Questions on Leadership and Management (2)

I am enough of an artist to draw freely from my imagination” (Albert Einstein).

It is quite amazing that the debate around differences between the manager and the leader continue to persist. What cannot be in doubt is that the manager must lead his team effectively through excellent leadership. A leader must also manage his team effectively by managing their behaviours, abilities and expectations. The end game of every leadership engagement is to achieve set goals. That is precisely the same end result desired by every person that is tasked with any form of management responsibilities. Leaders must manage effectively, and managers must lead effectively.

The most important issue in management is to utilise available resources to achieve the best possible outcomes at the least possible cost. This will often demand that the principles of transformational leadership are incorporated into the management style. A realistic way of doing this is to encourage the intrinsic worth of team members so that they are committed to add value because of their emotional ownership as team members, rather than because of an external reward-based mechanism.

Encouraging intrinsic worth of team members is an ongoing process, whose aim is to make every individual team member to feel good about themselves, as well as about their roles, responsibilities and rewards. This is achieved through the giving of respect and recognition to each person as a valued team member. Even when they are not physically rewarded, most team members are usually inspired to create and add value where required, as long as they are made to feel valuable. Helping team members to that level is one of the most important responsibilities of every leader and/or manager.

The critical issue is that people tasked with management responsibilities at any level must think of themselves as leader-managers and not just as task managers. As leader-managers, they must learn how to motivate team members to do their jobs effectively and efficiently by fostering the right belief systems, which compels the “can-do” attitude. The concept of leader-manager is all about harnessing the powers of both efficient management and effective leadership to compel necessary change and achieve desired goals. But the leadership style that best suits the team, environment and situation must be identified and applied. 

The personality of the leader-manager makes the greatest difference especially in the work environment. It matters much in this regard that the ideas of transformational leadership be incorporated into the management routine. With this in mind, the leader-manager primarily seeks to identify, enhance and transform individual team member’s abilities in ways that would encourage them to excel. In order to achieve this goal, team members should be supported to concentrate on doing what they are best at doing. 

The plan of the leader-manager must always be to facilitate personal “JAF” (“Joy”, “Achievement” and “Fulfillment”) in his team. When people do what they love and love what they do, they usually become less concerned about physical entitlements, but are more focused on personal improvements. This is what truly transformational leaders seek for in their quest for team performance excellence. And, this is where inspirational leadership and effective people management find convergence.

My personal advocacy is that the leader-manager concept should be entrenched in organisations, and indeed everywhere that the best is required and demanded from people operating in a team. In this regard, the idea that the manager is the key representative of the organisation responsible for ensuring compliance with organisational policy, plans and systems is very important and must be encouraged. The idea is commonly associated with the transactional leadership style.

This important feature of transactional leadership style is however most effective when coupled with the transformational leadership style, which tends to support personal development of team members. This union of leadership styles is what the leader-manager concept offers. It is a calling to every team member to seize opportunities to positively influence others. It implies that team members have to learn to listen to one another, simply because they also need to rely on one other to achieve together.

This underlies the current trends in team dynamics, where no single team member is a mega star. Rather, every team member is regarded as a superstar. With such beliefs, the leader-manager is best motivated to reach out to each team member and bring out the best in them, while at the same time creating strong bonds, mutual understanding, respect and recognition. With the desire to get every team member to be on the same page regarding team vision, strategy and planning, achieving team goals become much easier. There are fewer ways than this to ensure both personal and team productivity.

Successful leadership coaching engagements are those that set out to improve organisational effectiveness through strategic transformational leadership tools and techniques as one of the most important coaching outcomes. This goal of course dovetails into the leadership coaching approach of facilitating and supporting the leader’s lifestyle, wisdom, management style, leadership abilities, communicable vision, and other skills to achieve goals of corporate development.

Emmanuel Imevbere