I am the father of two adult young men. As most fathers, like most parents I know, I’m proud of these guys. Looking back at my parenting style, I realize that as my boys matured, my parenting style evolved.
Young kids need more supervision, more rules, and more protection from themselves. With infants and toddlers, parents use gates to keep them from tumbling down stairs. The younger the child, the more hard and fast rules we diligently enforce.
As children grow and reach the age of reasoning and reckoning, many rules turn to guidelines; the training wheels come off. As children turn into young adults, there’s a dramatic shift in parental face-time, and rules become much harder to enforce as our children spend less time under our parental thumbs.
By the time our kids are driving, our ability to ensure their safety and manage the risks of avoiding life-threatening events is close to impossible. If we haven’t instilled a value system, a moral compass that allows them to be self-guided, there will likely be issues. As children mature, parents must shift from managers to leaders. To a system that guides them when we can no longer fence them inside a play-pen.
At work, are you a Manager or are you a Leader? Where do you fall on the Leadership Versus Management scale? Do you treat your people like children, or do you empower their independent actions? Are your employees motivated by fear…. by carrots and sticks? Or do they respect you? Are you modeling the behavior you expect or dictating it? Do they perform because they are afraid of losing their job or because they want your approval? As a business owner, can you walk away from your business for two months and return to a thriving organization?
“Your title makes you a manager, your people make you a leader.” Bill Campbell
Leadership versus Management. If you have the right team, inspiration results in higher performance than fear. If you have the wrong team, then Management is just a delaying tactic to failure.
Strong leadership creates a culture of sustainable high performance. Great leadership requires trust, vision, and personal strength. Outstanding leadership creates scalable teams.
Excellent Management is challenging, exhausting, and time-consuming work. A managed organization requires more work and more supervision than a leadership-driven company to build to scale.
Great leaders are great leaders first and good or OK managers second. Great companies are led by great leaders.
Check out this list and see which column personifies your style:
Great Leaders trump Great Managers. As you read the words above, how would you characterize your style?
Are you a business leader? Want to talk about leadership? Want someone to keep you on a high-performing leadership track? Let’s have a conversation about that. Schedule a complimentary one-hour coaching session here.
