For many management theorists, there is no such thing as a strategic manager. According to one popular view of management and leadership, the role of the manager is to maintain the status quo, to keep current operations working smoothly. This implies that there are only strategic leaders. There is good reason to challenge this orthodox conception, however. If we can free leadership from position, then all employees can be said to show leadership whenever they promote a better way, such as a new product, service or process. This move takes empowerment a stage further, very appropriate in our knowledge driven age where innovation is increasingly the key form of competitive advantage. In a world of growing complexity, those at the top don't have all the answers so we need a model of leadership that explains how all employees can show leadership.
A New Way of Differentiating Leadership from Management
Many attempts have been made to define leadership and management as separate roles or functions. The most fashionable approach is based on style. Leaders are said to be inspiring and people oriented while managers are described as having a task focus and being controlling. Their influencing style is transactional – they reward employees for their performance. Conversely, leaders are defined as being transformational which means, among other things, being inspirational. This approach has serious problems because we know that some managers are good motivators and sensitive to people. We also know that some leaders have a factual, quiet style. They are convincing because they know what they are talking about, even if they are not inspiring in their communication style. Also, the style approach makes it seem that leaders and managers have the same focus, getting things done through people, except that the leader is more inspiring. This makes it seem as if leaders are really superior managers, so why bother having managers at all?
If we remove the style criterion, a simple way of defining management and leadership is to say that leaders promote new directions while managers execute existing ones. If leadership is totally position free, then it can only work through informal influence. This means that leadership is never a decision making role with authority over people. A further implication is that all decisions made by senior executives are management actions, never leadership. Following this logic, we now need to say that management makes strategic decisions, not leadership. At first this sounds a little odd. If new strategies take a business in new directions, is this not leadership? No, because this is simply an investment decision.
Management as Investment
It makes sense to regard management as an investment activity. Managers have resources to invest, people, finances, material and human resources. Whenever they decide to hire new people, downsize, move into new markets or initiate new strategies, they are making investment decisions. The only reason we would want to regard this as leadership is if we were committed to a role based concept of leadership. But, if we want a theory of leadership that allows all employees to show it, then we must restrict it to the use of informal influence in the promotion of new directions. For example, when a front line innovator promotes a new product to the senior executive team, this is bottom-up leadership. But the front line employee has no authority to decide to develop this product. This means that leadership, whether shown top-down or bottom up must be restricted to influencing others to adopt a better way.
The Importance of Leadership and Management
Leadership and management are equally important. Management is needed to make the best use of all resources in developing and executing strategies. Leadership is essential for creating the future through innovation. Both leadership and management can be strategic. The difference is that leaders informally influence others to adopt new strategies while managers make new strategic decisions. For example, a knowledge worker might promote a new strategy to the CEO who is like a buyer, customer or investor in this context. When the CEO decides to adopt the new strategy, he or she is making a management decision. It is the initial promoter of the strategy who has shown the leadership. Of course, the CEO can both lead and manage by first selling a new strategy to the organization, then deciding to adopt it.
Although leadership and management are equally important, management has a much bigger workload because it needs to decide overall strategy and manage its execution by coordinating and motivating employees to get the best out of them. Leadership is a more focused activity. It searches for a better way and sells it to the organization.
Of course, this is not the conventionally accepted way of defining leadership and management but it is a good way of making sense of bottom up leadership which is clearly not a decision making activity.
Mitch McCrimmon - I am a management assessment and coaching consultant with a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in 1975. I had a ...
