Thu, 11 Nov 1999 Glenn Rowe wrote Re: Managers versus Leaders
>
>Jack Ring
>
>I mostly agree with you but would like you to justify your thoughts that
>leadership is part of management.
[...]
[JR] I will be happy to try. In parallel it might be useful if you or
someone else justified that leadership is not part of management.
I come from two angles.
One angle considers all the purposes and behaviors that must be "actioned"
in an enterprise. That is, everything required to score well on Drucker's
main measures of market standing, productivity, innovation and liquidity.
In my lexicon these include: ethics, envisioning, pursuit of quality and
cycle time as well as net income, enthusing others, risk taking, planning,
supervising, serving others, variance suppression, administration, enjoying
others, celebrating, reflecting, learning and learning to learn. These are
not all the items but enough to illustrate where I'm coming from. In my
view this collection of actions, or at least the responsibility for them
needs a label. Let's call this collection a NERN. Let's call
accomplishing these actions NERNING. And lets say that a person who does
most of these can be called A NERNER.
Because I was at an impressionable age when GE in the 1950's and Drucker in
the 60's and others used the label Management, Managing and Manager for
that collection I tend to equate NERN with Manage.
Along comes the leadership chorus and wants to emphasize the importance of
Vision and Spirit and a few other facets of NERNING. Well, I think, if
Leadership is the label for part of the collection. What is the label for
the remaining parts. And when I witness them saying the rest is management
but also witness them specifying that Management is only what I call
administration and supervision (so they can glorify Leadership?) I wonder
what happened to all the other facets.
Having witnessed Berzerkely in the 60's I am sensitive to the Angela
Davis's of the world who teach "Cause Riding for your own agendas." George
Orwell warned us of Doublespeak in "1984" and was only off by 10 years as
it turns out.
I think the second angle is important as well. It concerns inspiring
people toward their personal best -- to excel at their Knowing, Doing and
Being triad. Also, understanding the awesome power of using the right or
wrong word when they are looking to you for purpose, possibilities,
guidance, encouragement, admonishment, empathy and hope. To tell any one
of these people that they are "Manager" and not "Leader material" is an
exercise in hanging labels on people that is extremely pre-destructive.
Although others may be excused for such clumsiness, management education
and development practitioners cannot be excused.
So if you need to differentiate Leadership, Leading and Leader from the
rest of the collection, go ahead. This is a free community. But please
don't circumscribe a minor subset of the rest and call it Management,
Managing, Manager.
Accordingly, my lexicon says that the label for the overall collection is
the M word and that Leaderhip must be a subset.
To those who need the terms to be parallel or management a subset of
leadership I simply ask -- where did you put Ethics and where did you put
Serving Others?
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On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 Michael CHUMER wrote Re: Manager(manager(manager))
[...]>
>Their situational embeddedness is key to grasp and understand. I have seen
>as most have that some managers are terrible leaders
[JR] Please clarify the criteria you use to call them Managers but not Leaders?
>as well as some
>leaders being terrible managers.
[JR] Please clarify the criteria you use to call them Leaders but not Managers?
[JR] And what do you call them if they can do both?
>Embarking upon education/training in an
>attempt to "homogenize" the manager into becoming more of a leader or a
>leader becoming more of a manager may prove futile.
[JR] May? OK, May. But what of your responsibility for Type 1 and Type 2
errors in unilaterally classifying a person as Manager or Leader?
>Rather an
>understanding that different situations require different behaviors and
>those behaviors ( managerial, leader, etc.) may not be embodied within a
>single functioning self.
[JR] May not be? Are you willing to assert, Cannot be?
[JR] Why don't we just agree on an ontology -- that there are people,
competencies, behaviors, roles and needs? If we could do this maybe we
could agree that leader is a role not a person and that leading is a
behavior and that leadership is both a capability and a need.
Then we could talk about the other 5/7ths of NERNING and enterprise.
Jack Ring
Innovation Management
32712 N. 70th St., Snottsdale, AZ 85262-7143
Office) 480-488-4615, Cell) 602.369.4615, Fax) 480-488-4616
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. (Walter Lippman)