We've got leaders. What we need is leadership.
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D. H. Lawrence wrote a marvelous short story called "The Rocking Horse Winner." In it, a young boy rode his rocking horse to try to bring good fortune to his family. As he rode the voices in his head kept chanting, "There must be more money! There must be more money!"
Evidently those same voices chant in a lot of pundit heads. "We must have more leaders! We must have more leaders!"
Nonsense. Leaders we have in abundance. What we need is good leadership.
Pick up the dictionary and look up "leader." What will you find as a definition? It will probably be something like this: "leader: one who leads."
You can define leaders by what they do. They're not defined by traits, or magic tricks, or what kind of shoes or watches they wear.
There's another definition you might see. "Leader: one who has followers."
If you are responsible for the performance of a group you are leader, because you have followers. You can lead well, or you can lead poorly, but lead you do. You will also manage. You will supervise. The question is, "How well?"
Leadership, management, and supervision are all kinds of work and you must do them all. Here are the differences between them.
Leadership work involves purpose and direction and culture. You decide which direction the ship is going. You explain why the work of the team is important. You communicate and set the example that defines culture.
You do other kinds of work, too. Management work involves groups and priorities. If you are drawing up the vacation schedule, that's management work. It isn't any more or less noble than leadership work. It has to be done, and done well.
What about supervision? That's the forgotten function much of the time. Supervision work involves individuals and task performance. When you help a team member improve his or her performance on a task, you are doing supervision work.
If you're responsible for a group, you do all three kinds of work, sometimes two or three at the same time. No one kind of work is more important.
The mix changes as you move up the organization chart. If you're a first-line supervisor, you're going to do relatively more supervision and management and less leadership. It's the nature of the size group and the scope of your mission.
Move into middle management and the management components get a little bigger. So does the leadership component. The supervision component falls off a bit. But even if you're the CEO in a giant corporation, you still are going to be doing supervision, as well as leadership and management.
Don't be misled by all the jargon and the hype. If you're responsible for a group, you've got to do leadership, you've got to do management, and you've got to do supervision. Don't worry about what you are, pay attention to what you're doing and what your group is doing, and you'll be on the road to success.
Boss's Bottom Line
Your challenge is to accomplish the mission and care for your people. That will only happen if you do leadership work, management work, and supervision work. Ignore any one of them at your peril. Remember: it's not about you.
This post also appears on The Management Experts.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Categories: Supervision, Management, Leadership
Tags: Supervision Management Leadership
Wally, I like the way you describe the mix of supervision, management, and leadership at different levels in the organization - and I agree with it. Somehow, it seems that of the three, "leadership" is the hardest for people to grasp because it is a "learn as you go" skill and it is so dependent on context. I like to think that the work I do is to help guide potential leaders through the pitfalls of the context, and to help them to learn as they go.
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I think your "context" point is really important, Mary Jo. In my experience it's factor for all kinds of work, but "leadership" does seem to be more context sensitive.
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People sometimes see leadership and management as separate and often incompatible functions, as though if you have strong leadership skills, you're probably not really good at management, and vice versa. But you have to have both; and both can be learned. These are not mystical powers that you have to be born with; effort can lead to development.
Harris Silverman
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Thanks for joining the conversation, Harris. You're right. You've got to do the work. And you can learn to do it at least adequately.
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When I think about leadership, management, and supervision I think about the sides of a triangle. Each of these complement each other and your ability to do one can't improve without improving the other two as well. The characteristics of a triangle bound each side to be less in length than the sum of the other two sides. Each side can only get bigger if the other two increase in length as well. My point is that someone's ability to manage can't improve too much until they also improve their leadership and supervision abilities.
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That's an interesting perspective, Richard. Thanks for taking the time to share it.
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Good post, Wally. I think a lot of times we're merely parsing words. Many degrade management to promote leadership (and ironically don't actually proceed to talk about leadership, just personal development). In reality, we need leaders to promote all of these actions.
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Good points, David, but I would make them even stronger. The "parsing words" you describe consume time and energy that we should be spending on the work.
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The general thought of supervision, management and leadership corresponds to title climbing of the career ladder. But you are on point that no matter the position all three aspects are equally key. All too often leaders place more emphasis on one or two aspect, deeming the third less important.
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Thanks for commenting, Ann. One thing that seems to have happened during the last two decades is that we've begun to attach relative value to different roles. My perspective is pretty ground level. As a coach, consultant, and observer, I've watched what happens when any of those functions is ignored or relegated to lesser status. It's not pretty.
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Wally - you are right on target; regardless of the level - beginning 1st-line supervisor to CEO - all three activities are in the mix. Too often it is assumed that Leadership is a top-down function when we all need to Lead at whatever level we occupy in the organization. And that is true whether the organization is a huge multi-national or a free agent working their craft.
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Well said, Paul. The level in the organization changes the mix and the details, but not the basic elements of the job.
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Making things happen doesn't require leadership, but when you don't HAVE responsibility or authority, you can still make things happen by leading. Hopefully, someone with authority will recognize and reward your leadership.
Shepard leadership can, however, be so invisible that it isn't seen or recognized. But, what's important, recognition or knowing that you were at the core of an achievement?
Many times having authority actually interferes with leadership, because it is easier to apply management techniques. It's easier to write someone up than it is to know them. It's easier to demand than to motivate. It's easier to be in charge than to let go. It's easier to horde leadership than to grow leaders or spread leadership across your organization.
Don't assume that responsibility, authority, or position makes you a leader. Don't assume that just because stuff is getting done that it was your leadership that makes that happen.
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Thank you David. You've hit on something important. Having authority can get in the way of being an effective leader. I know that several of the top performing supervisors I studied were highly reluctant to use the official sanctions they had at their command. They felt that it was a signal that they'd failed as a leader.
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It was my mentors that reminded me that I didn’t have to lead by position, even though I could have. I became much better at real leadership the day I shredded my business card. I was challenged to take a higher, more difficult path to achieving longer-lasting loyalty and deeper relationships with those who followed me closest.
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Wow, thanks for sharing that, Corrie. That's a great image of a powerful symbolic action.
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You say we have leaders in abundance and what is needed is good leadership. Isn't there a causal relationship? Do we need more 'good' leaders to provide good leadership? Of course how we define 'good' is much debated and is probably, to a large extent, situational. However, I think there are too many people who take up the privilege of leading others before they learnt how to lead themselves. As a result many of their actions, especially when under pressure, are taken to protect themselves rather than to serve others. So do we have enough good leaders to provide good leadership?
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Well said, Terry. I would add that there are also many people who are promoted to jobs where leadership is part of what they're supposed to do, but who receive no training and very little support in how to do it. Thanks for adding to the conversation.
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