How is leadership related to management? According
to the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge magazine,
not at all.
Let’s start with what makes a great manager: They
grasp what is the essential strength
of each person and capitalize on it. As the article
says memorably, "they play chess, not checkers." In
other words, everyone who reports to you is different—thank
God! Suss out what each member of your team excels
at, and let them concentrate on that. How can you figure
out what everyone’s real strengths are,
as opposed to the "strengths" they’ll list if you
ask them point-blank? Don’t ask point-blank: Instead,
ask an open-ended question such as, "What was the best
day you’ve had at work in the last three months?" Listen
with tremendous attentiveness to how they describe what they
were doing and what results they obtained.
But wait, if everyone has a special strength, doesn’t everyone
also have a special weakness? To be sure. The
secret here is to ignore them—or rather, to manage
around them. Do not, in other words, assign someone
with no head for details to manage a multi-office project. (And
to diagnose weaknesses, ask about the worst day lately.)
This may all sound logical and perhaps even obvious,
but a somewhat counterintuitive psychological insight
lies behind it: Self-awareness,
it turns out, isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. (Maybe
it is if your career is in poetry, but not if it’s in business.)
Consider:
"[Self-assurance,] not self-awareness, is the strongest
predictor of a person’s ability to set high goals, to persist
in the face of obstacles, to bounce back when reversals occur,
and, ultimately, to achieve the goals they set. By contrast,
self-awareness has not been shown to be a predictor of any
of these outcomes, and in some cases, it appears to retard
them."
Thus playing to people’s strengths and continually reinforcing
them ("I knew you could do it because you’re such a good [analyst/writer/negotiator/presenter,
etc…]") is how to turn talents into performance. Don’t
worry about the weaknesses; trying to remedy them is a job
even the person’s parents evidently couldn’t master, so who
are you to try? Rather, focus on proven strengths, reinforce
them, and urge people to aspire to greater challenges using
what they already know they can do well.
So are leaders different? Yes: While
the most effective managers tailor their approach to each
individual, leaders tap into what is universal and capitalize
upon the few universal uber-truths we all share to inspire
a vision of a better future, cutting across all distinctions
of race, age, gender, or attainment level.
Managers
use projects and individuals.
Leaders
use stories and heroes.
