adminShelter Chieza Change Management
As I sat listening to a teaching from one of my greatest mentors I could not help but realise that we often compartmentalise leaders to the popular folks that are at the helm of organisations.
We are all leaders in our own sphere of influence. We lead homes, focus groups, communities.
The British and American educational systems are particularly distinct when it comes to this, a small child is groomed from early childhood that he or she is a winner and a leader.
Is it not amazing that most corporates today are over-managed and under-led? Companies need to develop their capacity for training people to exercise leadership.
Why as a company would you wait to lure leaders from other organisations instead of grooming your own?
Successful companies do not wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out individuals with leadership potential internally and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential.
Send your employees to school, set up a training department and develop a policy that has a strong inclination to training and development.
Get me right, a crop of good managers is good, however, strong leadership with weak management is no better. Try to strike a balance between strong leadership and strong management.
Whichever way you see it, the basic appreciation is that leadership has a way of setting a new direction or vision for a group that they follow.
Management tends to control or direct people or resources according to principles, values or vision that have already been established.
One of my favourite writers, Bob Selden, author of “What to do When you Cecome the Boss”, said for a manager to be considered a leader there should be:
A shared understanding of the environment – “We know what we face”
A shared vision of where we are going – “We know what we have to do”
A shared set of organisational values – “We are in this together”
A shared feeling of power – “We can do this”
So what is the mark of a great manager and a leader? Great leaders have been chronicled in different ways.
They impact people’s lives in significant ways, whether good or bad, they still are impacting. One leader who immediately comes to mind is the late DPRK Great Leader Kim Il Sung who we are told had such a profound impact on his nation that his personal characteristics were taught throughout the educational system.
His impact was that citizens were requested to wear a pin/badge of his image. His death was declared a national tragedy, and hundreds of thousands were seen crying at his funeral.
Such was the aura that he carried – the state was thrown into three years of national mourning! That’s the mark of a great and leader with impact.
If you lead and are forgotten as soon as you leave then you are not a great leader.
John P. Kotter in a Harvard Business Review Publication reiterated that “leadership has nothing to do with having charisma or other special personality traits. It’s not the province of a chosen few.
“Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action.”
Closer to home, we have men and women that have literally pulled thousands and filled stadiums for religious reasons.
These lead huge crowds and impact people’s lives in different directions. Whichever way you look at it, the choice of the best leaders and managers is purely personal.
What I know and believe that each one of us has the potential to be either one or both of them. I commit to being a leader at all times.
Till next week, may God richly bless you!
Shelter Chieza is an advisor in management issues. She can be contacted at [email protected]
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