Amplifiers E-Book

Tom Finegan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 383

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Wall Street Journal bestseller Discover how to enable strategic change efforts by relying on your best people In Amplifiers, entrepreneur and expert management and technology consultant Tom Finegan delivers an insightful new way to think about human behavior in the execution of corporate transformations. Through an exploration of the career journeys of several leaders and analyses of "True Amplifiers" in action, the book demonstrates how to deliver strategic and transformative change by relying on the efforts of key, exemplary followers. This important book: * Explains the different ways that being a true amplifier is experienced by different ethnicities and genders * Describes the "Cell Concept" of amplifiers, and how they interact with other stakeholders of your organization * Discusses the work of amplifiers across global industries and organizations Perfect for executives, managers, and other business leaders responsible for change management and strategic execution, Amplifiers also belongs on the bookshelves of anyone who hopes to contribute to or lead organizations as they change direction.

Leseprobe

TOM FINEGAN

AMPLIFIERS

HOW GREAT LEADERS MAGNIFY THE POWER OF TEAMS, INCREASE THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZATIONS, AND TURN UP THEVOLUME ONPOSITIVE CHANGE

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Finegan. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Finegan, Tom, author.

Title: Amplifiers : how great leaders magnify the power of teams, increase the impact of organizations, and turn up the volume on positive change / Tom Finegan.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2021] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021016723 (print) | LCCN 2021016724 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119794554 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119794578 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119794561 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Followership.

Classification: LCC HD57.7 .F5555 2021 (print) | LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/092—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016723

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016724

COVER DESIGN: PAUL MCCARTHY

COVER ART: © GETTY IMAGES | PIXALOT

This book is dedicated to Bobby Menges (October 21, 1997–September 8, 2017), a true Amplifier throughout his shortened life. He packed more in his nineteen years than most in their lifetimes.

All of the author's proceeds from this book will be donated to the I'm Not Done Yet Foundation, a 501(c)3 in support of adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer patients and their families.

www.imnotdoneyetfoundation.org

Introduction

During a family trip to Sweden a few years ago, I came across the historical Vasa. The Swedish warship from the 1600s stands as an enormous symbol of leadership and followership gone awry. Gustav II Adolf was the King of Sweden between 1611 and 1632. He commissioned the construction of four ships to support his war effort, with one being the most powerful warship in the Baltic. The ship was doomed from the design. The hubris of the king and the enormity of the ship were too much for the ship's lead designer, Henrik Hybertsson. Although he was an experienced ship designer, the size and scale were beyond Hybertsson’s experience. However, he designed what the king wanted.

Although it was common for warships in the period to be somewhat top heavy, the experts at the shipyard were convinced that there was too much height and weight above the waterline and far too little ballast to support the buoyancy of the ship. Yet construction continued. The workers and their supervisors at the shipyard were not devoid of national pride, nor did they intend to put an unseaworthy vessel into war. They simply did not have the courage to tell the king, their titled executive or boss, that his vision was flawed.

Prior to the maiden voyage, the ship's captain had thirty men run across the deck to cause it to sway to demonstrate to the vice admiral that the ship was unsafe. After three passes, the captain stopped the demonstration for fear of the ship sinking. Yet even with this knowledge, at the final hour prior to the ship's sailing, the captain, the admiral, and the crew chose to squash their concerns and continue on the perilous mission. After sailing only 1,400 yards, the ship sank during its maiden voyage.

Although they were following the directives of the king, this example shows the flaws in both the king's leadership and the ship workers' followership. The king could not accept truth and criticism, and the followers could not deliver the news. Whereas the responsibility lies on both leader and follower to avoid disastrous, or in the case of the Vasa, fatal, consequences, it is hard for followers to bring bad news to a hubristic leader. However, leaders are rarely effective unless they themselves cut their teeth in followership. Good leaders need good followers. And exceptional followers possess a unique blend of leadership and followership characteristics. These exceptional followers are true Amplifiers.

True Amplifiers look like everyday people, but they produce outsized contributions to society. Racial injustices have existed for hundreds of years, but as a result of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and sadly too many more, we are now seeing the seeds of change begin to take root. The hard truth is there is significant work to do, and some have been doing it for years. John Hope Bryant has been sowing the seeds of change for decades with Operation HOPE. His vision is that if he can help people with economic and financial independence, they can prosper and live a more fulfilling life than previous generations. Bryant is a leader for sure. But a closer look will confirm he is just as strong a follower as he is a leader. In fact, I'd argue that his success as a leader is a direct result of his followership. In this book, we will take a closer look at leaders like John Hope Bryant, assess their followership skills, and define the characteristics of a true Amplifier in action.

As someone who has played baseball my whole life, it isn't surprising that one of my favorite books is Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Although I was familiar with what Billy Beane was doing with the Oakland Athletics, I did not know of the origins and the nuance underneath the strategy. Beane reinvented traditional thinking on what statistics matter in player recruitment and development. His new take on talent scouting in fact led to a transformative approach for all professional sports. The same philosophy applies to corporations. Organizations need to look at their employees in an entirely different way. For a century, we have evaluated employees on job competencies, management ability, and leadership. These are definitely important, but they miss the true human capital value in an organization. It misses finding the key followers and thus, the true Amplifiers.

Thirty years ago, my cofounders and I started Clarkston Consulting with a simple desire to genuinely serve our clients and create a rewarding environment for our employees, whom we call stewards. We called our employees stewards from the start because we want to emphasize the spirit of service we expect of them for our clients and our colleagues. We have worked with a wide variety of global and diverse companies from startup biotechs, upstart consumer brand disruptors, middle market manufacturing companies, and established global consumer products, life sciences, and retail companies. Over the years, we have helped these companies with their strategies and implemented transformation projects, ultimately exceeding $1 billion in cumulative revenue over the years. As a firm, we have seen many executive leaders in action, as well as leadership demonstrated through high-performance teams. We have also seen companies struggle to change and compete in the marketplace. And we have seen how they overcame those challenges. This book reflects our research and observations over the last three decades, dozens of case studies, and our interactions with thousands of professionals in the workplace.

Throughout my consulting career, I have seen countless examples of how some companies can outperform their peers by tapping into the special employees that have Amplifier qualities. On the flip side, we have seen the negative consequences of companies losing their way by following a crash course set by the executives at the top. What separates performance of the top-quartile and bottom-quartile companies oftentimes is the motives of the people at the top. Understanding these motives is critical to understanding ultimate job performance.

We can also turn to areas outside the corporate world to gather insight into good followership and how that leads to Amplifier behavior. Imagine an electorate who can honestly face facts, sort through fact and fiction, and make truly informed and unemotional decisions. Far too often, we replay or echo information we want to believe, think we should believe (for countless reasons), or are afraid to change our old ideals and don't take the time to critically think for ourselves. Today's political stage across the world is very polarized. This is not productive. But compounded with misinformation and delusional thinking throughout the political spectrum, we end up with suboptimal results. We fail to realize that the pursuit of this misinformation and blind support of a politician or political party hollows our intellectual core and renders us as puppets. More critical, independent, challenging, rigorous thinking is needed because we are assaulted with so much information. We need more true Amplifiers who are not afraid to seek a 360-degree view of the truth, speak truth to power, and redirect the polarization to productive means.

Over the years, I've been a student of leadership and followership and their impact on corporate performance. The theme that has emerged from this study is that it takes a special blend of a professional—an Amplifier—to create and wield the power to magnify corporate outcomes. These people possess the unique combination of strong leadership and followership skills. This book is largely aimed at a corporate audience, but it applies to many other social, political, religious, athletic, and philanthropic organizations. For organizations to succeed, they need true Amplifiers. Amplifiers are the people who intuitively know how to simultaneously influence up, lead others, and execute the mission of the firm. Although some people are natural Amplifiers, we have found the ability to magnify corporate outcomes can be enhanced by developing and nurturing Amplifier styles, motives, and traits. Having worked with numerous companies, large and small, I have been able to see their management teams up close and personal. We have helped to create and execute their business strategies. Whether these companies were winners or losers may have depended in part on their product offerings and the markets they serve, but their success is largely based on the strength of their human capital—their people.

Most people believe that in order to be successful, they must be a leader. That is categorically false. Most successful people are followers. But the magic happens when an individual is a highly effective leader and a highly capable follower. This produces the Amplifier. True Amplifiers are the key to success for great companies. They magnify corporate culture, get the most out of teams, increase the impact of organizations, and turn up the volume on positive change within their companies and society.

It has been fun for me to see and work with individuals who were earmarked as “HiPos” or “high-potential employees” and to see how the organizations groomed them in feeder roles and offered them increasing responsibilities. At the time, I knew these individuals were special, but I always attributed that to their leadership capabilities. This was only true in part. The other part, and some might argue the more important part, is their followership ability and functional job competence. The rare breed of great leader and great follower combined produces true Amplifiers. True Amplifiers are the special employees in great companies that actually make them great.

The book is organized into three main sections. In part 1, we introduce the concept of Amplifiers and why they are so important for corporate success. We then take a deeper dive into the differences and mistakes people make by confusing leadership with titled executives or bosses. When analyzing these differences, we explore the difference and common misunderstanding between leadership and management. Then we take a deeper dive into followership and subordinates to better understand the value of followership in corporate success.

Part 2 of the book focuses on finding and developing Amplifiers in your company. We review how “talent scouting” misses the mark in most companies and lay out several strategies to better find and develop potential Amplifiers throughout the company. We thoroughly analyze leadership, followership, and Amplifier styles, motives, and traits in order to create specific development programs to enhance these characteristics throughout the organization. Throughout the section, several examples of Amplifiers who have had successful careers are highlighted along with their secrets and suggestions on what it takes to be an Amplifier.

In part 3 of the book, we explore how Amplifiers magnify the power of teams and increase the impact of corporate performance for its stakeholders. We dig deeper into the Amplifier effect on corporate strategy and how Amplifiers turn up the volume on positive change and corporate racial justice. Several examples highlighting the positive impact of Amplifiers and negative ramifications on corporate outcomes when there is a lack of Amplifiers can be found throughout this section.

Finally, we close the book with how Amplifiers can amplify life beyond work and create a lasting impact on countless people with whom they interact.

Throughout the book, I use my experience and draw from the collective experiences of my colleagues in the firm. Therefore, there are times where I use first-person references, in other cases I use we. I also want to respect the emerging thinking regarding gender pronouns and refrain from using he, his, she, or her and use they, their, or them as a singular, nongender version of the pronoun.

1True Amplifiers: Leaders, Bosses, Followers, and Subordinates

The key to unlocking organizational success lies in discovering and deploying the Amplifiers in your company. Amplifiers know how to increase the impact for all key stakeholders through the power of example and by bringing out the best in their colleagues who surround them. These Amplifiers have the power to turn up the volume to enable transformation efforts to be successful or to affect the positive change that a company is seeking for long-term and sustainable health.

Leadership and followership are compared to each other as if they are two different sides of the same coin. Common thinking suggests someone is either a leader or a follower. We don't often see them as two separate dimensions on differing axes. When we juxtapose leaders and bosses on the one axis, and subordinates and followers on the other, we see a different view on effectiveness. Amplifiers exist at the intersection of great leadership and great followership. When deployed effectively throughout the organization, they magnify the power of the teams that they are either assigned to or with whom they interact.

For the purposes of this book, we use the following definitions to frame the discussion. You will notice that our definitions, especially that of leader, differ from the common search definition on Google, “the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country.”1

Our analysis does not focus on job performance skills or proficiency of the individuals. Our work focuses on the leadership and followership attitudes that drive employee engagement and create long-term differentiated and sustainable cultures. We assume that the capabilities of the individual workers are that they are trained, competent, and perform the expected job duties commensurate with their position. We recognize this is not always the case, but that is not in the scope of our analysis.

Leader

A person who uses their influence, example, or persuasion

to cause

others to follow them

Titled Executive/Boss

A person who is in charge of or commands a group, team, or function

Follower

A person who

willingly

goes along with and accepts direction from a leader

Subordinate

A person lower in rank or position who complies with directives of a superior

In this book, we make an important distinction between leaders and bosses, but not simply by juxtaposing leadership skills with management skills. Instead, we view leaders and bosses (or titled executives) as different ends of the same leadership continuum. They may hold the exact same job title and have the same responsibilities, but they may operate on different ends of the leadership continuum. Similarly, we view followers and subordinates as two ends to the followership continuum. Leaders are usually also bosses, and followers are usually subordinate to their leaders. The distinguishing factors that push them to one end of the continuum or the other are their individual styles, motives, and traits. These dynamics drive how they interact with others to get work done.

Most people think about leadership and followership as two ends of a continuum. However, in Figure 1.1, we show a matrix of leadership and followership behaviors. For the purposes of uncovering and discovering true Amplifiers in an organization, we map leaders and bosses on the same continuum on the vertical axis. We also map followers and subordinates on the same continuum on the horizontal axis. Note the intersection is slightly off-center because most organizations have a higher concentration of leaders and followers.

FIGURE 1.1 Leaders, Titled Executives/Bosses, Followers, and Subordinates

It is important to note that the actual job function of the person at the top of an organization or function does not differ on the continuum of leaders and bosses. In fact, the activities are the same. We also assume for the purpose of Figure 1.1 that individuals performing their roles are competent; the figure does not evaluate performance but the style in which they carry out their role. What does differ and, in fact, differs significantly, is the style in which they carry out their core job functions. It is the same for followers and subordinates. Followers and subordinates alike have work to do to complete their daily activities. How they conduct themselves and interact with their colleagues to get that work done is significantly different. The style and the nature of how they approach their work in the context of the broader organization and mission are what sets followers apart from subordinates.

One of the things that is amazing to me is the number of people who share with me their frustration when a colleague who has been promoted to be their boss lacks the requisite leadership skills. These individuals have excelled in their work product, have been exceptional employees, have demonstrated their ability to produce outstanding work, and seem to always reliably get the job done. They possess project planning skills, risk analysis, and the ability to budget and track status. But many times, an individual who possesses these functional subject matter expertise and perhaps even managerial expertise is recognized as a star worker, yet their peers on the team will not follow their lead. When the individual is promoted, the other team members shrug their shoulders in disbelief and commiserate with each other that they will now need to take direction from this newly promoted boss.

Why is it that some people amass followers and others do not? It's easy to spot a leader; just look for their followers. This is very different than looking for a manager and spotting their subordinates. For all the literature on leadership, there is very little that gets after the root cause to know why some people earn followers and some never will. Leaders have found ways to engage and inspire followers that may not exist in mere managers or bosses. Leaders need followers. Yet many leaders don't always understand the reason why their followers follow. Leaders may employ various methods to get work done, two of which are position power and influence. Leaders use these tools at different times for different types of work that needs to be done.

Position power stems from the formal authority vested in the leader simply because of their position in the organization's hierarchy. Position power enables the leader to force others to take action. It can be extremely effective at getting a lot of work done in a short period of time. Many leaders rely on position power when prompt action needs to occur or when they know they need some quick wins in order to gain broader momentum throughout the organization. But getting work done through position power is not sustainable as a long-term leadership strategy because it generally leads to resentment and disengagement by followers.

Conversely, leaders who rely on influence to get work done by their followers are able to use persuasion to convince the follower to take action. Influence is most effective when the leader has already established a strong relationship with the follower. The follower in turn trusts and respects the leader. This can be motivational for followers. Influence is far more sustainable because influence is the fuel for the engine of followership.

When you are the boss, people think you have followership. What you actually have are people executing orders or following your directions. Tim Hassinger, former CEO of Dow AgroSciences, shared with me one of his secret strategies for checking himself as he progressed throughout his career. “Leaders need to challenge themselves frequently. Honestly ask yourself: do they listen to me because I had a good idea or because I am the boss?” It's critical, especially for new bosses, to sit back and honestly self-assess this question. Everyone who gets promoted has typically received positive affirmation throughout their career. After being promoted to a position that oversees a team, department, business unit, or organization, leaders need to step back and have a regular method for self-appraisal by asking this key question.

Although challenging, the best organizations are able to differentiate between subordinates carrying out the boss's directions and followers who are genuinely inspired by their leader. Most evaluation systems and performance review processes do an excellent job on the measurable elements of job performance. Many have attempted to uncover or discover leadership traits and how they may apply to the individual, which can be fraught with implicit or explicit bias. However, few organizations evaluate or emphasize followership. In order for us to more fully understand leadership, we need to better understand followership. This is important because an Amplifier exists at the intersection of leadership and followership.

Let's look back at Figure 1.1. In quadrant A, we have the special blend of an organization that has leadership and followership. When companies and their corporate culture display behaviors that exist in this quadrant, they produce extraordinary results. The other interesting attribute about quadrant A is that here leaders and followers create legions of leaders and followers throughout the organization. When the flywheel is moving in this quadrant, organizations tend to dominate their markets.

The secret to how great leaders magnify the power of teams, increase the impact of organizations, and turn up the volume on positive change rests in unlocking these operating styles of the cream of the crop of the employee base in companies. The prized intersection of top-performing leaders and the top-performing followers are what we call Amplifiers. True Amplifiers are the key group of people in any company who activate the true potential of all stakeholders. Remember, employees can be in any quadrant regardless of their level within the company.

In Figure 1.2, true Amplifiers exist in upper right of quadrant A. These individuals possess the unique combination of leadership and followership skills. They are able to separate the flash leadership behaviors with the lasting leadership behaviors. They stand up and lead up, not just down and across. True Amplifiers have the ability to speak truth to power and influence leaders to change course. Great companies are unceasingly searching and developing Amplifiers throughout the organization regardless of title, tenure, or position.

On a bitterly cold and windy night in the fourth quarter of 2018, I had the opportunity to meet former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. My partner and I had spent a long day at Bain Capital’s Boston headquarters negotiating the sale of one of our businesses. Patrick had a long list of accomplishments during his eight-year term as governor of Massachusetts. His key priorities were to expand affordable health care, launch initiatives to stimulate clean energy and biotechnology, invest in education, and guide the state through economic crisis to a 25-year high in employment. After he left office, Patrick joined Bain Capital to help launch an impact investing fund. This innovative new fund—Bain Capital Double Impact—is designed to invest in mission-driven companies that target social good, while also generating impressive returns for investors. This chapter in his private work life was an amplification of his belief that private companies can be a force for public good.

FIGURE 1.2 True Amplifiers

I learned through our conversations that what makes Patrick himself a strong leader is that he is an exemplary follower. Over the years, he has been focused on effecting change and is driven by a higher purpose. The combination of competitive spirit and will to succeed coupled with positive examples from some remarkable leaders he has served have created the true Amplifier qualities that he so effectively embodies. One of the nicest things that his team said about him when he left the justice department was that when it was time to sign off on a case from the civil rights department, the section leader would present, and Patrick would go around the table and ask everyone for input. Even if a paralegal was there, he'd ask them what ideas they had. It wasn't something they were accustomed to. But he was constantly learning and got so much more out of the team by engaging each of them that he magnified their impact. Patrick had the humility to be a good leader, to subordinate his ego and pull ideas out of the team. He railed at the “imperial CEO,” whose feet never touched the ground, everything was looked after for them, and they lost sight of the implications of the decisions and impact to stakeholders because they were shielded from reality.

Quadrant B is an interesting quadrant insofar as it is composed of strong followers who lack leadership skills. For teams that report to executives in Quadrant B, true Amplifiers are critically important. The followers need to shore up the leadership gaps of their bosses in order to lead the team to achieve its mission and purpose. Organizations can be incredibly successful, even lack the institutional leadership, if they have followership en masse. I've seen firsthand over the years some very successful companies with great brands or products that have had marginal leaders at the top but have had outstanding key lieutenant followers in executive positions. These organizations, or functions within an organization, outlive the titled executive or boss. Followers and true Amplifiers can coexist with bosses or non-leaders in a particular function, but they are motivated and motivate others for a variety of reasons. In some cases, it's the higher purpose of the company. In other cases, it may be their career aspirations. But over time, they will need to have superiors who are higher on the leadership scale or they will self-select to another area within the company or outside the company altogether.

Quadrant C is much more problematic. However, a number of companies exist with a large employee population in quadrant C. Quadrant C is where incremental progress occurs. Many companies can still be effective in the short run. This quadrant is full of low-profile companies operating at a baseline level of performance. In some cases, they operate in product or service sectors that are fully mature. These companies are rich acquisition targets due to their lack of revenue growth, operating performance, and steady cash flows. Alternatively, companies that exist in this quadrant were once high-flyers and have grown significantly but have evolved into a style of incremental management. They are too big to be acquired or too far beyond the ability to affect positive change. They have become large zombie companies.

Quadrant D is the most precarious. In this quadrant, there is strong leadership, potentially flash leadership in an organization filled with individuals who will carry out the tasks. Think of the individuals at Tyco in the procurement or accounts payable department who were responsible for buying and paying the bill for CEO Dennis Kozlowski's gold toilet seat or the toga party for his wife's birthday. In this example, there is a strong cultlike personality at the top job of the company. He had enough leadership, at least temporarily, to influence subordinates to engage in his outrageous behavior.

Another example is the GE travel team who allowed Jeffrey Immelt to have a backup jet available on each of his travel visits so that he would not be delayed. The enablement of these cultlike celebrity CEOs is the antithesis of good followership. Quadrant D is littered with bankrupt companies or companies that have fallen from grace. It is in this quadrant where more shareholder, employee, and societal damage occurs than anywhere else. Other traps in this quadrant consist of serial acquisitions with marginal payoffs. With this strategy, CEOs are often heralded in the media as rock stars because of the growth of the companies they have been tasked to manage. But debt and goodwill swells resulting in a magnified risk in the balance sheet. In a low-interest-rate environment, the strategy can be pursued for some time. Inevitably though, companies that pursue this strategy run out of runway and they crash and burn. One disastrous example was the strategic pursuit of Valeant Pharmaceuticals from 2008 to 2016 under the direction of CEO Michael Pearson. His rampant buying spree was a terrible long-term strategy, although his methods artificially propped up the stock price for a short and unsustainable period of time.

Obviously, it's not as simple as individuals existing in a particular quadrant for all the roles they play within the company. Most of what we do needs to interoperate among the many hats we wear when executing our jobs. For example, an executive vice president in an organization clearly needs to have strong leadership skills and strong followership skills. They may be responsible for leading geographic regions, strategic business units, or major operational functions. Despite these clear responsibilities, they are also a subordinate follower to their leaders. This dynamic highlights how closely aligned leadership and followership are and, when combined, can produce extraordinary results.

Simply because an individual or company exists in a particular quadrant does not mean they will stay there indefinitely. We've seen companies drift or change over time. It is usually the case when there is a major change in strategic direction, market conditions, shareholder activism, or CEO succession. This leads us to dig deeper to understand what the characteristics are for individuals in each of the quadrants. It also leads us to understand leading indicators that may demonstrate movement between the quadrants.

Note

1.

Definition from Google search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+are+the+dictionaries&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS795US796&oq=what+are+the+dictionaries&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j0i22i30l2j0i10i22i30j0i22i30l5.12572j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#dobs=leader

.

2Leaders Versus Titled Executives: Leadership Differs from Management

Leadership and management are not the same. Amazingly, people often get this wrong. Bosses are frequently confused with leaders, and subordinates are confused with followers. That said, a boss may very well be a leader, but it is not a foregone conclusion. Just because a boss has the title or power in the relationship, doesn't mean that boss is a leader. We have all seen these bosses in action—the titled executive or manager who oversees a large team but has no followers. Some employees do as they are instructed by the boss, but not because they are being led or because those employees are drawn to follow, but rather because they fear the boss's reprisals. This is not leadership.

Sometimes we see this demonstrated in nonbusiness settings, such as politics. All too frequently, we find ourselves governed by a politician who, although they were voted into office, they are not an actual leader. These individuals may not even have the credentials to be qualified for the role. Although they certainly have the position, they do not garner a broad following.

My favorite book on explaining the differences between leadership and management is A Force for Change by John Kotter. We confuse leadership with people in managerial functions. Kotter lays out the stark differences between mobilizing groups of people in a common direction (leadership) and organizing a group of people to accomplish a task or run a function (management). Kotter makes a special point to parse leadership from the commonly misused title of someone who sits atop a business function or organization, what we call in this book, a titled executive.

Kotter rightly argues that simply by virtue of holding a position at the top of a team, department, or an entire organization doesn't imply that the person is actually providing leadership. Despite the book having been written in 1990, we continue to imbue the elements of leadership unwittingly onto these managers and titled executives.

What is amazing, though, is when these teams or departments produce extraordinary results despite the lack of leadership at the top. How is it that teams can function despite this lack of leadership at the top? In some cases, it's momentum from a previous manager. In other cases, the product carries itself. But more commonly, success is driven by followership in action. Professionals who are not in the top spot are able to step up to fill the leadership void by wielding influence among their peers.

What motivates people to fill the leadership gap left by their managers? Some employees are motivated by their own career aspirations, seeing the void as an opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities. Others are motivated by serving the customer out of a need to simply do the right thing. These employees are driven by the greater purpose their organization is pursuing.

Titled managers or executives have power. Simply by nature of their title or position, these bosses can get others to do their work. Confusing this with leadership can lead to disastrous results. Some companies mistakenly have managers run leadership development training sessions. Such training sessions likely merge the concepts of leadership and management, but these two disciplines require very different skills. Companies can and should train separately for good management and for good leadership. Far too often, companies conflate the two and they wonder why the results are suboptimal.

Leaders do not need to be good managers, but depending on how high up in the organization the position, good management requires leadership. We have seen many good leaders who cannot manage well. If these good leaders are self-actualized, they recognize that they need to have good followers who are also good managers. They can delegate the management skill far more effectively than a follower can fill a leadership void.

Management Matters

There is an abundance of research on the science of management, and much has been written about how to manage more effectively. The “modern” father of management discipline is Peter Drucker in his 1973 book, Management. A significant amount of derivative work has been written based on his principles. Many of the current-day management philosophies are driven by his concepts. Even as these management practices have evolved over the past decades since Drucker wrote his material, little work has been done to discover traits that make great workers great.

Unlike theories on management, which focus on the “elite few,” very little has been written on individual contributors. Yet these individuals—those who are being managed—make up the majority of employees at many companies and are largely responsible for carrying out the organization's strategic goals. Understanding workers—whether they are subordinates or followers—is a worthwhile study for any leader or manager. Flipping the management theory coin and taking a closer look at employees who are being managed reveals greater insight into how to achieve higher performance from those teams.

Delving into the prevailing wisdom on management highlights several key gaps. We are increasingly operating in a world with a greater number of remote or virtual workers, especially because we've experienced a forced work-from-home environment during the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Managing these remote workers requires a different set of tools. Managers cannot manage by walking around, pulling subordinates in for quick conversations in real time, or interacting easily with workers in an informal manner. Culture trumps strategy, and building a strong culture with remote workers is difficult. All these factors and others necessitate the use of differing methods and tools to connect with workers. The effectiveness of these tools remains questionable as the modern workforce grapples with how best to deploy them.

Another change in how knowledge workers get work done is the agile method of running projects and accomplishing work. This style democratizes the nature of work, placing more emphasis on the workers responsible for getting the work done than on the managers overseeing the teams. The following summarizes a few key characteristics of good workers.

Subject Matter Aspects

Subject matter expertise or competency

Accreditation and special training

Company and industry knowledge

Technical Aspects

Project planning and oversight

Team construction and oversight

Problem deconstruction and solving

Risk management and contingency planning

Nontechnical and People Aspects

Communication

Performance management

Professional development

Administrative Aspects

Risk and issue resolution and management

Budgeting and forecasting

Goal setting and tracking

Compliance

Traditional Leadership

“If you think you are a leader and you are out there and turn around and there's nobody behind you, you're not a leader, just a guy out there taking a walk.”

—John Hope Bryant

There is so much confusion regarding what leadership is and what it is not. There is an abundance of books and articles written about leadership. Many universities have courses devoted to studying leadership. But far too often we miss the point. Simply because someone occupies a chair does not make them a leader. Additionally, leaders with charisma or popularity can seduce employees by their style. When we follow these individuals, we often find ourselves in regrettable positions.

What's more, we often feel that leadership is good when that is not necessarily the case. I was in a bookstore several years ago browsing business books and noticed the title of the book, Bad Leadership