Tag Archives: management

Leader as manager

Posted on July 10, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Strong leadership with weak management is no better, and sometimes is actually worse, than the reverse. The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other.
— John Kotter

This month we’ve been focusing on building organizational talent. Last month’s topic was customer service. I’d like to step back for a minute and think about why these activities are important to leadership. Aren’t they much more about tactical management?

Our teamKotter is preparing to facilitate an executive leadership development program, so I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at literature on leadership. One of the articles that I find very helpful is John Kotter’s What Leaders Really Do, (first published in Harvard Business Review and then in a book of the same name).

Kotter’s model helps explain why one of MnSCU’s four leadership competency domains focuses on leader as manager. He highlights the difference between leadership and management, and makes the case that both are needed:

  • Management is about coping with complexity. Managers bring order and consistency to key activities such as student enrollment or quality of the academic experience.
  • Leadership is about coping with change. Leaders look to the future and make sense of new educational technologies, changing student demographics, and new sources of competition.

Kotter argues that one of the best ways to develop strong leaders who are also strong managers is through on-the-job experience. This is vital for our new staff members, and continues to be important throughout their careers. As we help our people develop as leaders, it is essential to provide experiences that allow them to cope with both complexity and change.

As we address the challenges identified in the recent draft report on Charting the Future of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, the MnSCU system will need to develop strong managers, strong leaders, and most importantly, people who can do both.  What kind of learning opportunities do you seek for yourself? What opportunities do you provide for the people you lead?

Dee Anne Bonebright

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Posted in higher education, Leadership, leadership competencies, leadership development, talent management

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Leadership versus management

Posted on June 3, 2013 by | Leave a comment

“Leadership and management must go hand in hand. They are not the same thing. But they are necessarily linked, and complementary. Any effort to separate the two is likely to cause more problems than it solves.”  –Allan Murray

Differences between leadership and management have been debated over the last 50 years by well-known authors and thought leaders like John Kotter, Warren Bennis, and others. In fact, during my tenure at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, I’ve often been asked the questions, “What’s the difference between managers and leaders?  Do you have to be a leader to be a manager? Do you have to manage others in order to lead effectively?”

Bennis, who attempted to delineate the differences between managers and leaders in his 1989 book, On Becoming A Leader, said:

  • The manager administers; the leader innovates
  • The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective
  • The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why
  • The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon
  • The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it

One of his best known quotes is “Managers are people who do things right; leaders are people who do the right thing.”

While these distinctions are interesting, I often find them unhelpful. Within the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, everyone from individual contributor to senior leaders CAN exercise leadership. And we need managers who demonstrate leadership ability to innovate, challenge the status quo, articulate a vision, ask the right questions, and inspire others to follow.

Over the next few months, we’ll be focusing on a set of MnSCU Leadership Competencies, titled: Leader as Manager. This set of competencies is a useful framework for all our leaders in formal supervisory or managerial roles and includes:

  • Builds Customer Service Orientation
  • Builds Organizational Talent
  • Demonstrates Good Stewardship

Leader as manager competencies reinforce the idea that leadership and management must go hand in hand. They are inextricably linked.

In thinking about my own leadership, I tend to demonstrate some of Bennis’s characteristics of managers AND leaders. I have a difficult time staying in one camp or the other. For instance, there are times that I administer and other times that I innovate. When I’m feeling truly motivated,  I can also keep one eye on the bottom line and the other eye on the horizon. What about you?

Anita Rios

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Posted in leadership development, self awareness

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