Managing Stuff, Leading People

LeadToday

Generally speaking, people get promoted because they did something good. Salespeople get promoted to Sales Manager because they were good at selling. A marketing associate gets promoted to Marketing Manager because they had proven themselves to be good marketers. An engineer might get promoted to manager because they designed stuff that worked well and was marketable.

All three of those individuals were promoted to leadership positions and none of them were promoted because they were skilled leaders. Now, they may be good leaders…or they may not, only time will tell.

Here’s a reality of leadership: the vast majority of people are promoted into leadership positions without having demonstrated even a slight ability to actually lead. Many are promoted into leadership positions because they have demonstrated some ability to manage but leading and managing are two entirely different things.

You manage stuff like budgets, inventories and buildings but you lead people…

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Authentic or Effective Leadership?

LeadToday

Trust! It is a vital element of leadership, at least Authentic Servant Leadership. I suppose an effective leader can get away with a lack of trust, but the leadership of someone who is merely effective is limited.

If you’re wondering about the difference between an effective leader and an Authentic Servant Leader here is my take on it: an effective leader can influence people to take action, they can chart a course for their people and the can make a difference in the lives of those they lead? it may not be a positive difference but it will be a difference.

An effective leader can even build other leaders but it?s very unlikely that an effective leader will ever develop an Authentic Servant Leader.

On the other hand an Authentic Servant Leader can do everything an effective leader can do and so much more. They are far more likely to…

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Are You a Born Leader?

LeadToday

The question of whether leaders are made or born is about as old as leadership itself. I am firmly on the “made” side.

While some people do seem to be born with certain traits of leadership; extraversion, self-confidence, and courage are but a few that come to mind, there are many people who have those traits and yet never lead. So traits alone do not make a leader.

There are also readily identifiable qualities and characteristics of leadership but merely possessing those characteristics does not make a person a leader. For instance, I believe that to lead people you must care about them, truly truly care. So caring is a prime leadership characteristic for me. But I know many many caring people who do not seek leadership opportunities.

It is ultimately the actions of an individual that makes them a leader. It’s what they do with the qualities and characteristics…

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Compliance or Commitment?

LeadToday

One of the biggest differences between someone who tries to manage people and someone who truly leads people is this: a manager may have the compliance of their people but a true leader has their commitment.

If you don’t think that?s a huge difference then answer this. Which employees do you think serve an organization better, compliant employees or committed employees? Which would you rather work with, somebody who only does what they are told because they ?have to? or someone who does whatever needs to be done because they ?want to??

Pretty much any boss or manager can force their people to comply. They simply make the consequences of not complying worse than what they are asking their people to comply with.

Having the compliance of your people isn’t the worst thing in the world but compliant people rarely perform up to the standards required to grow a business…

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Compliance is not Commitment

LeadToday

No one has every done anything that they didn’t want to do!

Almost everyone would disagree with that statement and everyone who disagrees would be wrong. Almost everyone would say they have been made to do something they didn’t want to do. It could have been by their parents, their boss, maybe a spouse (I hope not a spouse) maybe a friend or co-worker. But the fact is they didn’t really make you do something that you didn’t want to do.

They found a way to make you want to do it.

They provided you with a choice. Either do this or something bad will happen to you. They made the “something bad” worse than the thing you would have preferred not to do. You considered your options and decided to do the thing you would have preferred not to instead of receiving the “something bad” as an alternative.

You…

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The Illusion of Leadership

LeadToday

No position or title can make you a leader. Yes, there are positions that provide the illusion of leadership but it doesn’t take long for most people to see past that. Yes, there are some positions that offer, temporarily anyway, the influence required to help you lead but even that does not make you a leader.

Leadership is far more about disposition than it is about position. Leadership is about making a decision to seize the opportunity that comes from a position to actually make a difference in the lives of people.

Here’s a sad fact in way too many organizations today, it may well be a sad fact in many governments as well: lots of people in leadership positions squander the opportunity to actually lead by settling for the illusion of leadership.

The illusion of leadership causes people to manage rather than lead. It places blame rather than accepting…

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Controlling Leadership

LeadToday

One of the biggest leadership myths around is the myth about leadership control. If you buy into the control myth then you likely believe that once you have a position of leadership you will also have substantially more control over people, things, and circumstances than you did before.

You might have a little more but not much and not often.

I see new leaders all the time trying to over control people and situations and it’s almost always a mistake. New leaders try to get their people to think like them, to act like them and to do most everything just like them. They try to exercise their ?authority? over their people and they end up with compliant people but not committed ones.

New leaders (okay, there are a lot of experienced leaders who think this too) believe their people have to do what they are told in the way…

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