Lead or Manage

So now that there is a truce in the Democratic contest, I guess we can all go back to paying attention to the issues... assuming that anyone really addresses them in this campaign. So far we have instead the tired comparison between management and leadership, between hands-on and vision, between can-do and charisma. There is so much so-called advice out there (see here and here), even a promise to measure educators to see if they are more leaders than managers. We change around nomenclature, claim to have discovered some profound secret, and proceed to market it away to consulting riches.

But the discussion is merely semantic, tactical, positional; it's all about marking a difference when one really doesn't exist. The kind of binary thinking represented by this distinction (especially by the three-column table in the first link above) is exactly the kind that transdiscipolinarity is meant to overcome. The same web page notes at the end that often leadership and management go hand-in-hand, that they are expressions of a continuum, not an either-or. At least that recognition is a start.

Better yet, one should see this sterile debate as both a failing of the current intellectual climate (over-simplified, riddled with sound bite material, dedicated to creating buzz and branding)and a way to avoid discussing the real issues involved in being responsible for people within an enterprise, whether in a small shop, a corporate board room, or even the White House. The multiple levels of reality that transdisciplinary thinking speaks of leads us to see that different situations, different people, different organizations require different admixtures of the values we so cavalierly label as leadership versus management.

If leading is about change, charisma, creating followers and stimulating passion, and management is about stability, authority, regulating subordinates and exercising control, how can anyone say that leadership is better than management? Don't valuable heads of organization know how to apply each in its proper measure in individual cases and to individual people? Don't effective directors have both authority and charisma? Don't they stimulate and regulate in an intricate dance of passion and control?

I guess when it comes down to it, I have to agree more with Clinton than Obama (or at least their spokespeople) here. The "vision thing" is not enough; one needs it as well as the means to bring it to fruition. Leadership without management is empty; management without leadership is sterile. So can we get past this empty, sterile debate as well? Can we call a truce on vacantly praising leaders and vainly disparaging managers already?

Comments

[Samantha Bartholomew]

It is true - the leader/manager dichotomy is misleading. They represent different dimensions of the "change" & "survival" formula, whether we are talking organizations or nation-states. Org experts have long understood the necessities of both -- of transformational AND transactional modes of influence. As well, sources of such influence are often distributed throughout an administration or organization. While leadership is attractive when followers and constituents are ready to imagine becoming a "new" thing (transformation), we also prefer not to fall apart or destruct on the way (management). It is probably more the case that the tendency to want to split leadership and management into an either/or is more a reflection on the psychological/emotional needs of the would-be followers ... especially in increasingly uncertain, economically dismal times. It is a good thing to continue to call attention to the fictions we create with our either/or reflexes. I think it is safe to say that managing (staying alive, which in the old days meant staying the same) requires an eye to the environment, which requires a certain degree of "vision" to ensure organizational survival. Leadership requires a degree of management (or a darn good team of managers around you) to translate the vision of something new into something that people can experience in their everyday lives (as employees or citizens.)

All this to say, Ditto!