just money, though. Pay people with time off, recognition, choice assignments, small gifts, and special bonuses to encourage the behavior you want.
One of my clients used to carry around a pocket-full of restaurant gift certificates as he wandered around his trucking company. When he found somebody doing something that he wanted to encourage he was likely to whip out a gift certificate and hand it to them on the spot. It created the kind of event and drama that makes for good communication, and it encouraged positive behavior.
Another client of mine, a police chief this time, did something similar. She was a police chief in Texas, and, as you might expect, she talked like a Texan. She had little slips made up with one of her favorite phrases on them. It was, "’preciate ya."
When she heard something about one of her officers that was positive, she sent them one of her ‘preciate ya slips. When she caught somebody done something she wanted to encourage she handed one out. Officers collected the slips and when they got enough, they got recognition in the department newsletter and some extra time off.
Look for ways to pay for the results you want. Pay and praise are the things that get the engine of progress going.
Promote People Who Deliver The Results You Want
This one just makes sense. The problem is that lots of organizations forget about it. They maintain reward and promotion systems that reward the old behavior, even while they’re trumpeting the new behavior in memo’s, meetings, and executive retreats.
When I was just starting out in consulting, a much more experienced and wiser consultant said to me, "When you first go into an organization, pay attention to who it is they promote. Listen to the stories that folks tell you about who gets promoted and rewarded and why. That will tell you just about everything you need to know about what the real organizational priorities are."
What are the stories that your people tell in your organization? What are the stories they tell about their bosses? You want those stories to be positive about great things their bosses have done. If all the stories are negatives, buddy you’ve got a problem.
What do your folks say about the folks who are promoted? Do they feel they got promoted on merit because of their performance or because they just happened to "know somebody" or worse.
The five P’s of leadership will help you stay on track to positive organizational change. Remember to pay attention to what’s important, praise what you want to continue, punish what you want to stop, pay for the results you want, and promote the people who deliver those results and you’ll help your organization be the very best that it can become.
More info:http://management.about.com/od/leadership/Leadership.htm
There are whole libraries full of things that tell you what to do about leadership and how to remember what’s important. Here’s another short edition to that library – the 5 P’s of leadership. They are:
Pay Attention to What’s Important
Praise What You Want to Continue
Punish What You Want to Stop
Pay for the Results You Want
Promote the People Who Deliver Those Results
Pay Attention To What’s Important
Time management courses, strategy books, and management gurus all will tell you that there’s not a lot that’s really important. Your job as a leader is to concentrate on what’s most important so that it gets taken care of. Then let the rest of the stuff take care of itself.
Now if you’re a perfectionist, that’s going to be hard for you to do. But there’s not P for perfectionism in this scheme of things. No, we recognize that there are limited resources of time, energy, people, and money. Because those resources are limited, you want to go for the big stuff first.
What you’re after is the 20% of stuff that gives you the biggest bang for the buck. What underlies all of this is something called Pareto’s Law. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian Economist and Sociologist in the late 19th century. He formulated something he called "The Law of the Unequal Distribution of Results." You probably know it as the 80/20 rule.
All the 80/20 rules says is that there’s 20% of the stuff you do that gets you 80% of the results. The trick is finding that 20%. Once you’ve found it you then have to pay attention to it.
Pay attention to it in your written and oral communications. Restate the key themes over and over. Don’t undervalue repetition, repetition makes for memory and memory makes for action.
Pay attention to it in your casual contacts. John Kotter, in his book to general managers, pointed out that effective general managers make great use of the random contacts they have with people. Those contacts could be in the hallway, at the water cooler, in the elevator, or walking down the street. The seize on those moments to talk about the things and ask the questions that are important to their leadership agenda. You should do that too.
Organize you day, your communications, your organizational structures, your reward systems and everything else to pay attention to what’s important and then do that with unremitting diligence.
Praise What You Want to Continue
Praise is your best training tool. In technical terms, praise is a positive consequence that follows a positive action. It’s a reward for something done right. Use praise to get people to continue to do things or to take positive action. That’s where it’s best used.
Remember, too, that praise is a tool that is most effective when it’s used inconsistently. Used consistently, praise tends to loose its force. So, don’t worry so much about praising everything that people do right, but do worry about praising.
That’s important, because most of us came up in a world where we didn’t praise enough. Seek out opportunities to praise but don’t get anal retentive about it.
Punish What You Want to Stop
Punishment is the mirror image of praise. It’s a negative consequence that follows negative behavior. It follows a principle stated almost in biblical terms by one of my past trainees. She said: "the good shall be rewarded and the unjust shall be punished in proportion to their deeds."
Punishment – negative consequences – are the tool you use to get people to stop stuff. If you figure out what’s most important for people to quit doing in your organization, rig up some kind of negative consequence for them if they do it. Be careful though, because you may fall prey to the hot stove guideline. It was Mark Twain (or if it wasn’t it should have been) who said, "A cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. But he won’t sit on a cold stove either.
The management lesson here is that if you zap people too much with negative consequences, they don’t just quit doing the stuff that you don’t want them to do. They quit doing pretty much everything. That’s why "rule by fear" and "controlled ferocity" cultures have a devil of a time getting people to take initiative. They’ve been zapped so often they’re just not willing to risk it.
Pay For the Results You Want
Years ago when I was managing distribution and customer service centers I happened to compliment one of the customer service reps. She immediately turned around to me and said, "Don’t just tell me, show me, payday is Friday."
Pay is one of the tangible ways you can reward people for doing good stuff. It’s another form of praise in visible, tangible form. Don’t limit your thinking about pay to just money, though. Pay people with time off, recognition, choice assignments, small gifts, and special bonuses to encourage the behavior you want.
One of my clients used to carry around a pocket-full of restaurant gift certificates as he wandered around his trucking company. When he found somebody doing something that he wanted to encourage he was likely to whip out a gift certificate and hand it to them on the spot. It created the kind of event and drama that makes for good communication, and it encouraged positive behavior.
Another client of mine, a police chief this time, did something similar. She was a police chief in Texas, and, as you might expect, she talked like a Texan. She had little slips made up with one of her favorite phrases on them. It was, "’preciate ya."
When she heard something about one of her officers that was positive, she sent them one of her ‘preciate ya slips. When she caught somebody done something she wanted to encourage she handed one out. Officers collected the slips and when they got enough, they got recognition in the department newsletter and some extra time off.
Look for ways to pay for the results you want. Pay and praise are the things that get the engine of progress going.
Promote People Who Deliver The Results You Want
This one just makes sense. The problem is that lots of organizations forget about it. They maintain reward and promotion systems that reward the old behavior, even while they’re trumpeting the new behavior in memo’s, meetings, and executive retreats.
When I was just starting out in consulting, a much more experienced and wiser consultant said to me, "When you first go into an organization, pay attention to who it is they promote. Listen to the stories that folks tell you about who gets promoted and rewarded and why. That will tell you just about everything you need to know about what the real organizational priorities are."
What are the stories that your people tell in your organization? What are the stories they tell about their bosses? You want those stories to be positive about great things their bosses have done. If all the stories are negatives, buddy you’ve got a problem.
What do your folks say about the folks who are promoted? Do they feel they got promoted on merit because of their performance or because they just happened to "know somebody" or worse.
The five P’s of leadership will help you stay on track to positive organizational change. Remember to pay attention to what’s important, praise what you want to continue, punish what you want to stop, pay for the results you want, and promote the people who deliver those results and you’ll help your organization be the very best that it can become.
More info:http://management.about.com/od/leadership/Leadership.htm
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
