Leader vs. manager. An old debate

Aretha Franklin -elegida este año 2.009 como mejor cantante de la historia- en el clásico de los "Blues Brothers". Este vídeo no tiene más mensaje que el transmitir energía y alegría (algo es algo :))

An excerpt from "The Paper Bridge"

The leader must decide about vision, values, directives and criteria, with the participation of the people, in order that they are the persons and the teams who develop their own plans and take control of their destinies.

The leader must communicate as widely as possible the necessary information, he also must qualify and support his people, in order to get them mobilized towards the achievement, eliminating all the interferences and creating spaces for self-motivation.

Finally, he must guarantee that things happen and do a permanent follow-up of the processes, never failing in recognizing the importance of the flexibility to reach the results.

The leader has to influence his collaborators in order that their potential and energy are used to the maximum for their own benefit and for the benefit of the whole organization.

It is a question of "tuning" the minds of the persons towards a vision and a few shared intentions and not on basing the scheme on sheer obedience, since this can turn out to be effective, yet not efficient.

And in the competitive environment, I have to obtain more with less, and this means being efficient.

Of another hand, he – the top manager - must be able to handle the chaos and the uncertainty in order that the organization survives.

He will have to learn from the crisis and from his mistakes in order to move forward, provided that the processes of change are not linear but cyclical.

He also has to be intuitive and inspiring, since he will have to be prepared to assume risks and to permanently defy his already deeply ingrained beliefs and paradigms and those of his people. Common sense and simplicity are fundamental for confronting the challenges of the future.

Well, so far everything is just fine, and all of us more or less can agree with those basics. But we must analyze more in depth.

How does this relate to methodologies of training?

First, remember that between top management and basic staff, there is an extremely important link, the mid management, who is in charge of transmitting to their subordinates, trying not to alter the top management message, although taking in account the specifics of each of their collaborators. Not that easy to be achieved. It is a skill that may naturally come, but most likely we will have to learn and practice it.


La cita del día
7. Have a strong mind and a soft heart.
Anthony J. D'Angelo