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

     “Many managers recently became first-time remote leaders.”

 This author deliberately reversed the two emboldened words, which were in the opening sentence of an ‘Inc. This Morning’ eblast, April 2020, that refers to our Coronavirus Pandemic changes.

This author was stunned by the real original opening line: ‘Many leaders recently became first-time remote managers.’ Why? For three key reasons:

» Firstly, he was chagrined to see both manager and leader in the same sentence, where they almost appear like interchangeable words: whereas, in fact, they serve quite different functions. If you are aware of their current meaning – more in a moment – the email author’s statement would almost read like an oxymoron.

Today’s briefest definitions of managers and leaders look like: managers are systems and process fixated, while leaders are people and progress focused.  Taking these into account, Inc magazine’s actual suggestion could potentially lead to disaster. That’s because remote ‘systems-process’ oriented managers would be the least likely characters to hold dispersed work-related teams together. Team members would probably resent any proposed ‘systems or processes’ that were thrust upon them in due course, since such machinations would smack of distrust. Distrust barriers between managers and their staff are already at unhealthily high levels.

Remotely dispersed people yearn leadership, especially during a pandemic crisis, since leaders would do much to keep their spirits up. Too much management would likely make them feel depressed and encourage them to move on elsewhere. Of course, effective leaders are well aware that there are useful elements in management thinking and will usually apply them where appropriate. However, they wouldn’t apply them at the expense of harming their people relations or reducing the likelihood of progress.

» Secondly, by calling on these same definitions, it would seem rather inconceivable for a systems-process believing manager to convert themselves into becoming a successful remote people and progress leader. Managers are by definition not particularly trusting of people, which is why they spend so much of their time devising ‘systems’ and ‘processes’ to corral them in a certain devined, command-and-control direction. Leaders, by contrast, spend their time getting their people to ‘buy-in’ to what needs to be accomplished and then empower them to make the most of their situation. The latter approach will be much more appealing within remote working teams.

 » Thirdly, the eblast unfortunately shows a classic misunderstanding about manager and leader roles, such that when placed together in the same sentence it almost creates that oxymoron. In other words, you would take leaders, who are generally good at engaging and making people as productive as possible, and turn them into managers, who enjoy enforcing policies and procedures through bureaucratic activities. There are much better uses for those managers.

All the indications are with this pandemic that our traditionally crowded and highly managed offices are going to be somewhat taboo, at least during the near-term: hence the likely motivation behind the Inc. article. This is presumably to be the case for at least the next 18 months until a vaccine is perfected. By that time everyone will have adjusted to a new normal. So, wherever possible, workplace people will become accustomed to working remotely rather than being under the noses of their ‘managers.’

The Inc eblast article went on to quote their poster-boy, entrepreneurial target, who had built a successful media company starting out during the 2008 Great Recession. He has now built a thriving company, which currently has 80 remote workplace people. In fact, the entrepreneur still doesn’t utilize any formal offices for his venture. He was quoted as saying: “The key to good leadership was never proximity or scrutiny in the first place – and smarts and motivation don’t punch clocks…” This author’s confession: he converted the quoted use of word ‘management’ into ‘leadership,’ since the former just seemed out of place in view of our prior definitions.

Among the stories that are also circulating amid the pandemic are the contrasts between two types of organizations: those that laid their people off with the shut-down and those who struggled to hang on to them. The latter group have tried to hold their people together either through full-salaries, part-time activities, or furloughed with medical benefits. This represents another classic departure point between conventional managers (CMs) and enlightened leaders (ELs).

Many of those who laid their people off will feel rather confident that many of them will return; even though it’s likely that many of those people are in shock right now. Even so, once they begin to pull themselves back together and start learning about those businesses which struggled to hold their teams together, they will just put two-and-two together. Then don’t be so sure that they will return. Even if they do, they may not be around in a year from now. They will have probably been lured away by those more people-enlightened and stand-by-you enterprises.

There’s no doubt that this COVID-19 crisis has put many executives on the proverbial ‘leadership spot:’ both for now and during the foreseeable future. Did they hold onto their people talent or let them fly with the wind? The fact that there are 10 million or more people currently unemployed right now, indicates that there are an awful lot of management-minded executives out there.

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