by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

 “Effective leaders focus on strategy: Efficient managers focus on implementation.”

    Leadership teams at their best bring clarity to future pathways for their group or enterprise; while management teams at their best bring clarity to detailed implementation plans. Every successful organization needs a dose of both capabilities, but reality demonstrates that executive teams naturally lean one way or the other toward these capabilities. It’s up to the overall strategic leader – Visionist/CEO – to determine that leaning.

That means: if the Visionist-CEO is a strategic thinker, their strategic team members are likely to hold sway. But if the Visionist-CEO is an operational thinker, then it’s likely only operational thinking team members will survive. The strategists will likely feel under-appreciated and leave, while the operational thinkers will hold sway. The latter is a too common scenario, which is why so many organizations don’t progress that much.

It is crucial for Visionists-CEOs and their executive teams to recognize their natural leanings and use those talents accordingly. That way, they will maximize the benefit to their enterprises and themselves. Let’s consider three scenarios:

 »The Efficient Manager – For both historical and current organizational reasons, such executives are clearly in the majority. People usually enter their careers in frontline roles where efficient day-to-day operating skills are crucial. For that reason, quite apart from those who hold true to their natural strategic gifts, the majority become fully grounded and committed to the operational thinking mode.

It becomes their forte to analyze and reformulate daily operations to run as smoothly as possible: aiming for minimal hourly or daily hassles. Those naturally good at these operating areas rise quickly through the operational ranks into more significant roles. They feel comfortable with numbers and recording appropriate daily efficiencies designed to help the bottom-line.

While such attributes are invaluable to owners and shareholders, they are not especially inspirational with regard to their team members. Staff can feel there’s something missing in relationships with their efficient managers, where they see themselves regarded more as a “thing,” a headcount or number; rather than respected as a talented contributor or person. Such feelings accumulate over time to the point where workplace people become somewhat robotic and dissatisfied within their work environment, due to this lack of personal recognition and appreciation.

Usually, their manager’s response toward such despondency is to award greater incentives and numerical goals to compensate. Where this goes too far, it can become a vicious cycle that eventually leads to flat performance or collapse.

»The Effective Leader – For those talented leaders who somehow escape the operational thinking mode, without being unduly modified by it; they will infuse a much different attitude into their workplace. They will be more strategic and people oriented.

Usually, it will begin with them figuring out potential  pathways – the likely team or organization vision and associated strategies. They are attuned to the notion that their people want to be fully aware of future team or venture intentions. More importantly, they appreciate that their people prefer to be involved with formulating pathways, as it will give their staff a deeper appreciation of any forthcoming activities.

Once they have their people on board, such leaders will collaborate with their team members on a regular basis – not supervising and controlling them – but to keep them engaged through their progress and contributions. Such regular involvement keeps team members on board, as well as makes people feel their leaders care about them. Staff feels valued as human beings rather than just being cogs within a system.

Creating such an environment gives people a sense of empowerment, creativity and being respected. Their financial rewards then become somewhat secondary, within reason, and they’re more eager to grow and contribute wherever possible. Environments like this enable ventures to thrive and prosper.

» The Hybrid – A portion of those conditioned to the operational mindset are capable of recognizing the limitations of being just efficient managers. Caught at the right moment, they can be educated into adopting somewhat more of an effective leadership mode: thus becoming perceived as a leadagers…a bit of both.

They are still disposed toward operational thinking, but are more open to the benefits realized by using a “people touch” and somewhat more strategic in their orientation…and then involving their people in that strategy. At this point, they are more attuned to availing themselves of the tools and techniques associated with being more effective leaders.

It is likely that up to 50% of your future executives-managers will fall into this category, and can be raised out of relying purely on analysis, numbers, goals and systems thinking before it’s too late. Such a partial transition could make a huge difference to your enterprise’s performance by identifying these hybrid-people types early on.

  Over the near term, it will be enormously valuable for you to identify these three types within your current executive-manager-leader ranks. Ideally you need to restrict the number of efficient managers, since there’s normally only a place for up to 30% of them. With regard to effective leaders, you may be lucky enough to have 15-20% of them within your current junior-senior executive ranks. That leaves around 50% of your executive-manager-leader types to become leadagers; that hybrid of efficient management and effective leadership thinkers…although, their manager-operational side is still likely to show more than 50% of the time.

Having an overall people-leadership team with such a combination will go a long way toward fostering enlightened teamwork at your more senior levels, since it will operate with a diversity of talents rather than all being of much the same ilk. This diversity of strategic and operational capability will increase overall creativity and encourage a lively dynamic, which is essential to off-setting in-breeding and preventing bureaucratization. So, get to work on determining to what extent you have the three differing types within your current key team: leaders, leadagers and managers. Your people and your organization’s future depend on it.

To learn more about these leader-manager modes, talk with: