Business Mastery

You’ll find the key for establishing leadership skills in your self within this article. Enjoy the material. We have found that most people equate managing and leading. They often interchange the terms managing and leading. Of course, in order to be an effective manager you have to be a leader. However, the opposite is not a case. One of the essential skills of management is leading, but leading and managing are not the same.

Think being a leader and being a manager are exactly the same?

Interesting question, but it’s not asked very often because people believe they already know managing and leading are the same concept. “They are the same thing,” most people believe. Particularly in a business environment, people think of their managers as the leaders. If you happen to be a member of an accounting department, for example, your manager is also your leader. And, it’s true. Leaders are often the ones promoted into managers. Also true that high-performing individuals are the ones getting promotions into management jobs. Great performing workers are not always your best management candidate, but that’s another story.

Is it crucial you have leadership skills to be a manager?

It’s certainly true if the manager happens to be a poor leader it’s a quick path to failure. You can’t be an effective manager if you don’t have great leadership skills. Imagine a situation where there is some sort of problem or crises on the job. The normal reaction during a problem is to look towards the boss. It’s expected she will provide leadership in that situation. If the manager has poorly developed leading skills, you’ll find the probability of success of solving a problem go way down. In most cases the workers want to focus on their job and leave problem-solving to their managers. They want and expect their manager to be leaders in those situations.

In general, people gravitate towards leaders. The majority of people like the security and the knowledge of knowing that someone else is in charge. They like knowing that they have a leader that is looking after them. As a result, they will always look to authority.

Is it possible that you could be a leader and not be a manager?

Of all the questions we’ve asked in this article, this is perhaps the best one of the bunch. In a word, yes. Your goal should be to have more people willing and able to lead than just your managers. Whenever a manager falls short one of the other leaders can pick up the ball. If in above example, one of the other people on the team, provided they possessed the ability to lead, could have easily picked up the ball and solve the issue.

Certainly the leading skill is a vital component of management. We have learned that leading and management are different. You must have excellent leading capabilities in order to be a highly successful manager. You want to have as many leaders as you can even if they’re not your managers.

Generally, you always want to have a majority of your employees able to step up as leaders from time to time. As it turns out good leaders know when it’s the right time to step up.

We have developed a great new set of tools to help. Take a look at our subsidiary company.

One of my prospective clients had scheduled a brand-new restaurant opening day last week. But, it did not happen.

All the employees had been hired and trained and showed up for their first day to serve customers.

Hordes of anxious new patrons were lined up outside the front doors.

The local press had sent a camera crew and reporter planning to publish the success of the opening day.

But, also present was an official of the state’s health department. She had a notice in her hand requiring the restaurant to remain closed until a required document was filed properly.

The owner told me that he was very surprised because one of his senior management had the responsibility to complete the required documentation. In addition, that manager was his son-in-law and one of the restaurants owners.

When and if the outcome will be successful remains unclear.

Sadly, this incident reminded me of how many people believe that responsibility for something means that it will be done.

Actually, there’s very little connection between having the responsibility for something and things actually getting done as expected or hoped for.

Most of the time and individual’s areas of responsibility are delineated in their position descriptions or job descriptions.

Simply because someone has the responsibility, as outlined in their position description, doesn’t mean they’ll actually perform the job as you would have anticipated.

The best way to think about this is to envision a group of people with the same responsibilities.

That group could be your salesforce,  your file clerks or your warehouse personnel. People in those kinds of jobs, like schoolteachers, all have similar responsibilities. You know however, their actual job performance varies widely. Individually they will range from in competent to magnificent.

What the restaurant owner required and what you must always insist on is accountability.

In simple terms accountability means a culture of people giving their word and actually keeping it. Everyone else’s role is to insist people finish what they have agreed to do.

You surely know that delegating work to others is a excellent and suitable way to save masses of time, prioritise your own agenda and to concentrate on what are the “vitals” of what you should be doing. Nonetheless knowing when and the way to delegate well is the secret to being successful at it.

First, what does it mean to delegate? It is when you temporarily allow another to assume an area of your own responsibility. Note, it is a temporary assignment not a permanent one.

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Not many of us are going to install the full-blown Toyota Production System anytime soon. But, there is one aspect of it that has wide applicability for all of us.

The 5 Whys methodology is a great problem-solving technique that anyone can employ.

Although it’s not intended to be the end all and cure all, it is a technique I suggest you use to help solve the very next problem you face. It involves asking “why” over and over again until you get to the root of the reason the problem happened. Once you know the root cause, the solution is often much more clear.

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Bob Waterman and Tom Peters became famous for their landmark work, In Search of Excellence, published in 1982.

I like to re-read old management/business books to see how well their concepts have weathered. There is a very mixed result.

Let’s review part of their work here.

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