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Leadership and Management Understood

Written by: Tom Schulte

Article Overview: Many people confuse the ideas of what is true leadership and what is management. Many people think the two words are interchangeable and give little thought to the important differences between them. If, however, you take a quick moment and understand their unique differences, you will be better equipped to get better results through better relationships.

Leadership and Management Understood

When it comes to effective leadership and getting results through others, it is important to remember the differences between the concepts of "Leadership" and “Management." One easy way to remember the differences between the two is to remember this: Leaders should lead people while managing tasks, processes and resources.

To understand this, simply ask anyone if they would prefer to be lead by their boss, or would they prefer to be managed? Almost everyone would rather be lead. And, as you might imagine, managing a pile of paperwork would certainly be much easier than trying to lead it.

Here are some good reads on the topic of leadership:

"Authentic Leadership" by Bill George
"Primal Leadership" by Daniel Goleman
"The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" by Dr. John C. Maxwell
"Executive Intelligence" by Justin Menkes

Think about a mindless stack of paperwork and then think about what comes along with your average human being. People come with a variety of complexities that makes it impossible to actually manage them as a whole. People we work with embody a multitude of attitudes, dispositions, histories, talents, troubles, families, preferences, values, achievements, skill sets, opinions and a ton of other components that make it very difficult to manage them through control. Leading people is actually a much easier task than managing people if you know how to motivate, navigate, and communicate with them as they are. If you don’t know how to do this, there's hope! With some concerted effort, you can learn these proven methods.

The books listed above are a great place to begin understanding how to do this. It will take practice, but the payoff is huge! The key is to focus on what internally drives each person you lead and make sure that you are aligned with those intimate motivators when your are trying to get a job done through the efforts of complex creatures.

Just remember, if people would come to work and leave that long list of personal attributes at home, then we might actually have a chance to manage them. Unfortunately, they don’t, so our focus should be on how best to lead them to achieve the desired results.

I hope this helps you in your leadership journey!

Tom Schulte | CEO
Recalibrate Professional Development
www.leadershippowerlabs.com
Leadership PowerLabs: “High-Impact Leadership Training fit for the Blackberry-Attention-Span”™

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Article Tags: business, influence, l2l, leadership, leadership development, leadership training, linked 2 leadership, management, power



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