Leadership vs. Management

Do you want to be a leader or a manager? You need to make a choice, as there is a huge difference. “The world is full of managers and woefully lacking in leaders – real leaders:

Leadership Defined – “Leadership is influencing people to get things done to a standard and quality above their norm. And doing it willingly:  Leadership is a complex activity involving:

• a process of influence
• individuals who are both leaders and followers
• a range of possible outcomes – the achievement of goals, but also the commitment of individuals to such goals, the enhancement of group dynamics and the reinforcement of change in an organizational culture.

Effective Leadership as a Source of Competitive Business Advantage

Leadership is a critical element that enables the successful molding of a group of people into a team – shaping them into a force that gives the business a strong competitive business advantage.  Leaders have the knowledge and the skills to make people function together.  And they know  how to motivate them to excel. Leaders also know how to balance the individual team member’s personality and work style with the goal of getting results.  Leaders demand that their teams forego their focus for personal best into one in concert with the overall team effort.

Role, Task, Responsibility, and Source of Power of a Leader

• The role of a leader is to create followers.
• The task of a leader is to bring about positive and necessary change.
• The responsibility of a leader is to bring about the change in a way that is responsive to the true and long-term needs of all stakeholders.

The greatest source of power available to a leader is the trust that derives from consistently and honstly serving followers

The Essence of Managerial Leadership

The genuine leader is someone who can express a vision and then get people to carry it out, said Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric.

Leadership versus Management

Leadership is more than just having the authority of a management or supervisory position. Authority gets a manager compliance. Leadership gets you commitment.

“When you influence others to follow, they do so because they like you, admire you, and recognize your knowledge, talent and competencies to achieve goals. ”

Integrity

While leadership is always important to a business’ performance, there is a growing realization that effective leaders who are ethical are absolutely crucial to successfully navigating the 21^st Century.  There is also a fast being recognized realization that the characteristics of the Leader is different than even the recent past.

Building Sustainable Competitive Advantage

It’s crtical that a leader focus their firm’s resources on what it does best and what creates sustainable substantial competitive advantage.  Three characteristics of a leaders’ core competences include:

1. They must deliver a major disproportional contribution to the stakeholder(s) value
2. They should be open minded and ready to open the door to other opportunities
3. They should represent such significant industry or competency knowledge that cannot be copied by others

Leading Change

Leadership is about getting people to abandon their old habits and achieve new things, and therefore largely about change -  about inspiring, helping, and sometimes enforcing change in people. “While there can be effective management absent ideas, there can be no true leadership.”⁴

To Lead or To Manage?

You need both. The old proverb says that leadership is doing the right thing; management is doing things right. The difference between the two is not as sharp as the saying would suggest, and both are required for effective corporate growth: leadership risk creates opportunities while management strictness turns them into tangible results.

“There is a direct correlation between the way people view their managers and the way they perform. Strong leadership is imperative for shaping a group of people into a force that serves as a competitive business advantage.

Building Better Leaders through Attributes

Leadership attributes are the inner or personal qualities to constitute effective leadership. These attributes include a large array of characteristics such as values, character, motives, habits, traits, motives, style, behaviors, and skills…

Results-based Leadership

What is missing in most leadership-related writings and teachings, is the lack of attention to results. Most of them focus on organizational capabilities – such as adaptability, agility, mission-directed, or values-based – or on leadership competencies- such as vision, character, trust, and other exemplary attributes, competencies and capabilities. All well and good, but what is seriously missing is the connection between these critical capabilities and results¹. And this is what results-based leadership is all about: how organizational capabilities and leadership competencies lead to and are connected to desired results.

Super-Leadership – Leading Others to Lead Themselves

Super-leaders help each of their follower to develop into an effective self-leader by providing them with the behavioral and cognitive skills necessary to exercise self-leadership. “Super-leaders establish values model, encourage, reward, and in many other ways foster self-leadership in individuals, teams, and wider organizational culture.

An important measure of a leader’s own success is he success of his or her followers. The strength of a leader is measured by the ability to facilitate the self-leadership of others. The first critical step towards this goal is to master self-leadership. If leaders want to lead somebody, they must first lead themselves

Why Super-Leadership?

Super-leadership is a new form of leadership for the era of knowledge-based enterprises distinguished by flat organizational structures and employee empowerment.  A super-leader is one who leads others to lead themselves through designing and implementing the system that allows and teaches employees to be self-leaders.

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers” (Ralph Nader)

Empowered Self-Leadership

The best organizations have a theory and practice of leadership that subscribes to and promotes the concept that leadership exists at all levels within the organization. “Everyone provides leadership for those responsibilities that have been assigned to them. For the the highest performing organizations, even the lowest-ranked staff within an organization must assume leadership and attention to detail for their