We Don’t Need More Managers. We Need Leaders.

Today, we are inundated with information about the importance of leaders and their increasingly difficult role in motivating employees and managing the ever-changing work climate. As businesses are attempting to thrive during the Great Resignation, we're reflecting on what it means to be a leader versus a manager.

Can you have good leadership without good management?

We look to leading researchers and thinkers like Brené Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek. They are redefining the notion of what leadership is and how leaders are called to behave today. Over the past two decades, Brown’s research has focused on the intersection of leadership and vulnerability, while Grant urges leaders to think like scientists, constantly questioning their thinking and assumptions. Sinek captures our imagination by stressing the value of finding your personal and organizational why and a just cause.

In our current environment, being a manager alone isn’t enough. It’s time we evolve into leaders who can excite, influence, and be catalysts for change.

You might be thinking, “Hey, not so fast! Can I be a great leader without having some skills and traits of a good manager? Who is paying attention to the operations? What about keeping track of sales and ROI? What’s the difference anyway? Is this just semantics?”

In the HBR article, “What Leaders Really Do”, John Kotter brings to the surface an important question: What is leadership? And is it different than management? He makes the case that management and leadership call on different skills and that good leadership requires both complementary skill sets – each playing an important role. Because leadership in the absence of good management is no better, and perhaps, even worse, than management without good leadership.

What is management?

Management is a way to minimize complexity by planning, budgeting, and setting goals and targets while figuring out how to track them. That means keeping an eye on the details and finding systems that will provide you with the “data and information” that you need to make good decisions as a leader. It requires organizing your business processes and making sure you have the right talent to do the work. Managing is also about daily problem-solving and instituting systems that provide feedback – both on processes and people, and perhaps most importantly, daily communication.

What is leadership?

Leadership is thinking strategically about where your team is going, setting expectations and supporting your team in reaching them. Most importantly, leadership is defining and facilitating a culture within the organization that supports the vision and purpose.

This requires seeing the big picture to determine what your company’s strengths are, where the marketplace is going, and how these two forces intersect. A quality leader thinks broadly, taking in the full vision of the forest and not letting themselves get stuck growing a single tree. It means asking the hard questions about the purpose driving your organization and figuring out how you communicate that to your team and your customers. This work is hard, and that’s why we partner with experienced psychologists and management consultants when we work through discovering your organization’s purpose, values, and vision – what we call your Brand Heart.

One of the most challenging yet important aspects of this work as a leader is being able to define and articulate your values. The return of this work results in an organizational climate that supports the actions you must take when navigating decisions and interactions with your team and clients to move closer to realizing your goals.

Kotter sums it up best when he states, “Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.”

This sentiment has never been more true than it is today. With the world changing at lightning speed, from remote work to the gig economy, creating an environment for team members to find personal meaning, digging deep within yourself to discover your own personal values, and translating this to clarify the purpose of your company has never been more essential. We can no longer rely on a roadmap to move us forward. You need a compass – one rooted in what your organization values most.

Ready to make the jump from management to leadership?

Get in touch to begin discovering what matters most to your company.

Want to dig deeper?

Dare to Lead – by Brené Brown, 2018

Think Again – by Adam Grant, 2021

Start with Why – by Simon Sinek, 2009

The Infinite Game – by Simon Sinek, 2018

What Leaders Really Do – by John Kotter, Harvard Business Review, May 2001